After Pat Smear suffered a “bizarre gardening injury” in January 2026, the Foo Fighters needed a capable replacement for their three-guitar brand of sonic chaos. Luckily, Jason Falkner – St. Vincent and Beck guitarist, and long-time pal of Dave Grohl – was up for the challenge.

“I’m a fan of the band,” Falkner tells Guitar World. “I wasn’t familiar with their entire catalog, but what I’d heard I loved. I got the first two records when they first came out. I was definitely curious to size up another one-man band guy!”

His curiosity paid off as he learned 23 songs at lighting speed, leading to his Foo Fighters debut 10 days after Grohl asked him to fill in. “Needless to say, that was a bit hectic,” Falkner says.

But it didn’t take him long to find his feet – and then the shows became a blast. “Dave’s amazing,” he says. “The atmosphere he creates is super-fun, as you can imagine. It’s just the right amount of energetic looseness, but the arrangements are tight. A perfect juxtaposition!”

He played his final show with the Foos in Manchester, UK, in February, with Smear ready when the band returned to action for new album Your Favorite Toy. But if Falkner is needed again, he says, “they all know I’m down.”

How were you asked to fill in for Pat Smear?

I was getting ready to rage per usual on New Year’s Eve, when Dave called and told me about Pat's injury. He asked if I’d be interested in filling in and obviously, I said yes. Then he told me I had four days to learn 23 songs at home before we started five days of rehearsals on January 5, with the first show in Mexico on January 10.

Why do you think Dave called you?

Well, I’ve known him for quite a while. I’d like to think he and Pat knew I’d rock out in this situation. And Dave had called me in 2018 for a single show at Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam, where we played Dave’s opus Play. I think he knew I’d fit in quickly.

I was truly chuffed when he said that he and Pat had thought of me basically at the same time. I’m a Pat fan going back to the Germs, so it’s all just really cool.

What did you find interesting about Pat’s playing?

His guitar playing rules – it’s direct and heavy and I don’t want much more than that! He’s famously a Hagstrom guy, and I have quite a few ‘60s Hags, as well as a collection of oddballs, so we clearly share an interest in the obscure.

I spent four days at home learning the records, trying to get comfortable enough that I could leave space or not, depending on what Dave and Chris were doing live.

The one mistake I made was not listening to the live versions earlier – they can be quite different from the record's arrangement. I learned that the hard way at full band rehearsals!

Were you able to make the parts your own, or did you play them straight as Pat does?

Pat was incredibly sweet. We talked a lot, and he texted info and tech support when I had a question. I feel like I started from the angle of trying to do what Pat does; but once I got comfortable I stretched out a bit.

Was it tough to integrate with Chris and Dave, seeing as those fellas have long-term chemistry?

Not really – Dave or Chris would tell me when Pat lays out or when he steps out in front musically. It was a lot to learn in a short time, but the communication made it easy. I didn’t just have to know it all from minute one.

What was the key to finding your own chemistry with Dave and Chris?

Whenever I’m asked to be a part of something, I’m very aware that there’s a significant chemistry that has existed long before my involvement. Being sensitive to that is important. But in this case I felt pretty comfortable, since I knew the guys to varying degrees already.

Did you have to alter your rig from your usual gear and approach?

Luckily most of the set is pretty maxed out sonically, so I used the same ’board I use with everything. I’ve got several gnarly distortion pedals on that, so I used my judgment as far as what to engage song by song – it wasn’t always the same.

These were stadium gigs. Was that nerve-racking?

Well, my first show was 10 days after Dave called me, so that was pretty nerve-racking! The first show was in Mexico, and even though I was out-of-body pretty much the whole time, it went very well. I had done a lot of work at home, learning everything, so all that paid off.

What did playing with the Foo Fighters teach you?

It reminded me that I enjoy nipping on Jägermeister on stage! We parted with sweet sorrow – the last show in Manchester was a bit emo, knowing it was my last. I certainly hope I work with them again.

Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, has named what she thinks is the best guitar solo ever recorded – and, according to her, it should be played note-for-note at all costs.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, St. Vincent named 1976 Steely Dan classic Kid Charlemagne, which also clinched the eighth spot on the publication's recent list of the greatest guitar solos. Steely Dan’s Peg, released a year later, is also another favorite of Clark’s.

“Those guitar solos on [1976 album] The Royal Scam are so iconic that I want to hear them verbatim,” Clark asserts.

“I don’t want to hear someone improvise and stretch out and be completely extemporaneous – even the great guitar players that they’ve had onstage. I want to hear the [session guitar legend] Larry Carlton solo note-for-note. That’s the testament to how great it is. It’s sacrosanct, compositionally.”

According to Steely Dan lore, it took around two hours for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker to figure out the 50-second solo that defined their fifth studio album, The Royal Scam – as confirmed by Carlton himself in a 1981 Guitar World interview.

“I did maybe two hours' worth of solos that we didn’t keep,” he recalled.

“Then I played the first half of the intro, which they loved, so they kept that. I punched in for the second half. So it was done in two parts and the solo that fades out in the end was done in one pass.”

Carlton went on to say that the duo's demands were “so high” that the The Royal Scam sessions were “grueling.”

“We cut tunes six or seven times with different drummers,” he explained.

“I was pretty fed up and thinking, ‘Are those guys ever going to be happy with what I do?’ When I heard the record, then I realized that I wasn’t the person that should be judging them at all. I knew how hard they worked on it, but I saw why. It was just outstanding.”

In more recent news, Carlton revealed how he became part of a very select group of guitarists to work on records by the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.

For as long as most of us can remember, the guitar industry has been a boys’ club. From ad campaigns to signature series, it’s mostly been men designing, building, and, most visibly, slinging guitars on the world’s biggest stages. But as any music fan knows, that’s never been the full story. Women have always been there, pushing boundaries and making their mark, even if the gear world hasn’t always recognized it.

Now, International Women’s Day is the perfect moment to spotlight just how much things are changing. In the last few years, we’ve seen more and more women getting their own signature guitars, and frankly, it’s about damn time.

Look at Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent. Her Ernie Ball Music Man model is a total rethink of what a signature instrument can be, with radical lines, a lightweight design, and a vibe that’s all her own. Susan Tedeschi’s Fender Telecaster channels her decades of blues power, built to take the kind of beating her intense touring schedule demands, while Fatoumata Diawara brings Malian influences and a global perspective to her custom SG model, and Yvette Young’s quirky Ibanez signature is just as innovative and expressive as her finger-tapped melodies.

In this collection, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite artist models to shine a spotlight on these standout instruments and the artists behind them, showing how female signature models are changing the face of guitar for good.

Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear has had to pull out of the band's upcoming live shows as he recovers from a “bizarre gardening accident” – and his temporary replacement has been announced.

In a social media post that gave a not-so-subtle nod to Spinal Tap, the band wrote, “In the classic tradition of rockstars having bizarre gardening accidents, Pat Smear has apparently rung in the new year by smashing the shit out of his left foot.

“This means he’ll unfortunately be missing a few shows while the multiple broken bones in his foot heal. We’ll miss our beloved Pat as much as you will, but we want him fully healed and back on his feet as soon as possible.”

“Smashing the shit” sounds like it could be a rather accurate medical diagnosis. A photo that accompanies the post shows the Foo Fighters guitarist strapped to a wheelchair and, what we presume, an X-Ray of his ankle.

This is Guitar World, not Medicine World, but there certainly looks to be some gnarly fractures there. If only Foo Fighters had, say, a purpose-built throne that Smear could sit on for the upcoming shows.

Oh, wait, they do. Or, at least, they did – when band leader Dave Grohl broke his leg in 2015, he famously took the stage atop a grand guitar-themed throne. That throne was later loaned to Greyhawk bassist Darin Wall.

Whatever the case, the throne is apparently M.I.A., and even if Smear did have it, there’s then the small order of having to stomp on his pedalboard. So perhaps a brief rest on the sidelines is the most sensible option.

He’ll be out for Foo Fighters’ next few shows, and the band have already hired his temporary replacement: “Beck and St. Vincent guitar wizard Jason Falkner will be filling in for Pat while he’s on the mend,” the post concludes.

Falkner will step in for the band’s upcoming shows in Mexico, California and Australia on January 10, 14, and 24, respectively.

In 2024, Guitar World caught up with the journeyman session guitarist, who looked back on the moment he unexpectedly received the call to try out for St. Vincent’s band.

Back in 2016, St. Vincent launched what would quickly become an ergonomically game-changing guitar with Ernie Ball Music Man – in doing so joining the ranks of fellow EBMM endorsees John Petrucci, Albert Lee, and Steve Morse.

Perhaps one of the most distinct (not to mention eye-catching) features of the model is its angular – or, in Annie Clark’s own words, “slightly unorthodox” – body shape: a completely new guitar design that broke the mold of what we then expected a guitar to look like.

“For me, a guitar that is not too heavy is really important because I’m not a very big person,” she told Guitar World, just before the signature model's launch.

“I can’t even play a Sixties Strat or Seventies Les Paul. I would need to travel with a chiropractor on tour in order to play those guitars. It’s not that those aren’t great guitars, but they render themselves impractical and unfunctional for a person like me because of their weight.

“I carry my guitar pretty high, so I had to make all of these costumes based on the fact that you wouldn’t be able to see if I had a waist or not. I wanted to make something that looked good and not just on a woman, but any person.”

Indeed, pop and rock connoisseur – and, as solidified by her headlining Glastonbury performance – bona fide contemporary rock star Olivia Rodrigo, is quick to mention St. Vincent as one of her top inspirations, and this extends to her signature model.

“I read an interview about it, and she made a guitar that's specifically designed for women,” Rodrigo tells riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna on the Music Makes Us podcast. “Because she plays her guitar really high up, and it's cut so that you can have boobs and play guitar, which is so awesome. So it's such a fucking cool looking guitar, but she's rad.”

Rodrigo speaks from experience, having gigged with a custom purple-finished Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent Goldie signature guitar since early 2024, coinciding with her Guts tour.

“Olivia killing it opening night of Guts tour,” St. Vincent confirmed on an Instagram story after the guitar was unveiled. “Playing a custom purple STV Goldie. So proud!”

And, speaking of St. Vincent signature model wielders, The Last Dinner Party’s lead guitarist, Emily Roberts, is a true champion – having adopted the model four or five years ago in her quest for “something that sounds and looks different, for the sake of being different.”

When The Last Dinner Party’s debut single, Nothing Matters, dropped in 2023, the band was immediately met with dizzying success – momentum that continued with their 2024 debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy. It signaled to everyone that, if there was ever any doubt, guitar bands were well and truly back in the mainstream.

The band’s lead guitarist, Emily Roberts, in particular, dazzled guitar aficionados with carefully crafted parts that wouldn’t be out of place on Queen or Mick Ronson-era Bowie albums – and the jazz-schooled guitarist remains a defining pillar of the band’s sound on their sophomore record, From the Pyre.

Using a combination of Music Man St. Vincent signature guitars, a Gibson ES-330, and a Les Paul, the new album has an unmistakable vintage twang – plus the added sharp bite that's part and parcel of the St. Vincent model's sound.

Speaking about her penchant for using the St. Vincent guitars, both in studio and live, Roberts tells Guitar.com, “I’m a bit stuck in my ways at this point. What I like about the St Vincent is that it really cuts through a mix, and it’s quite high-end.

“I think that’s a great quality that it has, and it just doesn’t sound like a Fender or a Gibson. I wanted something that, when you hear it, it’s not obvious what it is. I wanted people to go, ‘What is that?’ and for it to sound new.”

As for what she would hope for if she ever got the chance to design a signature model, Roberts notes that she'd want something that's "modern-looking” and has “the same ease for playing as a female.

“I’ve always wanted to design or make my own guitar, I just haven’t had any time to do that,” she admits.

“I’d want it to be an amalgamation of different decades in one guitar, even if that’s really difficult to do. It would be cool to have a guitar that combines elements, like if it had different pickups from each other, or a switchable bridge pickup that changes from a P-90 into a humbucker or a Firebird. Having something with a lot of versatility that captures different decades of guitar playing and guitar history would be really cool.”

In last year’s Guitar World interview with Roberts, the lead guitarist spoke about performing as Brian May in an all-female Queen tribute band, and how she used an authentic Klon Centaur on the band’s debut.

Family legacy aside, it's safe to say that Willow has evolved into a bona fide boundary-pushing artist who seamlessly flits between genres, both across and within records. In 2021, her single Transparent Soul turned heads not only for its pop-punk energy, but also because Willow was very much in her electric guitar-wielding era.

Fast forward four years, and through her subsequent albums, Willow has shown that the instrument remains an integral part of her core sonic palette. However, as she reveals in a new interview with Rick Beato, her guitar journey started long before that career-defining single.

“Everyone always is like, ‘This is so ridiculous. Why did this inspire you?’ Could have been Jimi Hendrix. Could have been all these other things. But weirdly enough, no. It was a Michael Cera album,” she confesses.

“Michael Cera is mainly an actor. But I listened to this Michael Cera album [2014’s true that], and it's all just him playing acoustic guitar, and it's very DIY. And I was like, ‘Why does this make me feel like I want to go get an acoustic guitar right now and just go for it?’ And so around 14, that's what I did. And I've been playing guitar ever since.”

Another artist who served – and continues to serve – as a source of inspiration for Willow is none other than St. Vincent, with whom she collaborated on her empathogen (2024) highlight, pain for fun.

