Hello there, and welcome to Guitar World Editors’ Picks – our monthly guide to the guitar tracks that have captured the attentions of our editors over the past four weeks or so.
With the aid of our Spotify playlist below, we’ve rounded up all our favorite new releases from the month of January, and put them under the microscope to wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that have set our six-string senses a-tingling.
Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief
Ever the master marketeer, Polyphia shred provocateur Tim Henson lined up the launch of his two new high-end TOD100 nylon-strings with the release of a solo single that highlights their tasty new Fishman acoustic preamp.
Original Sin features flamenco-inspired triplets, big trap beats, and – wait – is that a wah solo? Rarely have we encountered a song that spans so many generations of guitar playing in three minutes.
It’s been nearly 13 years since Aussie progsters Karnivool dropped an album – something that has further fueled the Tool comparisons that have followed them throughout their career – but it’s hard to complain about a long wait when the music is this breathtaking.
Latest single Animation is a hypnotic ode to the big-budget alt-rock of the noughties: wrecking-ball riffs swirl with cinematic textures and melodic leads worthy of Billy Howerdel.
Ever-unpredictable, Paul Gilbert has followed up his Dio instrumental covers album with a record themed around – what else – George Washington's Rules of Civility, which the PR reliably informs me is an etiquette guide dating back to the late 1500s.
Show Not Yourself Glad (At The Misfortune of Another) is a bonkers punk-meets prog meltdown with some of Gilbert’s most soulful soloing in recent years. You simply cannot listen to a Paul Gilbert song and not come out the other end smiling. This is no exception.
Matt Parker – Deputy Editor
White Denim are a thunderous, unpredictable force for good in rock music. They get labelled eccentric and – yeah they are – but they’ve never been ‘quirky’ in the whole ’00s freak folk, put-your-gin-in-a-mason jar sort of way. They’re just originals, and people don’t always know what to do with that.
Guitarist/frontman James Petralli – who gamely pulls from all manner of jazz, funk, soul, and experimental influences – is, for my money, one of the great underrated rock guitarists of the last two decades.
I’m a huge fan of their new single (God Created) Lock and Key, which captures their wild blend of Dr John, Zappa, and funky math entanglement, without ever losing sight of that fundamental need to nod your head to an unhinged blues riff.
Elsewhere, January is supposed to feel like the calm after the chaos. This January has been the chaos after the chaos, though, so I’m gaining some inner peace from Tenderness’ tune Salt Flats, taken from her new album True (due in March). There are some really warm hollowbody tones floating across the mix, and while she hails from London, it has an underpinning of simple pedal steel, too, that mellows me right out.
On the opposite end of mellow is the new single from Guitar World’s own Mike Astley-Brown, the excellent Brain Paint. Mike was too proper to pitch Maebe (his nom de plume) for inclusion, but fortunately, his PR was less backward. Me? Well, my initial response was “Get this shit off my desk!”
However, upon listening, it is – like a lot of things Mike does – annoyingly good. Expect a colorful guitar smorgasbord, with hints of Marnie Stern, Intervals, Alpha Male Tea Party (guitarist Tom Peters mixed Brain Paint), and Norwegian noiseniks Aiming For Enrike, to be detected. A melodic, euphoric six-string meltdown, it’s quite the window into Mike’s brain, tbh…
Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor
The ball dropped, we got new calendars, and, most importantly, NAMM brought us an absolute deluge of new gear. It is January indeed. For me, the ample bounty of new singles and album announcements have been a very welcome distraction from the icebox weather that has enveloped my home of New York City – and I’ll start by highlighting, well, we could call it the “biggest” of them all. And by “biggest”, I mean the largest wall of guitars that I’ve ever heard at least.
I don’t know exactly how many guitar tracks are on drone-metal kings Sunn O)))’s colossal comeback single, Glory Black, but the number is 130 at the absolute least. Yeah yeah pull up the drone metal memes and jokes, but I’m willing to bet that every last person who’s ever picked up a guitar – even the absolute snootiest of classical or jazz players – has at some point wanted to plug in and just play nothing but leviathan power chords through the mountain of amps that gave the duo their name. Cue parts 1 and 3 of Glory Black. Come on, it’s awesome, admit it – surrender to your most base desires as guitar players, and let it wash over you.