“She's very gear-oriented. She knows exactly what's gonna make a sound [and] the machinery. I'm just very organic when it comes to [the studio],” she adds.

And, following in St. Vincent's footsteps, Willow can often be seen wielding the All Born Screaming guitarist's signature model – a conscious choice that, as she described in a 2022 Guitar World interview – was born partly out of her admiration for the guitarist.

“I have to start by being honest and saying I love St. Vincent. She’s one of my favorite musicians ever. The guitar is super-sleek and light, plus the action is low, which I love. It is very easy to move with and play. I feel like a lot of guitars are a bit harder to dance and move with.”

She continued, “The St. Vincent signature is so comfortable in that sense. It’s such an inspiring guitar to play, even more so because I know it’s one she designed. She is one of my idols still to this day.”

Speaking of St. Vincent and unassuming inspirations, the guitarist recently revealed which retro entry-level guitar served as the original template for her Ernie Ball Music Man signature model.

Annie Clark – better known as St. Vincent – may now be inextricably linked to the effortless cool of her signature Ernie Ball Music Man series. However, the model owes its existence to a more obscure and perhaps unsung hero – the Harmony Bobkat, which Clark played a pivotal role in re-popularizing.

“I got into the Harmony Bobkat because I was playing with Sufjan Stevens and his guitar player at the time was like, ‘You gotta check these Harmony Bobkats out. They're lightweight.’ And this was when they were still cheap,” she tells Reverb.

Originally dubbed the Silhouette when it first hit the shelves in 1963, Harmony Guitars' entry-level offset was rebranded as the Bobkat after 1968. Bobkat-based models, including the popular 1477, were also sold under the Silvertone brand and stocked at Sears department stores around the States.

Featuring high-output DeArmond-designed gold foil pickups, the Bobkat tone has lots of character – with clear, crisp highs, and powerful, well-rounded lows, making even the pickups highly sought-after.

“I think the first one I found was at Emerald [City] Guitars in Seattle, and I played it. I was like, ‘I love these gold foil pickups.' It's so lightweight. I love the whammy bar.”

Clark admits that she soon took her penchant for Bobkats to the next level, stating, “Anytime I would see one, no matter what the condition was, I would just buy them.” Soon, she started actively scouring guitar shows in hopes of finding another one… or two.

“I went to the Dallas Guitar Show back in the day and bought every Harmony Bobkat I could find. I was the only person not wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt. I really love them.”

And when it came to creating her own signature model, it comes as no surprise that it's very Bobkat-coded – bar a few well-needed upgrades.

“I took a lot of the lessons from the Harmony Bobkat,” she discloses. “My guitar is similar in spirit, except when you dive bomb on the whammy bar, it stays in tune. That would be the one thing with the Harmony. Obviously, because these are guitars you buy in the ’50s and ’60s at Sears [and were] student player guitars, they're not meant to be assaulted.”

She continues, “So when I made my signature series, I was like, ‘I want a really intense whammy bar that you can dive bomb, but it still stays in tune.’ Because I used to do that to the Harmony Bobkat, [but] you have one dive bomb, and then you can't play the guitar anymore because you've moved the wooden bridge and it no longer will stay in tune.”

Just this month, St. Vincent picked up three Grammys for All Born Screaming – her self-produced seventh studio album, which also saw her team up with two Foo Fighters.

Talks of pop queen rivalries may have dominated the lead-up to the 67th Grammy Awards, but away from the glare of the pop music limelight, St Vincent, Andrew Watt, and Gojira have flown the flag for guitar music, picking up six awards between them.

Three of those awards went to St. Vincent, whose dark, gritty, and angular LP All Born Screaming has been rightfully recognized for its invention. The record was awarded the Best Alternative Music Album, with singles Broken Man winning Best Rock Song and Flea Best Alternative Music Performance.

The Music Man signature artist, whose guitar is designed specifically for the female body shape and has since found fans in Olivia Rodrigo and The Last Dinner Party, drew from some interesting places for the record.

Speaking to Total Guitar about Flea last year she said: “I was going for a sound where it’s like… wrong? Like, ‘Is this person virtuosic, or do they totally suck?’ That’s kind of where I live. Like, one of the great guitar solos, Neil Young’s Down By The River is, what, one note? So it’s just in the hands of the beholder, I think.”

It's also her first self-produced release, and with it, she's consciously resisted throwing in guitar when it isn't needed, believing, “the guitar’s versatility is unparalleled. But it’s also an instrument with a lot of baggage. We all know the tropes we’re trying to avoid.”

To cap it off, Broken Man features a Strat gifted to her by Pearl Jam's Mike McCready and she's used it to beat the band to the Best Rock Song award, having played it on the end of its massive riff.

Pearl Jam were up for three awards – Best Rock Song, Best Rock Performance, and Best Rock album – but the Seattle legends walked away empty-handed.

Guitarist and super-producer Andrew Watt's still experienced a two-fold triumph, however, via three industry heavyweights. The Rolling Stones walked away with the Best Rock Album honors for Hackney Diamonds, which he produced, and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' collaborative banger Die With A Smile, co-written and co-produced by Watt, won the Best Pop Duo / Group Performance award.

They add to his growing Grammy collection, having won Producer of the Year in 201 thanks to his work on Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. He also scored Best Rock Album in 2023 having been behind the desk for Ozzy Osbourne's Patient Number 9.

The Best Metal Performance award, meanwhile, was fiercely contested. French metallers Gojira, who stunned the world with their rousing take of Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!) at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, edged out Spiritbox, Knocked Loose, and Metallica for the accolade.

The performance aired to millions worldwide, was a high-profile maiden outing for Joe Duplantier’s stunning new ESP signature, having made the surprise move away from Charvel, a company he has championed throughout most of his career.

Duplantier ended his acceptance speech with some choice words: “We want to dedicate this award to all the bands that are pushing the boundaries,” he said. “Support your local artists, support your local bands because that’s where it’s at and they’re inspiring us to continue. So, thank you very much for this.”

Meanwhile, Justus West is flying the flag for guitar music in the mainstream having found it “crucial” to add rock elements to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album on his Abasi Concepts guitar. The LP won the awards for Best Album and Best Country Album.

Last night (January 30), a remarkable assembly of all-star musicians came together in LA for FireAid, a massive benefit concert that aimed to raise money for those affected by the devastating fires that tore through Los Angeles earlier this month.

The bill was stacked enough as it is, but one of the biggest performances of the night came from a band that wasn't even on it: Nirvana.

The three surviving members of the group – guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl – played four Nirvana classics, each with a different singer in the captain's chair.

The band started off with a ferocious take on Breed, featuring St. Vincent accessing her inner punk growl.

Naturally, the alt-rock A-lister also, with a sleek, black-finished version of her Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar, highlighted the performance with a noisy, free-spirited solo that would almost certainly have made Kurt Cobain proud.

Wielding one of her favored Jazzmasters, Sonic Youth legend Kim Gordon then took the reins for School, a scrappy highlight from the band's debut album, Bleach, using the offset's whammy bar for all it's worth.

After that it was Joan Jett's turn, for a break-neck version of the band's ultimate thrasher, Territorial Pissings, for which Jett used her sticker-adorned Gibson Melody Maker.

The mini-set was then rounded out by a powerful All Apologies with Grohl's daughter, Violet, on vocals, and Gordon returning to the stage to fill in for Novoselic – who picked up the accordion – on bass.

But for Lorde, it was the same group of frontwomen the surviving Nirvana trio played with at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction performance in 2014.

“We thought, ‘Wait, it has to be all women,’” Grohl told Rolling Stone of the lineup of singers that same year.

“‘Don’t even ask anyone else. If we can fill the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance with these incredible women singing Nirvana songs, then we’ll have achieved our own revolution.’ It also added a whole other dimension to the show. It added substance and depth, so it didn’t turn into a eulogy. It was more about the future.”

“Joan Jett, who formed the Runaways, changed rock & roll for women,” Grohl continued. “Kim Gordon, from Sonic Youth, was this beacon of light in the predominantly macho, male underground punk rock scene. St. Vincent is a wicked musician that’s pushing boundaries now.”

Paul McCartney’s headlining set at Mexico City’s Corona Capital Festival this past weekend featured two special guests – Jack White and St. Vincent – who joined him for his show closer, a raucous rendition of The Beatles’ The End, in front of nearly 82,000 attendees.

The performance marked the ex-Beatle’s debut at a Latin American music festival and, according to promoter Ocesa (via Billboard), attracted the largest crowd the festival has seen in its 14-year history.

As fitting for two stellar guitarists, White and St. Vincent soloed their way through the song alongside McCartney – who was also wielding a guitar by this point – and his two guitarists, Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray.

Best of all, the historic moment seemed to double as an off-the-cuff jam session, with McCartney pointing to the different guitarists at random, prompting them to show off their soloing skills.

Gear-wise, White could be seen wielding a custom black, yellow and white Triple Caster Telecaster – a nod to the signature (and more accessible) Triple Caster he released this September with Fender – while St. Vincent played her Stealth Black signature guitar. McCartney, meanwhile, began the song on piano before switching to a left-handed Gibson Les Paul.

Earlier that night, St. Vincent joined a Hofner violin bass-playing McCartney on lead guitar duties for an equally high-octane rendition of Get Back.

While it was White’s first time ever sharing the stage with the former Beatle, St. Vincent had previously collaborated with him on Women and Wives from his 2021 remix album, McCartney III Imagined.

As expected, McCartney’s set list was packed with Beatles favorites, including A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Let It Be (1970), Hey Jude (1968), Blackbird (1968), and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (1968).

With his participation in Corona Capital, Macca wrapped up a busy week in Mexico as part of the South American leg of his Got Back tour, which kicked off in Uruguay on October 1.

In other Paul McCartney news, Richie Sambora recently revealed that The Beatles and Wings co-founder had a hand in mixing one of the tracks on Bon Jovi's One Wild Night live album.

St. Vincent has named Jimi Hendrix’s Crosstown Traffic as the song that got her into rock guitar music, despite the fact she doesn't believe his records sound that great.

In an interview with Kerrang!, St. Vincent – aka Annie Clark – discussed some of the most influential tracks, albums and artists that she’s been exposed to throughout her life, with Hendrix’s 1968 Electric Ladyland cut cherry picked as an especially important piece of music.

As Clark recalls, she was listening to Hendrix when she was only eight or nine years old, with the trailblazer’s playing serving as an especially influential force on her own music.

“I was listening to Jimi Hendrix when I was eight or nine,” she says, “and I had a CD but it skipped so it kept going like, ‘You jump in front of my car- You jump in front of my car- You jump in front of my car…’ His guitar playing is just fire, it’s like lightning.”

However, Clark did go on to comment on the quality of Hendrix’s recordings which, as a result of the emerging recording technology of the time, weren’t all that great.

She continues, “Recording technology hadn’t come that far at that point and obviously he died so young, so the sounds of the records are kind of bad, right?”

Of course, Hendrix’s guitar playing was in a league of its own, with Clark noting that, regardless of the recording quality of the time, his chops still shone through.

“You could record it in a tin can and still feel the power of his guitar playing,” Clark concludes. “As a guitarist, my favourite Jimi Hendrix guitar parts are his parts, I’m less of a solo gal, but the parts are so good. The sound is just pummelling coming out of the speakers, it’s absolutely undeniable.”

Clark has previously shared a candid clip of herself covering Hendrix classic Little Wing on a Fender Lead II.

Elsewhere in the Kerrang! article, St. Vincent also named John Mayer’s Daughters as “the worst song ever written”, calling it “hideously sexist” and “deeply misogynistic”.

The track, which was released in 2003 and won a Grammy for Song of the Year in ’05, explores familial relationships, and stresses the importance of mothers and fathers being good to their daughters, who “turn into mothers” themselves.

“It’s just so hideously sexist but it pretends to be a love song, but it’s really, really retrograde and really sexist,” she says. “And I hate it… It’s so deeply misogynistic, which would be fine if you owned that, but it pretends like it’s sweet.”

After securing the sought-after support slot on St. Vincent’s All Born Screaming tour in the UK and Europe earlier this summer, Heartworms’ post-punk powered ascent to prominence appears to be in full swing.

While the name might suggest a collective, Heartworms is in fact the solo project of guitarist, singer, arranger, performer, theremin sorcerer and dramatic onstage death-stare specialist, Jojo Orme.

Raised in a sleepy Cotswolds town where her talent went unrecognized by peers, her unique vision received its first major endorsement in 2022 when she was picked up by Speedy Wunderground, the taste-making label that first introduced us to black midi, Squid and Black Country, New Road.

She recently launched Jacked – an intensely jarring banger of a single – and reports that the writing of her debut album is done and dusted, with sights set on an early 2025 for its release.

Whether it’s tight, driving synths that descend into cacophony, vocals that morph from a whisper into a scream, or a catchy guitar hook that gets downright flirtatious with tonal dissonance, Orme’s creative spirit seems to feed off of putting herself and the listener on edge.

“I don’t know what I’m trying to portray, but I know it’s always going to be uncomfortable and vulnerable,” she says. “I might write a riff, then write another one on top. I don’t think about what I’m doing – I just know that it makes me feel weird.”

The same applies to tone: Orme is a big fan of pedal combinations that include the ProCo RAT for distortion, Boss’s RE-2 Space Echo and the Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Max for its reverse reverb setting. It’s worth giving EP track 24 Hours a listen for the particularly cool “synthy distorted sound” she gets from pairing a Nano Big Muff with one of Dreadbox’s Komorebi BBD Chorus Flanger pedals.

Self-taught and self-motivated, Orme’s experimental approach comes from a mixed bag of influences from Ben Howard to Prince, Mac DeMarco to Interpol and stacks more. It began when, as a 12 year-old, she found herself grounded for an entire year, unable to see friends or access social media.

To stave off the boredom, she borrowed a nylon-string acoustic from her brother and taught herself the ropes. She says her “independent mindset” and a fraught relationship with her mother drove her into the foster care system at 14, before she took up residence at the local YMCA as a 16 year-old.

“It was very constrained and difficult to be myself at home; moving out was the way I could pursue what I wanted,” she explains. “The only downfall about growing up on your own and having to make your own rules is that you don’t really understand how to regulate certain emotions and problems in your life – you’re dealing with them as a child, and trying to be an adult at the same time.”

She channeled that turbulence into music, busking with an electro-acoustic guitar and a mini Vox amp to pay her rent. Her passion for playing grew, but, as one of the only female students on her production and performance course at college, she felt compeled to hide it.

“I was never really openly showing that I wanted to play,” says Orme. “I’d play, but I’d never be like, ‘Look at me! I can play guitar!’ because I was always afraid that guys would be…” she trails off, giving a tell-tale eye roll, before letting out a slight laugh.

“I discovered for the first time what a Gibson Les Paul was at college,” she recalls, by way of example. “There was a guy who used to bring his in, show it off and tell people not to touch it because it was too expensive…”

Fast-forward to 2024 and Orme’s just been presented with a Les Paul Standard by Gibson. To suit her military-goth aesthetic, she’s ditched the cream scratchplate, making it a sleek, all-black affair.

She’s already taken the six-string for a spin in front of a full house at London’s Royal Albert Hall, after being selected to open the show for the “very mysterious” yet “lovely human being” that is Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, aka reigning queen of the alternative guitar world.

They do say that success is the best revenge, don’t they?

• Heartworms kicks off a UK tour including festival appearances on July 11.

Annie Clark – aka St. Vincent – is finished, for now at least, with digital guitar tones. “I’ve done enough direct guitar sounds,” she declares. “I wanted to move some air again.” The result helps St. Vincent’s latest album, All Born Screaming, sound extremely human. “It sounds real because it is real,” Annie says of the record’s emotional content, but she could also be talking about the Marshall she used to express some of those emotions. 

When she wrote this record, Clark explains: “I personally was metabolising inward and outward violence. How do you make sense of the human condition? It’s wild and fraught. I’m lucky in the way I get to try to make sense of everything, by making work that takes chaos and puts it into some kind of order, whether that’s literally, with electricity through circuitry, or in more esoteric ways.”

“Every record I make is just a direct reflection of what’s happening in life,” she continues. “I’m not really deconstructing persona or identity this time. That’s not really where my head is at. It was more, ‘Okay, life is very short. It’s in some ways very binary. You are alive or you are dead, and there’s not an in between. So if you’re alive, let’s go. Let’s live…’” 

Living things need to breathe, and the guitars on the record mirror that, with roomy, ambient sounds. The vibey guitar licks on Big Time Nothing, for example: “That is my Music Man Goldie signature guitar through a reissue Marshall cranked in a room, with two Coles stereo ribbon mics for room sound.”

All Born Screaming sees Clark self-producing for the first time. Although guitar is central to what she does, it’s just one of many instruments she plays. Wearing all those hats means she must decide not just what to play, but whether to play at all.

“I don’t mean to sound like a total space cadet,” she smiles, “but I think the song tells me if guitar needs to happen.” Her position as songwriter and producer informs her thinking about every part of the process.

When we ask about the guitar gear on the album, she includes what mics she used on guitar cabinets (C12s and SM57s) and even mentions her Neve Decca mixing console. Where most guitarists imagine their signal path starting at the strings and ending at the amp, for Clark it seems to begin in her brain and end in the listener’s, encompassing everything between. 

Clark’s gear obsession is evident. “I’m happy to nerd out any day!” she cries, volunteering her favourite pick, but she values gear for its creative uses.

She describes pedals with creative adjectives like “gnarly” and “kaleidoscopic” rather than technical descriptions of what they do, but wearing her producer’s hat, she also knows the technical stuff. “Say, with a 500 millisecond delay. You gotta know what that equals in quarter notes and eighth notes,” she insists.

“There’s always going to be that guitar player ego going, ‘Put me in, coach! Hey! What about guitar? What about guitar?’ Sometimes guitar is exactly what needs to happen, and sometimes guitar is just not on the cards,” she shrugs.

“One must be strong in their resolve, not to put guitar on things that don’t need guitar! But that also means that you try and be as innovative as possible when there is guitar.”

Sometimes that innovation means layering guitars with synths or unusual bass tones to create sounds that are both familiar and new:

“The real nastiness on the song Flea comes from the bass,” she says. “Justin Meldal-Johnson played that bass clean, but I distorted it. I’m not one to go, ‘Oh, to make a big chorus, I’ll put eighth-note distorted guitars over it.’

“In the midrange, by the time you have Dave Grohl on drums and Justin’s bass, all the guitars need to do is be this riffy, seasick, out-of-tune EBow choir, and that’s the thing that will give you the additional harmonic information. It’s fuzzy, because the EBow has a has a built-in buzz to it.”

Wait a second… who on drums?

“We’ve been buddies since I helped induct Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Annie tells us. “I just hit him up and was like, ‘There’s a song called Flea and you’re the only person I could hear on it!’

“He’s a great drummer because he’s a great songwriter. He has all the power and all the chops, but everything he does serves the song. He’s just gonna take the song from a nine to a 21!

“He just brings that kind of power, but it’s never ego-blowing. He just came over, knew the song inside and out, every turn. He probably only heard it three or four times but he just had it.” New Foo Fighter Josh Freese also supplies drums on a further two tracks, Hell Is Near and So Many Planets.

Despite the presence of those rock giants, All Born Screaming makes us think mainly of Prince, to whom St. Vincent paid tribute at the 2020 Grammy Salute. It’s not that it sounds like a Prince record, although there’s a deep funk influence worthy of the Purple One.

It’s that they are both such polymaths – producers, songwriters, and multi-instrumentalists – who nevertheless keep guitar at the forefront of their sound. Both are far better guitarists than they ought to be, given their breadth of other talents, and both have threaded the needle of maintaining artistry and musicianship alongside commercial success.

And they share a favourite pedal: “On the songs All Born Screaming and Inverse To This, I recorded my Roland JC-40 with a Boss VB-2, the original one,” she says. “You know, Prince’s vibrato pedal. He only played Boss pedals.”

Also like Prince, Clark displays an engagingly non-linear thought process. “If I had to name my favourite bass tone ever, I would say Chris Squire from Yes on Close To The Edge. That is a perfect bass tone,” she asserts at one point, apropos of nothing. “I know you did not ask me that question!”

This is not the only time Yes come up for conversation. She also refers to the instrumental section of Flea as “my Yes prog odyssey”.

That prog odyssey is powered by two pedals that use sampling in innovative ways. The first is the Hologram Microcosm, also beloved of Covet’s Yvette Young, which combines pitch-shifting, delay, and looping. “It was for that kaleidoscopic delay trail,” Annie explains.

The other is the Cooper FX Outward, which she likes “for gnarliness”, admitting: “I don’t even know what it does! It just makes everything sound melted and gnarly, just disturbing.”

All Born Screaming also sees St. Vincent delivering supremely tight funk guitar parts. “The guitars in Big Time Nothing are very much in the pocket, which is nice. You gotta have that pocket!” she grins.

Funk tones are powered by the Roland JC-40, while the Marshall takes care of dirty tones for things like Broken Man. “It sort of is and isn’t enormous,” she reflects. “I think the attack feels punchy and aggressive, but it’s not like I put a big fuzz pedal on it. It’s almost a little bit more spanky of a tone, which is why it feels more aggressive.”

“Mike McCready from Pearl Jam gave me one of his amazing signature Strats,” Annie reveals, “and I played that on the record a bit. I’ve typically been afraid of Strats just because they carry so much baggage, but there were certain songs on this record that was like, ‘A Strat is exactly what needs to happen here, so a Strat it shall be!’

“The end of the big riff on Broken Man was that Strat. I was just playing it as aggressively as possible. I play with my fingers most of the time, but I think I played that with a pick. My pick of choice is the Ernie Ball nylon light (0.53mm).

“Using pedals on a Strat, you just have to be conscientious of avoiding unpleasant brightness, so that’s all from the amp. That’s it. An amp cranked up in a room. Not to be corny, but that’s a real sound.”

She adds: “There may be a couple EBow parts that are direct to the console, or run through a pedal chain and then direct. Other than that, it’s all air coming through speakers.” 

There’s also an unlikely third amp: “Cian Riordan, who recorded a lot of the record and mixed it, let me borrow his Peavey Decade.”

The Decade is a previously unloved 10-watt solid-state affair whose second-hand prices shot from $50 to $500 after Josh Homme described it as his “secret weapon” in a 2020 Mark Ronson documentary. “It’s a Homme homage,” Clark confirms, though she can’t remember precisely where on the record it ended up.

The main guitar on the album is the Music Man Goldie, the latest edition of her signature model. It’s so named because of its gold foil pickups, which ape the appearance and vibe of the budget single-coils on 1950s Teiscos and DeArmonds. Unlike those models, however, the Music Man pickups are hum-cancelling.

“It has a little bit more of a midrange brightness that I was going for,” she explains. “That was especially nice with the amp and room sound.”

Other guitars on the record include a Gretsch 12-string on opener Hell Is Near, and a Telecaster strung in Nashville tuning (standard tuning, but with the low E, A, and D strings one octave higher) on Big Time Nothing.

Annie’s favourite guitar moment on the album comes near its end: “There’s a solo in So Many Planets that I’m fond of. That song is my love letter to second-wave ska and 2-Tone Records.

“I thought I was totally aping The Specials’ Man At C&A, and then I went back and listened to it and realised, ‘Oh, no I wasn’t.’ Usually when you reference things, you’re only really referencing your memory of the feeling that you had when you last heard something, you’re not literally referencing it.”

Another favourite moment comes in the aforementioned Flea. “I take a kind of solo in the chorus that reminds me of listening to Butthole Surfers in Dallas in 1997. I was going for a sound where it’s like… wrong? Like, ‘Is this person virtuosic, or do they totally suck? That’s kind of where I live.

“Like, one of the great guitar solos, Neil Young’s Down By The River is, what, one note? So it’s just in the hands of the beholder, I think.” She laughs: “That’s not an expression!”

St Vincent’s brain is firmly planted in the here and now. We invite her to speculate where her music might be headed next, but she declines to think beyond the next day: “Tonight, I’m going to play a benefit. I’m going to play this classical guitar that I tune down to C. I’m going to put it through a couple of chorus and vibrato pedals into a JC-40, and play Moon River and have a really fun time.

“I’ll be playing very delicately and playing chords with lots of numbers behind them, you know what I mean? After that, I don’t really know…”

She muses: “Guitar is interesting, because its versatility is unparalleled. But it also is an instrument with a lot of baggage. We all know the tropes that we’re trying to avoid. There’s a fine line between, ‘Wow, that’s amazing and virtuosic, and I love it!’ and, ‘That’s an act of ego and not an act of art!’ It’s a really funny balance.”

• All Born Screaming is out now on Total Pleasure/VMG.

St. Vincent's discography is full of moments where her distinct guitar playing shines. However, on some tracks from new album All Born Screaming, the artist goes back to basics and adopts a less is more approach to guitar solos.

“I take a kind of solo in the chorus that reminds me of listening to Butthole Surfers in Dallas in 1997,” she says when talking about her track Flea in a new interview with Total Guitar.

“I was going for a sound where it’s like… wrong? Like, ‘Is this person virtuosic, or do they totally suck?’ That’s kind of where I live. Like, one of the great guitar solos, Neil Young’s Down By The River is, what, one note? So it’s just in the hands of the beholder, I think.” She laughs: “That’s not an expression!”

This doesn't mean that the album is short of solos, however. In So Many Planets, St Vincent rips a solo that the artist describes as her “love letter to second-wave ska and 2 Tone Records.

“I thought I was totally aping The Specials’ Man At C&A, and then I went back and listened to it and realised, ‘Oh, no I wasn’t.’ Usually when you reference things, you’re only really referencing your memory of the feeling that you had when you last heard something, you’re not literally referencing it.”

In a 2014 interview with Salon, St Vincent talked about her approach to crafting each song's guitar parts: “In the same way that I think that I really make pop music, I don't think of it as pushing the guitar lexicon. I'm thinking, 'How do I make something that's interesting to my ears?'

“And I have some restless ears, and I now have a fractured attention span because I'm like living in the modern world. I have a more fractured attention span than ever, so I'm, like, how do I make this sound interesting to myself. I have to trust that if this sounds cool to me, it might sound cool to somebody else.”

St. Vincent may not be the first guitarist to come to mind when coming up with names of Fender Stratocaster players. However, that might have to change: on her new album All Born Screaming, St. Vincent played one of Mike McCready's signature Strats – an experience that lead to something of an epiphany.