What was I saying about jazz? The maestro Julian Lage’s terrific new album, Scenes From Above, came out last week, and a particular highlight is the nimble Talking Drum. Lage really shows his funky side, letting his air-tight sidemen take the spotlight, before he takes his turn at around the two-and-a-half-minute mark. He makes it sound so easy, man – the twisty leads are so cool and melodically inventive, but his dynamics are impeccably controlled. He’s having his moment in the song, but has no interest in overshadowing it, or the irresistible groove – that’s real confidence.
In the more alt-rock vein, I was psyched to hear the latest offering from one of the greatest alt-rockers of all time. Kim Gordon has made it clear since the breakup of Sonic Youth – the pioneering band she co-led for 30 years – in 2011, that she couldn't give less of a shit about giving the people what they want as far as her solo career goes, and her music's been all the better for it. Confrontational, bold, and experimental, her solo records (and post-Youth collaborations) have been essential listening.
That said, longtime Sonic Youth fans (like yours truly) will be delighted to see Gordon (literally) flinging her Jazzmaster around in the video for new single, Not Today. That storm cloud of omnipresent offset breakup is just music to my ears.
Matt Owen – News Editor
Forgive me, for I am still shaking off the NAMMthrax that seems to have struck me down right at the last minute. More recovery time spent vertically reclined, though, simply means more time to really listen to some new music – and this month has started my year off with a corker.
The biggest new release for me is, hands down, the return of Tom Misch – the soul/jazz singer-guitarist from the UK, who singlehandedly shaped the very fabric of the bedroom producer movement with SoundCloud mixtapes and an acclaimed debut EP, Geography.
Since the record's release in 2018, Misch has busied himself with a jam album with Yussef Dayes and building up his disco alter ego, Supershy. There were a few singles late last year, but now Misch – who recently announced his return after a spell out of the limelight to focus on his mental health – has put his singular guitar chops back in the spotlight with the announcement of his sophomore album, Full Circle.
Sisters with Me is Misch all over. There is just such an effortless groove, carried by an airy progression and punchy bassline. No solo, though – I could listen to an entire album of Tom Misch solos. His feel is that good. Let’s hope he cracks out the Q-Tron on another track.
Jared James Nichols quenched my solo thirst, though, with his new track. I’m still gutted I didn’t bump into him at NAMM this year, but I’ll just, ahem, Pretend that I wasn’t too upset. Geddit? Well, Pretend is the song title (sloppy pun soz) and it’s an absolute bruiser of a blues rock romp, with a suitably crushing riff and wailing solo that had me reaching for my Les Paul.
Finally, shoutout to Brit indie rockers overpass for Union Station. It’s being billed as the start of a new era for the band, and you can really hear that. Everything is amped up. The tones are tight. The riffs are excellent. The arrangement is on point. Some bands just scream ‘arena material’ and this is easily one of them.
Janelle Borg – Staff Writer
My first gig of the month was witnessing the brilliant Daraa Tribes at a very packed (and sweaty) show in Brighton (England). Armed with Telecasters and Jazzmasters, the Moroccan group is the definition of what it means for musicians to truly celebrate their individual and collective heritage while building cross-cultural bridges through their music.
This show quickly led me down a path of discovery to other artists from the region, and luckily, the Algerian Tuareg quintet Imarhan were there to satiate my appetite, as they have just released a stupendous new album, Essam.
Adounia Tochal is a heartfelt track written by band member Sadam’s cousin, Eyadou Ag Leche of legends Tinariwen, in memory of his late mother. The guitar reinforces the unhurried and meditative desert blues pulse that characterizes the song (and by extension, the genre), offering a space for reflection that complements the shared, communal spirit conveyed through the group vocals.
Speaking of quiet reflection, London shoegazers Whitelands' sophomore album, Sunlight Echoes, is the perfect soundtrack to a gloomy winter's day. Armed with an Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1962 ES-335 (as showcased in his Me & My Guitar video on the Guitar World socials), vocalist/guitarist Etienne Quartey-Papafio and co. craft a delectable sonic feast drenched in reverb, delays, and dream pop textural goodness.
Fatoumata Diawara (who recently released a signature SG with Epiphone) continues to grace us with her musical dexterity on the collaborative track Ti Love, alongside Paris-born composer, guitarist, and vocalist David Walters. Syncopated rhythms and fingerstyle guitar choreograph a pleasant dance with the vocals – a nod to Creole and Afro-Caribbean sounds and to Walters’ Saint Kitts and Martinique heritage.
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