“Mike McCready from Pearl Jam gave me one of his amazing signature Strats,” St. Vincent reveals in the new issue of Total Guitar. “And I played that on the record a bit. I’ve typically been afraid of Strats just because they carry so much baggage, but there were certain songs on this record that was like, ‘A Strat is exactly what needs to happen here, so a Strat it shall be!’

“The end of the big riff on Broken Man was that Strat. I was just playing it as aggressively as possible. I play with my fingers most of the time, but I think I played that with a pick.”

With a Fender Strat, St. Vincent had to experiment with what pedals she could use on the record. On Broken Man, for example, she opted for a pedal-less setup and achieved the dirty tone by plugging straight into a reissue Marshall amp.

“Using pedals on a Strat, you just have to be conscientious of avoiding unpleasant brightness, so that’s all from the amp. That’s it. An amp cranked up in a room. Not to be corny, but that’s a real sound.”

In 2023, an Instagram post by Willow Smith hinted that St. Vincent might be using a Strat on her then-unannounced album. Indeed, the Strat captured in the photo is the Fender Custom Shop Mike McCready 1960 Stratocaster, which St. Vincent has now revealed was one of her main guitars when recording her latest album.

All Born Screaming, St. Vincent's newest album, dropped on April 26. She kicks off her album tour at The Majestic Ventura Theater in Ventura, California, on May 22.

For more St. Vincent, plus new interviews with Slash and Kerry King, pick up issue 384 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct.

Hello there, and a very warm welcome to Guitar World editors’ picks – our new-and-improved, comprehensive 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 March, and put them under the microscope to wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that have set our six-string senses a-tingling.

Without further ado, let’s hand things over to our EIC MAB to kick things off…

Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief, GuitarWorld.com

First, we need to talk about Beyoncé. Whatever your musical affiliation, Cowboy Carter is a goddamn masterpiece, and features some sensational guitar talent including Gary Clark Jr, Justus West, and recent recipient of a signature Telecaster, Raphael Saadiq. Saadiq lends his skills to my personal standout, Bodyguard, a breezy, yacht rock-indebted strummer which rides into the sunset with a gnarly Whammy’d solo that’s all hooks.

St. Vincent has also been dominating my playlists. We’ve got an interview coming, but in the meantime, I’ve been reveling in the diversity of All Born Screaming, from its neo-Nirvana bombast (Flea) to QOTSA riff blasts (Broken Man) and esoteric pop à la Prince (Big Time Nothing). But the standout guitar moment might just be the ripping solo on So Many Planets, a chromatic legato workout that sounds like a buzzing bee… in space, obviously.

It’s been a big month for guitar-forward pop in general, actually, with new releases from Tora Daa and Emily Krueger, and more emo-tinged direction from Japanese metal stalwarts Band-Maid with new single Bestie, a co-write with Incubus guitarist (and Avicii Wake Me Up collaborator) Mike Einziger. But just before you go thinking they’ve gone soft on you, lead guitarist Kanami Tōno burns through some blistering alternate-picking runs that must rank among her personal best(ie).

My heavier picks of the month are the bouncing wonk-chug of Chicago psych outfit REZN, who are signed to the reliably excellent tastemakers Sargent House. And shoutout to GW scribe Phil Weller for recommending Finnish progsters Wheel my way. Guitarist James Lascelles recently told us why nothing can replicate the chunk of a good Les Paul, even in baritone tunings, and serpentine, Tool-esque rocker Porcelain is proof that sometimes the classics simply can’t be beaten, no matter the context.

Damian Fanelli – Editor-in-Chief, Guitar World magazine

Like any good (and increasingly rare) Byrds fan, I went to see Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman and Marty Stuart – twice – when they toured together in 2018 (backed by Stuart’s band, His Fabulous Superlatives). 

Although the tour was a tribute to the Byrds’ 1968 country/rock classic, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which turned 50 that year, McGuinn & Co. padded the set with other country-leaning tunes from the band’s catalog. Among them was Mr. Spaceman, which appeared on 1966’s Fifth Dimension. 

When I saw their Albany, New York, show on September 18, 2018, Stuart’s Telecaster – famously once owned by the Byrds’ Clarence White – was mixed so freakin’ loud (especially during Mr. Spaceman) that I felt like I was at a Yo La Tengo show in Hoboken, circa 2002 (you know, the one where I thought my head was gonna fall off). 

Not that I was complaining, because all that juicy, Apple Watch-alarming volume let Stuart’s B-bender brilliance wash over the audience in an almost nasty, “There’s no escaping this guitar solo, Albanyites!” way.

Anyway, even though it took them six years to do it (BTW, what’s up with that?), McGuinn, Stuart and the gang finally released a live album from the tour – Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th Anniversary (Live) – this past Record Store Day, April 20. I don’t know if the album’s performance of Mr. Spaceman is from the Albany show, but I’m just glad it’s finally out there. As McGuinn shouts after Stuart’s solo, “Yeah!”

Meanwhile, a little something called The Light Up Waltz showed up in my “New releases for you” pile over on Spotify a couple of weeks ago. That’s the new album by Minor Moon, a Chicago band fronted (and masterminded) by Sam Cantor. 

I was immediately drawn to the topsy-turvy guitars (possibly and/or partially played by Chet Zenor), most of which benefit from ​​some sort of fake-rotary Uni-Vibe situation, which definitely support the band’s claims of playing “knotty country rock”. The catchiest knotty country-rocker of the bunch is probably I Could See It Coming, the off-kilter solo for which blends overdrive, vibe and maybe some phase shifter, resulting in a hard-to-pin-down, ’70s L.A. session-pro vibe.

And it’d be weird to leave out Evolve, the new single from Phish, a track that heralds the coming of the band’s 16th studio album, also called Evolve, due in July. It’s about as enjoyable as anything “song Phish” (as opposed to “jam Phish”) have put out over the past 20 years. In fact, with its simple chord structure, it brings to mind songs like Crowd Control from 2004’s Undermind. Here’s hoping Evolve (the album) is as twisty and labyrinthian as its 20-year-old predecessor.

Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor

I certainly haven’t the world’s most diverse taste, but my favorites from this, the month where temperatures warm and trees blossom, are truly all over the place. 

First, I wanna talk about Kings of Leon. I have sentimental reasons for liking them as much as I do (they opened for Radiohead at the first show I ever went to), but I’ve always found a lot of nuance in their steamrolling twin-guitar approach. Whether crafting parts for supermarket PA perennials or cowbell-aided bar brawl-starters, the Followills have never quite taken a straight path from A to B, and that’s led to more fascinating riffs and unpredictable but melodically moving solos than people annoyed by their ubiquity give them credit for. 

Nothing To Do – the new single from the band’s forthcoming LP, Can We Please Have Fun – charges out of the gate almost at a Ramones pace, but is far from an empty “back to the basics rock ‘n’ roll” cliche. Matthew Followill, ever a disciple of The Edge, perfectly blends the band’s weird and stadium instincts with a warbly solo packed with funky single-note stabs and fire-alarm arpeggios. 

LA rockers Milly, meanwhile, released one of my April headphone perennials, Drip From The Fountain. Need a grunge or shoegaze fix? Look no further. On the back of a Siamese Dream-sized wall of guitars, the chorus of this song absolutely slams. 

On a much more subdued note, I’ve been preaching the gospel of North Carolina-based singer/songwriter Jake Xerxes Fussell to anyone who’ll listen for years. He channels the American songbook into a vision that’s wholly unique, and his new single, Going to Georgia, is the best song called Going to Georgia to come out in over thirty years. In all seriousness, just listen to how perfectly Fussell’s driving acoustic fingerpicking pairs with texture master Blake Mills’ funky fills. Sublime stuff. 

Finally, if you’re looking to start your summer playlist early, Mei Semones’ Kabutomushi, the title track of the Brooklyn guitarist’s new EP, is worth a listen. With a none-cooler jazz sensibility, a bossa nova gait, and immaculate string arrangements, Kabutomushi will lower anyone’s stress levels. 

Matt Parker – Features Editor

Traditionally, April is the month in which I pick up all my spring-iest tunes. We’re talking colorful melodies, lush tones and earworm hooks. Not so in 2024. Perhaps it’s just been a late spring, or maybe it’s the way the planets have aligned (or that eclipse?), but the most exciting stuff I’ve heard this month seems to be coming directly from, er… the dark, gaping mouth of hell. 

Kentucky’s vicious hardcore exports Knocked Loose have felt like a band on the precipice of much bigger things for a while now, but Don’t Reach for Me is the track that looks like it will send them hurtling over the edge. It opens with a mechanical riff so crushingly heavy that it will give you the bends – and yet it still swings and breathes in a way that evidences the group’s bouncing hardcore punk underpinning. 

More than that, it’s not a mindless thug of a track. The arrangement is intricate, dynamic and unpredictable, full of clever tonal and rhythmic hooks – from the monstrous groove of that chorus line, to the clever use of siren-like wails, unsettling delays, and stomping post-chorus riffs. And, yet, despite its complexity, guitarists Isaac Hale and Nicko Calderon somehow never get in the way of that yell-along chorus.

It feels like a genuine step forward in terms of heavy playing – a band that is re-shaping a metal landscape that has been dominated by the mechanical post-djent approach for the last 10 years. I’m not bad-mouthing that movement, it’s just time for a refresh – and Knocked Loose are very ready to oblige. 

Elsewhere, on the hardcore front, New Jersey’s GEL only released their debut album a scant year ago but are already back with the sub-three-minute Mirage. It goes big and guitarist Maddi Nave has a brief but superbly effective whammy solo that sees them knock seven shades out of the vibrato – and leaves me seriously questioning my hardtail tendencies. 

Meanwhile, former Emma Ruth Rundle collaborators Thou have returned with the excellently-titled I Feel Nothing when You Cry – the first taster of their new album, Umbilical. It is bitter on the mouth. The one-time sludge group has seriously upped the pace and given their black metal tendencies a newly-serrated edge, as a result.

Finishing on a lighter note, mk.gee’s performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live caught many guitarist’s ears for his remarkable tone – ably explained by Rhett Shull – and I was no exception. It feels like someone crossing the rubber bridge mutes with the shimmering indie landscape in a truly unique and affecting way and feels like another ‘moment’ of change. 

Spring seems to have hit differently then, but there are still green shoots, all over.

Matt Owen – Senior Staff Writer

I was admittedly quite late to the party, but upon finally hearing Cub – the 2022 debut album from Wunderhorse – last year, the British indie rock upstarts quickly became one of my favorite new guitar acts of recent times. Their energy was fresh and off the rails, and permeated through 11 songs that brought a neat spin to gung-ho guitar rock. 

They returned with a new single, Midas, which has probably already cemented its place on my 2024 Spotify Wrapped. It’s loose yet tight, littered with gritty guitar and a one-word chorus hook that has become something of a daily affirmation.

My indie ear this month has elsewhere been occupied by the new album from Hovvdy – particularly the noodle-heavy A Little, which blissfully balances between lap steel country and wistful acoustics – and Laufey, whose sheer musicality never ceases to astound me. The only thing that matches her vocals are the crafted extended chord progressions she weaves together – expertly showcased in Bored – which continue to be a fruitful source of inspiration when it comes to my own playing and writing. 

Imogen and the Knife, another up-and-coming UK act that made its way onto my radar, also launched a soft reboot of sorts with Mother of God, introducing a grittier, fuzzier sound that paves the way for some exciting future material.

February and March were quite blues/jazz-heavy months for me: I rinsed Black Country Communion, went down the Al Di Meola rabbit hole, and even saw Joe Bonamassa live. I developed some solo fatigue on that front (hence the chosen highlights), but I still had time for Joanne Shaw Taylor, who returned with the supremely soulful Devil in Me.

Of course, I’d be remiss not to give mention to David Gilmour and Mötley Crüe. The former announced his first solo album in nine years (which features a new producer tearing up the rulebook) with The Piper’s Call, while Crüe embarked on a new chapter with their first single to feature John 5.

Janelle Borg – Staff Writer

April has been my first month with GW, so I'm excited to add my picks to this monthly track roundup. To kick things off, I have to start with a track I just discovered this morning – Sababa 5's Ashkamoni. This group fuses Mediterranean folk, groove-based rhythms, and psych-funk, creating a truly compelling sound that ticks off all my boxes. In this particular track, the guitar and synth weave together like intricate lace, exchanging solos that made my morning espresso taste even better. 

Speaking of Mediterranean sounds, the next two tracks come by way of Malta, my home country. Alt-rock band Brodu mix jazz-infused, indie-rock guitars and an addictive guitar riff reminiscent of classic '90s rap in their track Kusksu Clan [feat. Peklektru]. Indie-pop quartet Oxygyn paint an ethereal image through shimmering guitar chords in their song Waste and make a strong case for why less is more.

On the opposite end of the minimalist-maximalist spectrum are Los Bitchos and La Bomba. Guitarist Serra Petale shines with a seriously catchy guitar hook in this guitar-driven, feel-good track. 

This month also saw ultimate mood-makers Khruangbin release their fourth album A LA SALA. My standout track is Juegos y Nubes, which sees guitarist Mark Speer subtly experiment with multiple genres in the span of just a couple minutes, while retaining the staple Khruangbin guitar sound. 

We wrap up with some good ol’ post-punk. Canadian band METZ make their return with their fifth album, Up On Gravity Hill, which, in true METZ fashion, packs a punch. In the track Superior Mirage, Alex Edkins creates tension with a repetitive riff that rings throughout the track. 

On the other side of the pond, South London's Goat Girl return with ride around. The track leverages its grungy guitar part to create a dark and hypnotic mood that paints an intriguing picture of what we can expect from their forthcoming album Below the Waste. 

Where are all the great female electric guitarists? Not in music magazines, according to new academic research published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies.

The study, conducted by guitarist and MA student Isabella Fincher, analyzes coverage of 43 influential female guitarists between 1959 and 2023 in 10 established American press outlets. It includes pioneering players like Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, St. Vincent, Joan Jett, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie. 

According to the study, 16.3% didn’t appear in a single article. 46% were mentioned in fewer than 10 articles – and often cited in connection with their work with a well-known male artist, such as Orianthi with Michael Jackson, Lady Bo with Bo Diddley, and Carmen Vandenberg with Jeff Beck.

It should be noted that while, historically, guitar publications, including Guitar World, have likely been no exceptions to this trend, this particular study has limited its focus to mainstream music and news titles such as The New Yorker, NPR, and Rolling Stone. 

Black female guitarists, in particular, tended to get even less press coverage. 27.9% guitarists in the study are Black women. Yet they were only featured in 10.6% of the articles analyzed.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the electric blues pioneer and Godmother of rock and roll who inspired everyone from Eric Clapton to Keith Richards, was only praised in 29 of these articles posthumously. According to Fincher’s study, none of these major publications wrote anything about her while she was still alive.

In her analysis, Fincher proposes that these players have been the subject to a set of double standards rooted in long-running masculine stereotypes around the electric guitar and rock music. 

Fincher writes that male electric guitarists are typically perceived as mythological god-like figures. Their over-the-top performances, with shocking gestures and over-exaggerated facial expressions, are key to their fans worshipping them as their heroes. 

On the other hand, women are chastised for similar performances. Most notably, a 1989 Rolling Stone article criticized Vicki Peterson of The Bangles for “relying heavily on cliched Moves R Us poses” and “playing guitars in a Pete Townshend-like windmill motion.”

In addition, many of these guitarists have often been framed as novelty acts and exceptions, or depicted as female versions of male stars.

For instance, the study notes Orianthi has routinely been described in the press as a “female Slash”, “female Carlos Santana” and “female guitar hero”. In a live review of The Runaways, Lita Ford was described by a Los Angeles Times critic as “a girl guitarist [that] can play [as] authoritatively and obnoxiously as the boys.” 

In a New York Times article from 1971 about the band Fanny, the writer posits: “a Four-Girl Rock Group, Poses a Challenge to Male Ego. Going to see an all-girl rock group, one has to bring a mixture of condescension and paranoia. What if they are good?”

The study evidences what has long been considered the anecdotal experience of many non-male guitarists.

In 2024, gender inequality remains a clear issue in the music industry, particularly in the guitar scene. Fender research revealed in 2018 that 50% of all beginner and aspirational guitar players are women – yet only 6% of all signature electric guitars were designed by women and non-binary artists, despite demand for female and non-binary artists' signature guitars outstripping supply. The relative lack of publicity from the mainstream music press may have contributed to these statistics.

On the music press side, meanwhile, inequality is slowly being addressed. For instance, Fincher notes that of the articles in the study that were published between 2020 and 2023, 41.3% of them were written by women.

Fincher suggests that to continue to address these systemic inequities, the music press must actively feature more female guitarists from all across the board, especially women of color. 

Moreover, Fincher stresses that it's necessary to go beyond gendered categories and markers, such as “women in guitar”, as well as their hyper-sexualization, as this excludes, rather than includes, women from serious consideration. 

Fincher concludes that, by challenging the stereotypes of rock culture, female guitarists embody the values and ethos that we associate with rock 'n' roll in the first place.

The full study is available at University of California Press.

From his early gigs with The Three O'Clock, Jellyfish and The Grays, Jason Falkner learned quickly that the music business is filled with left turns.

Thankfully, Falkner – who recorded the indie classic Bellybutton with Jellyfish in 1990 – has long had songwriting chops and accompanying licks for days, leading to five solo records, numerous studio works with Air, Noel Gallagher, Daniel Johnston and Cheap Trick, and mega gigs with Beck and St. Vincent.

Whether playing bass or guitar, he keeps things fresh, quirky and highly textural. That keeps him in demand, no matter the genre or the gig. Lately, when he’s not on the road with Beck and St. Vincent, he’s pondering his long-awaited sixth solo record, which he admits has taken “an embarrassingly long time”.

What sorts of sounds were you attracted to as a young guitarist?

“I was a classical piano kid starting at six years old, and then I got into FM radio stuff, like Led Zeppelin, Boston and Queen. I remember thinking my guitar sounded distorted when I first plugged it in – I felt it would sound like Tom Scholz!

“My parents had avoided getting me a guitar, but they finally relented and got me an early ‘70s Fender Mustang when I was 13 and new wave was kicking off. New wave, punk and classic rock were all things that came from different schools but were always present in my brain then.”

You joined The Three O’Clock and then Jellyfish not long after. What was your rig like around then?

“In The Three O'Clock, I had one guitar – the Fender Mustang from my parents. A bit later I also had a John Lennon Rickenbacker [1958 325] and I used both in that band. As for amps, I only had a little Gibson one my parents gave me, which was a 12-watt that got lost. I often borrowed amps from friends.

“But in Jellyfish, I became more sophisticated with gear and I got obsessed with Vox AC30s. Jellyfish producer Albhy Galuten had a gear hookup with vintage shops in LA, and we’d rent all this Holy Grail stuff. I had five AC30s to choose from, and we’d jog back and forth depending on the song.”

No more Mustang by then?

“We had all these amazing guitars, and the producer noticed me fooling around with my Mustang, which had lost the whammy bar. I developed a technique where I’d strike a chord and push down on the tube sticking out from the bridge where the whammy bar went – I’d push that forward and jog back and forth. That was my vibrato.

“It sounded so fucking cool, and the producer said, ‘You’ve created your own thing. That’s your guitar.’ And it was no joke – it was original, so I used the Mustang mainly.”

Gear aside, what memories do you have of putting together Jellyfish’s Bellybutton?

“We did the demos in San Francisco in the summer and plowed through them. They had written many of the songs, and I remember liking them a lot. I certainly thought I’d eventually be able to write more, which was false hope.

“I felt like I could flex my classic rock inclinations more, which was cool because previous bands had been more psychedelic and bubblegum stuff. I was excited by the idea of getting a little heavier.”

It didn’t work out with Jellyfish – but do you look back on the record fondly?

“I still love how sparse that record is. While tracking as a live trio, I got most of my guitar sounds down in one of the booths with an AC30. If you listen, my rhythm parts disappear whenever I play a solo because it’s the same take, which was a classic way to make a record.

“Since then I’ve become all about multiple overdubs and having a wall of guitars, so that was a different kind of experience.”

How did your gear evolve once you started your solo and session career?

“I’ve always just recorded whatever I felt the song needed until it was done. I’m a big fan of the art of reduction, where you pull things instead of adding. But I’m so in love with the electric guitar; that thing, to me, is a living, breathing thing.

“I have a crazy collection of oddball guitars. All of them are extremely playable – I never keep anything junky. People will come say, ‘What the hell is that?’ And then they pick it up and say, ‘Holy shit, it plays just like a Les Paul.’ And I say, ‘That’s why I have it!’”

Which of those guitars do you most often turn to?

“A ’61 Fender Jazzmaster, which is Fiesta Red with a matching headstock. I’ve been playing that on stage a lot with St. Vincent lately. Another is a first-year [1981] Hammer Prototype; it’s such a cool guitar. I got into that from James Honeyman-Scott; it's just like his.

“I loved seeing him with it because it didn't look like some stupid heavy metal guitar or nonsense like that. Nick Lowe also played one, which is probably how James Honeyman-Scott got into it, as Nick was involved with the first Pretenders record.

“I also have a couple of Framus guitars from the ‘60s and some ‘60s Hagstroms, too. Some of them are very rare, like my Retroscape Impala, one of my favorite guitars. And then I have some early ‘70s Guilds called Aristocrats; they look like a Les Paul.

“I have stuff by Gretsch and Dean, with the giant V headstock and others. I’ve got tons of weird guitars. There’s no reason you’ve never heard of them, like they suck. They’re all great guitars.”

You’ve been with Beck for a long time. How did that happen?

“We met in the mid to late ‘90s. He used to come to my shows, but he was already very successful. Around that time, we became pals, and he’d say, ‘Hey, man, we should really do something together.’ He didn't just want to collaborate – he wanted me to be in his band, which eventually happened.”

Your first record with Beck was Sea Change. Was that that like?

“The guy is just so creative. He’s a real trailblazing musician and writer. We bonded early over a lot of obscure things that are generational for us. We both love weirdo, outsider stuff, and hip-hop, which led to having no set way to approach things. I learned early on that he doesn’t nitpick, and it was and is a very easy musical friendship.

“He invited me to the studio for the Sea Change sessions. The first thing I did was grab my ’73 Fender Telecaster Custom and play this little wiry guitar thing that ended up on Paper Tiger.

“I found out the string part on that was done around the guitar lines I’d recorded. If you listen, you can hear the strings follow this spidery lead thing I did, which I took as a huge compliment.”

You appeared on Noel Gallagher’s Who Built the Moon? and Council Skies.

“I only play bass on those records. I also played bass on the last few Primal Scream records. The whole bass thing is interesting because I didn’t have a bass for the longest time. I would just tune my guitar way down to where the strings were super-loose!

“By doing that, I created this style of playing, and once I got a real bass, I kept doing all these palm mutes where I was playing with a pick, but I was resting my hand before the bridge. I’m not the first to do that, but I figured it out on my own and combined it with an Ampeg amp with just a single 18-inch speaker and a Fender Mustang bass. 

“I get a nice, throaty, low-mid quality of that bass since it's short-scale and has pickups positioned between the neck and the bridge. That bass, combined with the massive bottom end of the speaker, is like my favorite thing in the world – that’s the combo I use with everything I play bass on.”

What’s playing with St. Vincent been like?

“Oh, she’s phenomenal. She’s an amazing guitarist and songwriter. I absolutely adore her. The thing with her happened during the lockdown in 2021, when I was just sitting around my house, recording songs, and drinking too many margaritas because I thought the world was ending.

“I got a call asking if I’d be interested. The first thing we did was Saturday Night Live, and then, when things loosened up, I went on tour with her for a couple of years.”

Balancing that with your duties with Beck and your solo career must be challenging.

“Playing with St. Vincent is one of the most thrilling things I’ve ever done. I assumed she would be more of a dictator musically but was pleasantly surprised to find out otherwise. She’ll hear me play things and ask, ‘What’s that? It’s so cool – how did you do that?’

“I can add things to her songs that may not be on the record, and she’ll like them and say, ‘Hey, can you teach me that?’ It’s been a truly rewarding experience, and I’m hoping to tour with her and Beck this year. I don’t think I’ll be able to do everything with her once Beck ramps up again, but I’ll be able to do some.”

Do you plan to release another solo record soon?

“I’m trying to figure out the best way to put it out. It’s been too long and I’m thankful to my fans for being patient. They’re very vocal – in a good way – about being disappointed that it’s taking so long, which I appreciate. 

“If I'm being honest, I am most excited about finally getting my solo record and doing some touring to support that, which I expect to happen this year. So it’s gonna be pretty busy.”

• Follow Jason Falkner on Instagram.

Oh, hey. Nice of you to join us. You might remember we used to run a weekly track roundup around these parts – Essential Guitar Tracks, as it was known. Well, say your goodbyes, for EGT is no more.

Now dry those tears – preferably from the heat of some pre-warmed 6L6 tubes – and say hello to Guitar World Editors’ Picks, our brand-spanking-new, monthly guide to the songs our editors are digging very much indeed, yessir.

We’ll have a Spotify playlist for you to tuck into, and we’ll round up our favorites of the month in an article just like this – where our editors will wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that had their six-string senses a-tingling.

Make sense? It will do. Anyway, without further ado, let’s hand things over to our EIC MAB to get things started…

Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief

Full disclosure: I went to NAMM, took a vacation, and I’ve been catching up on music (and emails… mostly emails) up until roughly 10:37 a.m. this morning. So forgive me if I allow one or two late-January releases into my picks of the musical litter.

My month has mostly been dominated by Radiohead offshoot The Smile’s sophomore effort. It’s the sound of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood finally shaking off the chains of expectation surrounding their best-known gig, and it’s all the better for it. Read the Room is an absolute jam, Greenwood’s angular riff snaking around your consciousness, before the trio go full Sonic Youth. Yes. Yes, please.

Then there’s the small matter of a new Pearl Jam single. Dark Matter fizzes with the energy emblematic of producer Andrew Watt’s latest efforts with the Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop. And dang, it’s good to hear Mike McCready dial up the fuzz for that pull-off-heavy solo. 

In fact, I’ve been struck by the quality of latter-day releases across the board: Kerry King’s long-awaited solo debut is pure kinetic freneticism, the returning Kittie sound as vital as ever; and Judas Priest have no right delivering riffs this lithe so many decades into their career.

My guitar highlight of the month, however, comes from nu metal survivors Alien Ant Farm, of all bands. I’ve long maintained the band’s first two records are criminally underrated, just for the tonal and technical diversity of guitarist Terry Corso alone.

Comeback single So Cold harks back to that era with its incisive riffs and heavily modulated extended chords, but it’s the triumphant ’80s-vibed solo – whammy wiggles! taps! legato! – that steals the song, and presents a kind of revisionist history where guitar solos were cool after all in the early noughties.

Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor 

First off, as a Radiohead fanboy for life, I’m with Mike – The Smile’s Wall of Eyes has some of the most agile, inscrutable riffs in Jonny Greenwood’s already lofty catalog, giving the album some of that Radiohead ‘x-factor’ we’ve been so sorely missing. Ok, fanboying over.

Though it comes from a genre that, admittedly, isn’t my usual bag, I found it impossible not to be awed by Felix Martin’s dizzying neoclassical tapping clinic, Thundertap. Having witnessed his double-neck wizardry in person at NAMM last year, Thundertap – which also features double-neck bass tapping, to boot – feels like the culmination of Martin’s development as a player and composer to date. 

On a very different note, Khruangbin keep going from strength to strength, as evidenced by their new tune, May Ninth. A perfect balm for a hard day, this easy-strolling song finds Mark Speer getting incredible melodic miles-per-gallon. Kept surprisingly low in the mix, his dreamy, movie score-like arpeggios and clipped single-note statements are colorful and integral to the song’s charm, but never once overshadow the band’s always air-tight rhythm section. 

What I’m most excited about as February comes to a close, though, is the return of Mdou Moctar, the Nigerien guitarist who took the world by storm with his breakthrough 2021 album, Afrique Victime – a thrilling record that mixed traditional assouf guitar music from West Africa with Western influences, particularly the flash and fire of Jimi Hendrix. 

Funeral for Justice – the lead single and title track from Moctar’s forthcoming album – takes things to another level, turning up the distortion and volume and adding a touch of meat-and-potatoes riffing, especially in the intro. Moctar’s Strat fingerpicking, though, remains the star attraction, and is as driving and hypnotic as ever. 

Matt Owen – Staff Writer

NAMM festivities aside, it’s been a very busy start to the year indeed – and as far as new music goes, I personally have been eating especially well in February. 

For starters, Julian Lage is one person who endlessly inspires me to continue exploring new ways of navigating the fretboard. The jazz extraordinaire’s latest slew of releases – culminating in Nothing Happens Here – have put a firm focus on his acoustic prowess, and in turn I have found myself picking up my own Fender Paramount over the past few weeks as I look to learn from Lage’s limitless creativity. 

To satiate my hunger for blues, soul and some more electric-leaning soundscapes, St. Vincent, Gary Clark Jr., and Marcus King have been on hand to deliver the goods, providing masterclasses in dynamics, feel, and phrasing with Broken Man, Along Together (feat. Keyon Harrold), and Mood Swings, respectively.

It’s also been a big month for indie rock. Social media sensation-turned-recording phenomenon Towa Bird put in an early claim for my highlight of the month with B.I.L.L.S – yet another home run from the D’Angelico-toting titan.

But it was the return of Catfish and the Bottlemen – one of the finest indie guitar acts of its type – for which I will be remembering February. The band, which unofficially disbanded a few years ago after some personnel departures, has been AWOL for the past few years, but returned this month with Showtime – their first new music in five years.

Who’s in the band now? Well, frontman Van McCann (the beating heart of the group) is back, but beyond that we’re not quite sure. What we are sure of, though, is that Catfish are here for round two, and – if the new track’s Springstreenian leanings are anything to go by – the album that follows their revival looks poised to be their best yet.

Matt Parker – Staff Writer

May I be the first second to say that the big news for me this month is the return of Mdou Moctar? 

God knows how many words I have read (and, yes, written) about the guitar heroes of yore – wielding blazing guitars in the face of (sometimes violent) authoritarianism and inspiring a counter-cultural movement that shredded the social fabric of the era. 

Well, Moctar does all of that – and, more importantly, he’s doing it right now. So if, like me, you’ve spent time staring at pictures of Hendrix and wondering what it’s like to see a living, breathing guitar hero who plays with wild abandon in the service of something much bigger – look to Niger and Moctar. 

Elsewhere, I’m currently cycling between the crushing brutality of Knocked Loose’s newbie Blinding Faith and Hermanos Gutiérrez’ sun-kissed psychedelic beauty Sonido Cósmico (which dropped a few weeks ago), both of which offer first tasters of forthcoming albums. 

The former is blowing out the winter cobwebs with some vicious near-percussive hardcore riffing and I love those blink-and-you-miss-them shreddy central licks. Points are also gained for the use of a wall of amps, matching guitar finishes and getting an Ibanez Iceman in the video. 

Hermanos Gutiérrez, meanwhile, are helping to reset the blood pressure after all of the above overexertions. I’m a massive fan of that country-inspired muted clean tic-tac tone and Sonido Cósmico is absolutely laced with it, albeit in the dreamy context of a sort of cosmic spaghetti western. It’s a stunning ride.

Though a handful of music fans might not associate the name Olivia Rodrigo with the guitar world, the chart-smashing singer-songwriter is positioned closer to the realms of acoustic guitar and electric guitar than one might expect.

After all, the guitar-toting artist won over legions of fans with the angsty, pop-punk anthem good 4 u – which became the fourth most-listened to song in 2021 on Spotify – and helped bring the rubber bridge guitar hype to new heights with tracks such as Hope Ur Ok.

She also flexed her fretboard prowess with a standout Tiny Desk concert that featured a band full of guitarists.

Now, with the onset of her hotly anticipated 2024 tour, Rodrigo has upped the ante and delved deeper into her guitar roots, doubling down on her affinity for electric instruments by debuting an especially eye-catching model.

Specifically, Rodrigo has taken to the stage wielding a uniquely styled Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent Goldie signature guitar, which the multi-talented songwriter donned to perform a ‘secret track’ that was first released as part of the red vinyl version of her 2023 record, Guts.

And, to give greater meaning to the drool-worthy gear cameo, the song – titled Obsessed – was actually written with St. Vincent herself.

Fortunately for those wanting to witness the purple-finished Goldie in action, footage from the first few nights has emerged online, depicting Rodrigo wielding the eye-popping, uniquely contoured guitar to navigate the track's drop D power chord progression.

“Olivia killing it opening night of Guts tour,” St. Vincent wrote on an Instagram story after the show (via MusicRadar). “Playing a custom purple STV Goldie. So proud!”

Of the pair’s collaborative effort, Rodrigo recently told Variety, “That’s a fun one that’s a little rockier. I made it with my friend Annie Clark, St. Vincent, who is just incredible. I adore her just as a person, and she’s one of my musical heroes, so she was on that track. And it’s a very sort of deranged, angry-girl song, which I like.”

All said and done, we have but one question left: will Ernie Ball Music Man make the purple Goldie a permanent, or at least a limited-edition, addition to the wider St. Vincent lineup?

Certainly, there’s an ever-growing list of artists taking the St. Vincent platform and personalizing it to make it their own.

Willow, for example, launched her own punk renaissance a few years ago with the help of another eye-catching customized Goldie model that had been designed by Yvette Young – although that never saw an official release.

Our inner optimist will certainly hold out hope for a wider release of Rodrigo’s model, however, because that purple Goldie looks absolutely sensational.

Visit Ernie Ball Music Man to explore the current, currently non-purple range of Goldie guitars.

In 2016, Ernie Ball Music Man unveiled a guitar unlike anything else on the market – one so radical it’s often cited as one of the most exciting guitar innovations of recent memory.

That was the St. Vincent signature guitar, masterminded by Annie Clark [aka St. Vincent herself] and debuting a new body shape. A more affordable version arrived from Sterling by Music Man soon after, but when an updated $3,000-priced Goldie was released in 2021, guitarists began to dream once again.

Enter the equally radical but comfortably more affordable Sterling by Music Man Goldie, which – at least on the surface – carries all the aesthetic flair and tonal appointments of its pricier sibling…

There are some tweaks worth stating for the record. Here, nyatoh has been used for the body rather than okoume, and the premium tremolo of the original has been swapped out for a standard alternative. 

A roasted maple neck returns, though it’s topped with a rosewood, rather than ebony, fingerboard. So, a fairly sizeable shake-up, but not one that has compromised the instrument’s performance. In fact, those comparisons are almost unfair: this is a smashing guitar in its own right. 

It’s always strange getting to grips with an unfamiliar guitar shape, but the Goldie somehow doesn’t feel unfamiliar. It’s very narrow, but the contours make it a pleasing playing companion that doesn’t feel brittle balancing on your knee. 

Owing to the nyatoh, the Goldie is light and has a nice snappiness. Pair that with an impeccably profiled neck and 12”-radius ’board, and you’ve got all the ingredients for an exceptional contemporary instrument.

It’s a fun little thing to noodle with unplugged, but, of course, its potential is capped without an amplifier. Indeed, if the guitar itself feels like lightning in a bottle; that electricity is unleashed when plugged in. Gold foil pickups have been a bit of a ‘thing’ recently, but these are certainly here on merit.

It becomes a different animal with a little fuzz, and anyone familiar with St. Vincent’s repertoire – or gold foils in general – will be well prepared for this trio. The cleans are nice, too, and the five-way switch offers an array of chime-y and sludgy sounds, but this guitar really sings with a little overdrive. 

As with all three-humbucker guitars, that pesky middle pickup can get in the way of strumming – and here, that 2/4 tuner design might not be for everyone – but that comes with the territory. To summarise: stick the EBMM logo on the headstock and without a close-up inspection we’d probably be fooled. A must-try for fans of guitars that push the boundaries of instrument design.

Specs

• PRICE: $779 / £1,099
• BODY: Nyatoh
• NECK: Roasted maple
• SCALE LENGTH: 25.5”
• FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, custom St. Vincent inlays
• FRETS: 22, narrow
• PICKUPS: 3 x Gold Foil mini humbuckers
• CONTROLS: 5-way pickup selector, master volume, master tone
• HARDWARE: Vintage tremolo, locking tuners
• FINISH: Cashmere, Velveteen
• CONTACT: Sterling by Music Man
  

NAMM 2023: Sterling by Music Man has lifted the curtain on its 2023 collection of electric guitars, which is headlined by a more affordable version of St. Vincent’s highly popular Goldie signature guitar.

Joining Sterling’s existing version of St. Vincent’s flagship signature six-string, the Goldie is a long-awaited addition to the Sterling lineup, and is accompanied by a range of updates across the brand’s Cutlass, Albert Lee, Valentine and Mariposa ranges.

These updates arrive predominantly in the form of aesthetic overhauls, though some functional and tonal upgrades can also be found scattered across the 11-strong drop.

For a full breakdown of each model, read on below.

Sterling by Music Man St. Vincent Goldie

At long last, almost two years after Ernie Ball Music Man unveiled the reimagined, $2,999-priced Goldie St. Vincent signature model, Sterling by Music Man has finally introduced a more affordable version, which weighs in at $829.

Despite being over two grand cheaper, the model boasts the same eye-catching aesthetic flair as its full-priced sibling, arriving with the original gold foil St. Vincent signature pickups, quirky offset body shape and unique fretboard inlays.

Furthermore, two of the original colorways are also on offer – Velveteen and Cashmere – with Sterling’s Goldie only slightly veering away from the blueprint in areas of build and hardware. A nyatoh body is used rather than an okoume one – though a roasted maple neck retains its spot – with a vintage-style tremolo bridge replacing the chrome plated original piece.

Other specs include a faithful rosewood fingerboard and color-matched reverse headstock, as well as an identical control layout comprising a five-way switch and master volume and tone knobs.

Sterling by Music Man Mariposa

Another highly prized angular signature guitar in the Sterling by Music Man ranks, Omar Rodríguez-López’s Mariposa has been given a fresh lick of paint for 2023, now arriving in the none-more-pastel Daphne Blue. Besides the cosmetic shake up, it’s the standard Mariposa model, featuring a roasted maple neck, a pair of humbuckers and a vintage-style tremolo bridge.

Daphne Blue is the fourth color to be inducted into the Mariposa lineup – following Imperial White, Dorado Green and Pueblo Pink Satin – and, dare we say, quite possibly the nicest.

Like its forebears, the new-look Mariposa is available for $599.

Sterling by Music Man Albert Lee AL40P

Another new arrival to Sterling’s signature lineup for 2023 is a revamped Albert Lee model. A popular template for Ernie Ball’s regular Family Reserve drops, the standard-run Sterling six-string has been treated to Sherwood Green and Vintage Cream, and has been altered to feature a pair of P-90 pickups that swap out the original’s humbuckers.

Other notable differences include a lightweight poplar body and roasted maple neck, both of which replace the mahogany and hard maple alternatives of the flagship Lee guitar.

Elsewhere, the Albert Lee AL40P flashes either block or dot inlays depending on the chosen finish and a two-point tremolo, and carries a price tag that reads $599.

Sterling by Music Man Valentine Chambered

Rounding off Sterling’s 2023 signature lineup is the Valentine Chambered – a release that takes the brand’s classy Valentine design to luxurious new heights with the arrival of a chambered, f-hole-equipped design.

James Valentine’s latest model still has its key ingredients – white ash body, roasted maple neck and locking tuners are among them – but now arrives in either Butterscotch or Natural colorways that complement the sem-hollow vibe.

Furthermore, the Butterscotch iteration has also been fitted with a tune-o-matic-style bridge and Bigsby tailpiece – an appointment that is totally new across all Sterling and Ernie Ball Music Man models. While the other comes equipped with a hardtail bridge, both feature a pair of humbuckers and a standard Valentine control circuit.

Unfortunately, Sterling hasn’t yet confirmed an official US price for its newest Valentine models.

Sterling by Music Man Cutlass CT30HSS

Moving on into Sterling’s standard range, the brand has introduced two new Cutlass guitars. The first, the CT30HSS, is “inspired by vintage guitars but made with modern adornments”, with Sterling doubling down on the vintage vibe by introducing two new finishes: Vintage Sunburst and Mint Green.

Despite the flashy new looks, the CT30HSS stays true to its flagship design, boasting a HSS pickup configuration, versatile five-way switch and a vintage-style tremolo. Plus, at $349, it’s the brand's cheapest model of 2023.

Sterling by Music Man Cutlass CT50 Plus

If the above didn’t exactly rewrite the script, the all-new CT50 Plus certainly hopes to do so, bringing to the table a fresh take on the CT50 template. According to Sterling, the changes have taken the Cutlass “to the next level”, with the CT50 Plus featuring a roasted maple neck, locking tuners and vintage-style tremolo.

Available in Chalk and Aqua Grey, the guitar’s main attraction is arguably those new Modern HSS pickups, with the black pickguards certainly adding a suave aesthetic undertone to proceedings. It’s also worth mentioning those ornate block inlays and the push/pull mid boost control that's present for extra sonic versatility.

Described by Sterling as “the perfect all-in-one workhorse for any modern player”, the CT50 Plus is available for $649.

To find out more, head over to Sterling by Music Man.

Nile Rodgers has revealed he’s working on new music in the studio with St. Vincent.

In a new social media post, the guitarist shares a black-and-white photo of the pair, with the caption: “Working on new music with St. Vincent.” He proceeds to label his new collaborator – real name Annie Clark – as the “real deal” and “f-ing wonderful”, adding that he’s “trying to not lose” his mind at the thought of working with her.

While St. Vincent herself has not yet posted any photos with Nile Rodgers, recent shots uploaded to her Instagram page show her at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.

While the collaboration may, at first, seem unlikely, those who read an interview with Rodgers in Rolling Stone last year might have foreseen a partnership, after the funk rock legend waxed lyrical on his blossoming friendship with St. Vincent.

“Somehow she was introduced into my life only a few months ago,” he said. “I started to go back and listen to the work she had done with my old engineer and she started sending me some new stuff. I was like, ‘Wow! That’s really cool’.

“I would have never thought of using the guitar like that or composing like that and it was really interesting. It was very eclectic and she was using different ways of expressing herself, the fact that we’re vibing so much is interesting because just as guitarists we are very different. The fact she’s doing what she’s doing is really fascinating to me.”

In response to a question on whether he’d ever collaborate with St. Vincent, Rodgers said: “Yeah I probably would! Right now we’re just vibing, listening to each other’s music and talking. But that could easily develop into a musical relationship. Easily!”

The nature of the St. Vincent/Nile Rodgers collaboration is not yet clear, though is could be part of a broader upcoming project by Annie Clark.

Earlier this year, pop-punk star Willow revealed she was working in the studio with St. Vincent, posting an image of Clark patching cables, with a Fender Custom Shop Mike McCready 1960 Stratocaster in the foreground.

St. Vincent is a 21st century guitar hero, mercurial in her quest to redefine the sound of the electric guitar and take it into electronic, otherworldly realms. All of which betrays her influences, which are, well, the same as most other guitarists who grew up playing in the ’90s.

The young Annie Clark loved nothing more than cranking up the gain and tackling Hendrix, Tool and Pearl Jam. Heck, her first band was a metal outfit covering the likes of Iron Maiden, Megadeth and Metallica, with Clark tearing it up on what she describes as an “iridescent purple Ibanez bass”.

But one guitarist stood out among those early inspirations: fellow Texas guitar hero Dimebag Darrell, whose Pantera riffs Clark used to blast from her car as a teenager.

Clark credits her love of technical guitar playing to Dimebag, telling Guitar World in 2014, “It reminds me of being 13, being in the guitar store and picking up the Dimebag signature guitar and trying to figure out how he gets that crazy sound from Cowboys from Hell. ‘What is that?’ I’d watch tutorials on YouTube.”

Those lessons really lodged into the guitar savant’s brain. So much so that Clark would confess to borrowing from the Pantera classic for the opening salvo of her track Bring Me Your Loves, from 2014’s St. Vincent album.

“There’s a riff on my song Bring Me Your Loves that’s so Cowboys from Hell that I feel like I’m going to be sued… just in my mind,” she joked back in 2014.

On first listen, you might not spot the influence; Clark’s otherworldly tones tend to translate her inspirations into a very different musical language. But hold on one second: those ascending pentatonic shuffles sure do sound familiar. And the pitch dives are undoubtedly a nod to Dimebag’s trademark whammy (and, indeed, Whammy) squeals.

A few years later, Clark named Cowboys From Hell as the riff she wished she’d written in a 2018 interview with BBC Radio 6 Music. After performing the Pantera track on acoustic guitar, she even demonstrated how she appropriated the line for Bring Me Your Loves.

St. Vincent has previously stated that she intended to make a heavy record after 2017’s Masseduction, but ended up delving into ’70s funk for her 2021 effort, Daddy’s Home.

That shelved record is apparently still on the backburner, so we may well hear more Dimebag-inspired riffage from Annie Clark in the not-too-distant future…

Pop-punk star Willow has shared an image of St. Vincent in the studio, implying the two artists are working on music together.

The artist posted a photograph that shows Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) plugging up some patch cables in a bank of rack-mounted units next to a mixing desk, alongside the phrase ‘< circutcircus >’ [sic]. St Vincent’s official account also commented below the image, “Call me patchbay princess.”

Whatever the project is, it looks likely to feature the Fender Custom Shop Mike McCready 1960 Stratocaster in the foreground of the shot, which was procured by Clark late last year.

Willow has previously spoken about her admiration for St. Vincent and has long favored Clark’s signature guitar – the Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent. 

“I love St. Vincent,” Willow told Guitar World last year. “She’s one of my favorite musicians ever. The guitar is super-sleek and light, plus the action is low, which I love. It is very easy to move with and play. 

“I feel like a lot of guitars are a bit harder to dance and move with. The St. Vincent signature is so comfortable in that sense. It’s such an inspiring guitar to play, even more so because I know it’s one she designed. She is one of my idols still to this day.”

Willow has fine form in collaborators. Covet guitarist Yvette Young supplied Willow with a custom-painted St. Vincent guitar around the release of her track Transparent Soul back in 2021, and Young also previously gifted Willow one of her own signatures, the Ibanez YY10 Yvette Young. 

Meanwhile, Willow has performed or recorded with Yungblud, Travis Barker, garage rockers Cherry Glazerr and recently guested onstage with Smashing Pumpkins to cover the band’s classic tune Cherub Rock. 

There’s no official word on the nature of her collaboration with St. Vincent, so we’ll have to hold tight to see if it’s a standalone session or part of a larger project. 

Willow’s last album only arrived last fall and Clark hasn’t previously used many guest spots on her own records, so our money is on the session finding its home on a single.

Metallica invited Ernie Ball Music Man-toting guitarist St. Vincent onstage to help them perform Nothing Else Matters at LA’s Microsoft Theater on Friday (December 16).

The band – who were playing their third annual Helping Hands charity concert in support of their nonprofit, the All Within My Hands Foundation – opened with acoustic renditions of Blackened and The Unforgiven, moving onto covers of Thin Lizzy’s Borderline, UFO’s It’s Killing Me and Whiskey in the Jar, before heading into their usual amplified full-band setup for Harvester of Sorrow, Creeping Death, Enter Sandman and for the first time ever, new single, Lux Æterna.

But for the penultimate track on the setlist, James Hetfield and co brought out St. Vincent – real name Annie Clark – to play classic Black Album ballad, Nothing Else Matters. Hetfield relinquished lead vocal duties to Clark, who covered the track’s clean electric guitar lines and harmonized leads with ease. Check out the performance below.

St. Vincent is, of course, no stranger to playing Metallica songs; last year, she appeared on The Metallica Blacklist, a compilation of cover songs from over 50 artists tackling tracks from Metallica’s legendary 1991 self-titled album. For her contribution, she transformed Sad But True into a brooding industrial rocker.

Metallica looked as tight as ever performing Lux Æterna, the lead single from their upcoming 11th studio album, 72 Seasons, for the first time, save for a false start due to a malfunctioning drum cymbal.

In front of bright yellow screens – which mimicked the color scheme of the forthcoming record – Hetfield used his long-trusted white Electra Flying V, which also appeared in the Lux Æterna music video, to deliver a true-to-form right-hand masterclass. Meanwhile, Kirk Hammett – who also debuted new custom Fender, Gibson and ESP models at the show – used his ESP KH-2 Sparkle Ouija guitar to kill the track’s whammy bar-laden solo. Watch the performance below.

Metallica's first album in six years, 72 Seasons, is set to arrive on April 14, 2023. As Hetfield explains, the album's concept is that as humans, our world view is fixed by the age of 18. “72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves,” he writes. 

It's a though-provoking concept, but the second the album was announced, we became fixated with figuring out the nature of the charred guitar on the cover. 

Following 72 Seasons' release, the band will set off on a monstrous world tour, in which they'll play two nights in each scheduled city, with an entirely different setlist on each.

The tour is also set to host a selection of killer support acts, including Architects, Mammoth WVH, Five Finger Death Punch, Ice Nine Kills, Pantera, Volbeat and Greta Van Fleet.

In terms of actual geographical size, Texas is pretty much a pipsqueak compared to, say, Alaska. (For those keeping score, Alaska accounts for 665,384 square miles versus Texas’ total area of 268,596 square miles.) 

But if we’re measuring Texas’ mark on American culture, specifically through music, it’s hard to make an argument that any other territory comes close to the Lone Star State’s impact. 

From cowboy prairie songs to Tejano and conjunto music, from Western swing to the blues, from early rock ’n’ roll to hip-hop, and dozens of genres and sub-genres along the way, the sounds of Texas have enthralled and inspired listeners in ways that are almost incalculable.

The state also boasts bragging rights when it comes to the number of influential guitarists who have called it their home. Which begs the question: just what is it about Texas, and why has it been such a fertile breeding ground for guitarists? 

The oft-used phrase “There must be something in the water,” comes to mind, though no doubt Billy Gibbons would make a strong case for tequila. But perhaps there’s something about the state’s sheer magnitude, its rich history and renegade spirit that inspires guitarists to dream big and channel those ideas into their music unbound by restrictions. Or maybe it’s simply what choreographer (and Texas native) Tommy Tune once said: “I think Texans have more fun than the rest of the world.”

When we crafted the following list of Texas guitarists, we had to consider what actually constituted a “Texas guitarist”, and our criteria was based on anyone born there, raised there or who made their greatest impact there. There were, however, certain qualifiers that could be seen as subjective. 

For example, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio was born in Fort Worth, but since he moved to New Jersey when he was three and then relocated to Vermont – where he’s famously lived ever since – it would be a gigantic stretch of the imagination to call him a “Texas guitarist”. (Should we ever publish an issue celebrating guitarists from the Northeast, Anastasio will be there.)

Be advised: after reading about the 30 guitarists we’ve highlighted here (which are not presented in any sort of numerical “order”), you might find yourself playing guitar with a new sense of swagger. In which case, don’t thank us – thank them. 

1. Stevie Ray Vaughan

“I’m really just another Texas blues guitarist, but I think I’ve got something special to say with my music,” Stevie Ray Vaughan told us back in 1988. Then, prophetically, he added, “But I have to keep these things in perspective, because they’re gifts. It’s all a gift, and I have to give it back all the time or it goes away.”

More than any other guitarist, Vaughan embodied and celebrated Texas. Its grandeur ran through his spectacularly untamed sound that erupted with the force of an oil gusher. Its sense of danger inhabited a vibrato that could hiss like a rattlesnake. 

With his colorful scarves, silver rings and his trademark Plateau hat, he looked like a badass outlaw. And yet, he comported himself like a modest country gentleman. Referring to the bluesmen he studied – people like Albert Collins, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, along with B.B., Albert and Earl King – he said, “Those guys are the ones who really ought to have the recognition. They’re the pioneers and the innovators.”

So much of Vaughan’s tale now reads like legend: how he came up following — and eventually equaling – his older guitar-playing brother, Jimmie; his rise through the Austin club scene and his smash appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, where he was tapped by David Bowie for Let’s Dance; his signing to Epic by John Hammond (who also snagged Dylan and Springsteen). 

When he released his major-label debut, Texas Flood (boasting treasures like Love Struck Baby, Pride and Joy and the righteous title cut, a masterpiece of hellacious, over-the-top bends), it hit like a hurricane.

Others had been called the heir apparent to Hendrix, but Vaughan’s virtuosity and the fullness of feeling he brought to his playing made the claim manifest. His studio cover of  Voodoo Child (Slight Return) refined some of Hendrix’s caterwauling madness, but with his supreme musicality – those artfully applied wah squawks and slinky turnarounds – he made it his own.

Backed by his ace rhythm section Double Trouble (drummer Chris Layton, bassist Tommy Shannon and – a bit later on – keyboardist Reese Wynans) and invariably armed with his Number One Strat, Vaughan recorded an encyclopedia of guitar gems like Couldn’t Stand the Weather, Scuttle Buttin’ and Cold Shot, and after beating alcohol and drugs, he released In Step, which featured Crossfire and Tightrope. 

His death in a helicopter crash, in August 1990 at age 35, was mourned by music fans across the globe. Posthumously, his album with brother Jimmie, Family Style, was issued a month later. 

2. Dimebag Darrell

“I grew up a heavy metal kid and we are a heavy metal band,” Dimebag Darrell told us in 1994. “I know it’s not fashionable, but I’m proud to say that’s what we are and that’s what we do.”

Dimebag Darrell Abbott loved heavy metal so much that he helped reshape and reinvent it. With his band Pantera (which included his drummer brother, Vinnie Paul Abbott), he took what had become toothless and predictable and made it raw and ferocious again – and suddenly it all sounded disarmingly new.

Darrell called the band’s relentless attack a “power groove,” and countless groups tried to emulate its blunt force, but as is often the case, you just can’t improve on an original.

It was obvious from the start that Darrell (born Darrell Lance Abbott in Ennis, Texas, in 1966) had it in him. The son of a musician and recording studio owner, he took to the guitar as a kid and jammed religiously to his favorites (Kiss, Van Halen and Black Sabbath were the biggies). At age 14, he dusted all comers at a local guitar contest (the prize was a Dean guitar), and within a couple of years he was banned from such competitions – he was that good.

Pantera – and Darrell, who for a time went by “Diamond Darrell” – took a few beats to find their footing. Dispensing with a brief glam metal period, they arrived in full with 1990’s Cowboys from Hell, which set the blueprint for the band – there were elements of thrash and traces of the emerging hardcore aesthetic. 

As “Dimebag Darrell”, the guitarist cranked the mosh-pit heat to extreme levels on Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven, perfecting his deployment of face-frying solos, drop tunings, unorthodox modes and what he called “harmonic screams” (check out the end of This Love for a stunning example). In his Guitar World column, he wrote, “Harmonic screams are my way of ‘singing out,’ using my guitar instead of my throat.”

Following 2000’s Reinventing the Steel, tensions mounted in Pantera, and in 2003 the Abbott brothers ended the group and formed a new outfit, Damageplan. Supporting their debut album, New Found Power, the band toured throughout 2004, and on the night of December 8 of that year, in Columbus, Ohio, Darrell was shot to death on stage in an attack that left three others dead. At Darrell’s funeral, Eddie Van Halen placed his famous Charvel “bumblebee” guitar inside the casket.

3. Eric Johnson

There are guitarists with an identifiable sound – and then there’s Eric Johnson. With his exquisitely crafted mix of clean and overdriven tones, and his inimitable, sweeping, violin-like solos, his sound is as unique as a fingerprint. 

As he told us, “It’s one thing to become a good player and write songs that people like. But to have a sound where people can pick you out and they know it’s you, that’s pretty cool.”

As it turns out, the Austin native is one hell of a songwriter, too. His 13 solo albums (two this past year) showcase a guitarist steeped in Brill Building songcraft (one of his first gigs was backing up Carole King). 

For an example of Johnson’s compositional genius, there’s 1990’s Cliffs of Dover, a remarkable piece of ear candy full of incandescent, almost free-form soloing that, astonishingly, Johnson wrote in all of five minutes. Or as he puts it, “It was like a gift from the universe.” 

4. Freddie King

Freddie King is the third of “Three Kings of Blues Guitar” (the other two being Albert and B.B.), and his influence on guitarists across the globe can’t be overstated. British players such as Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Peter Green and Jeff Beck count him as a major inspiration, and in his homeland he’s been heralded by the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lonnie Mack and Joe Bonamassa, among others.

Born in Gilmer, Texas, King started playing guitar at age six, but after moving with his family to Chicago when he was 15, he came under the spell of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker and Elmore James, all of whom he sat in with when sneaking into the city’s nightclubs. 

Rejected by Chess Records (the label thought he sounded too much like B.B. King), he signed with Chicago’s Federal Records in 1960 and released Have You Ever Loved a Woman, which brilliantly showcased his spitfire single-note phrasing and piercing sound (he used both a plastic thumb pick and a metal index finger pick). His 1961 hit Hide Away is considered the gold standard in blues. 

An irresistible good-time shuffle, full of spikey and spunky turnaround licks, its famous mash-up of Jimmy McCracklin The Walk and The Peter Gunn Theme made it all the more memorable. King died of pancreatitis in 1976 at age 42.

5. Albert Collins

He was crowned “The Master of the Telecaster” for the guitar that never left his hands, but he was also nicknamed “The Ice Man” and “The Razor Blade,” references to his stinging yet piquant phrasing and tone. Whatever you called him, one thing was clear: Albert Collins was a true original and a giant among Texas guitarists.

Hailing from Leona, Texas, Collins (born Albert Gene Drewery) was taught guitar by his cousin, Lightnin’ Hopkins. From another cousin, Willow Young, he was introduced to the open F minor tuning (F C F Ab C F) that he would employ throughout his career. 

After moving to Houston, Collins began performing in clubs alongside the likes of John Lee Hooker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. To complement his unorthodox tuning, Collins incorporated a capo and dispensed with a guitar pick – and his sound was complete. A natural showman, he also favored a 100-foot guitar cable that allowed him to stroll around venues and get close to his fans.

With his shivers-inducing tone (he dialed back the bass on his cranked-to-
the-max amp), Collins made his mark on aptly titled cuts such as Frosty, Cold, Cold Feeling, The Freeze and Thaw Out (later adapted by Jimi Hendrix on Drivin’ South). Among his standout albums is one of his personal favorites, 1986’s Cold Snap, which earned him a Grammy nomination. Collins passed away in 1993 at age 61.

6. Lightnin’ Hopkins

He’s one of the most prolific blues guitarists in history (some 85 albums and 200 singles), and he’s certainly one of the most influential. Recognized for bringing the blues from the back porches of the country to rural and city stages, Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins did more than simply play music; he let you in on a feeling – pain tempered with joy.

Born in Centerville, Texas, in 1912, Hopkins made his first guitar out of a cigar box after watching Blind Lemon Jefferson play. In time, Jefferson befriended Hopkins and allowed him to accompany him during church gathering performances – a rare distinction, as Jefferson never let anybody play alongside him. 

Already, Hopkins had developed his distinctive style of acoustic playing, a deceptively simple approach involving plucking bass-note rhythms and melodies (with a thumb pick) while fingerpicking two- and three-note chords on higher strings.

At first, Hopkins was paired with singer and pianist Wilson Smith (the pair were dubbed “Thunder and Lightnin’”), but with Katie Mae Blues in 1946, Hopkins began his own recording career as a guitarist and singer, and in a short period he churned out a treasure trove of material, including T-Model Blues, Coffee Blues and Baby Please Don’t Go. 

After falling out of favor in the ’50s, Hopkins was rediscovered by blues fans, folkies and rockers in the ’60s. He continued to record and tour until his death in 1982 at age 69. 

7. Willie Nelson

By the end of the ’60s, Willie Nelson (born in Abbott, Texas, in 1933), had already written a slew of standards, most significantly Patsy Cline’s jukebox smash Crazy, and had established himself as a Grand Ole Opry staple. Still, true stardom eluded him. 

Then, in 1969, he bought a Martin N-20 classical guitar that he outfitted with a Baldwin “Prismatone” pickup, and its dulcet tone perfectly complemented his plaintive singing voice. He nicknamed the guitar Trigger, and it became his constant companion on breakthrough albums like Red Headed Stranger and Stardust that brought him international success. 

A virtuoso player, heavily influenced by gypsy jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt, Nelson is noted for his ferocious strumming style (his flat pick has gouged sizable holes in Trigger) and his syncopated yet melodic soloing – On the Road Again is a masterpiece of inventive phrasing. At age 89, he’s still recording and touring.

8. Charlie Christian 

One of the true pioneers of jazz and swing, and perhaps the leading figure in establishing the electric guitar as a lead instrument in a band, Charlie Christian was born in Bonham, Texas, in 1916. 

A musician since his childhood, he played guitar in various jazz outfits through the South and Midwest, and in 1937 he purchased his famous Gibson ES-150 electric hollowbody (which sported a bar-style pickup later called the “Charlie Christian pickup”), on which he perfected his unique, horn-like approach to soloing.

Hired by bandleader Benny Goodman, who was intrigued by the sound of the electric guitar, Christian became a star player in the Benny Goodman Orchestra. The guitarist’s lively, single-note soloing dominated cuts like Honeysuckle Rose and Solo Flight, and he would soon join Goodman in a new group, the Benny Goodman Sextet. Sadly, Christian never recorded his own music as a bandleader. He died of tuberculosis in 1942 at age 25.

9. Trini Lopez

Just as Bob Dylan was bringing folk to the mainstream, Trini Lopez exploded on the scene in 1963 with his exuberant cover of Pete Seeger’s If I Had a Hammer (played on an electric guitar, no less). The Dallas-born performer became a major star in the ’60s with other briskly strummed hits like Lemon Tree and I’m Comin’ Home, Cindy.

So huge was his fame that he played a major role in the Steve McQueen blockbuster The Dirty Dozen. Lopez was also asked by Gibson to design a signature guitar, and he came up with two: the Trini Lopez Standard and the Lopez Deluxe. Dave Grohl prizes his 1967 original Trini Lopez Standard, and a reissue of the 1964 model is available now. Lopez died from Covid complications in 2020.

10. Johnny Winter

For virtuoso guitarist Johnny Winter, spreading the gospel of the blues was his mission in life, and one could make a strong case that the music was always there to save him. 

Born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1944, he was afflicted with albinism (a condition shared with his younger brother, multi-instrumentalist Edgar) and was legally blind. Taunted by classmates, he sought solace with the records by bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf (he would often joke that they, too, had problems because of skin color).

Winter’s guitar skills stood out early (almost from the start he used a thumb pick), and by age 15 he cut a Chuck Berryesque single, School Day Blues, with his band, Johnny and the Jammers (which included Edgar on saxophone). 

By the late ’60s, he had developed his high-velocity pinky-finger slide playing to a dangerous degree, and he cut the indie album The Progressive Blues Experiment. After an appearance with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper in New York City, Winter signed with Columbia and released his eponymous major-label debut, which signaled to the world that a new voice in blues had arrived.

Career highs (producing mid-’70s albums for Muddy Waters) and lows (heroin addiction, unscrupulous management) followed, and after a brief dalliance with rock, Winter recorded the classic 1977 album Nothin’ But the Blues, on which he recommitted himself to his true calling. 

Rarely without his 1963 Gibson Firebird V, he recorded and performed until his death in 2014, aged 70.

11. Billy Gibbons

With his carefully cultivated image – shades, hats and an unruly beard that would grow to mid-chest level over the years – Billy Gibbons looks as if he walked off the set of an imaginary Western. 

But perhaps more iconic than the guitarist’s easily recognizable appearance is his distinctive guitar sound – growling, greasy, expressive, outrageous, beautifully expressive and big as the Lone Star State itself. Since 1969, it’s been the backbone of ZZ Top’s mighty roar – “that little ol’ band from Texas” as they modestly called themselves – and it’s thrilled and influenced fellow players across the globe. 

As a young guitarist, Gibbons was enthralled by blues legends such as Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Lightnin’ Hopkins. His biggest influence, however, was B.B. King, whom he would meet early on in ZZ Top’s career.

“I was in the dressing room and B.B. said to me, ‘Can I play your guitar?’” Gibbons told us. “I said, ‘Sure man.’ He strummed it a few times and said, ‘Why you working so hard?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Those strings. You got real heavy, heavy strings.’ I said, ‘Well, isn’t that how to get the heavy, heavy sound?’ He said, ‘No! Don’t be working so hard!’”

Ever since then, Gibbons’ guitars, particularly his trusty “Pearly Gates” 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, have featured super-light strings, which he used to maximum effect on ZZ Top’s early hits such as Tush and La Grange and on through multi-platinum smashes from Eliminator (Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man, Legs) and beyond. 

On boogie-based groovers or modern synth-laden cuts, Gibbons’ economic guitar style is a rich mélange of his influences. Key to his approach is his crafty application of “squealing” pinch harmonics (“it’s meat on metal on wood”), tapped bend licks and hybrid picking, as well as sweet and soulful legato finger slides that he employs in many of his solos. 

None of it came easily, however. As he told us, “Learning to play that agonizing F chord was miserable. In fact, I would encourage anybody just starting out to be sure to take time to, as the old adage goes, ‘practice, practice, practice,’ and then practice some more.” 

12. Jimmie Vaughan

Perhaps unfairly, many refer to Jimmie Vaughan as Stevie Ray’s big brother, but as Stevie told us back in 1984, “I think he’s the better player – so there!” Vaughan grew up playing the music of Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Mack, Jimmy Reed and, of course, the Three Kings. 

By the early ’70s, when he formed the Fabulous Thunderbirds, he was considered one of Austin’s top guitarists – soulful yet refined, his every note impeccably placed but rendered with a cutting tone (treble rolled all the way up, bridge pickup raised) that commanded your attention. 

After years of commercial disappointments, the T-Birds crashed the charts in 1986 with the good-time cut Tuff Enuff. By the start of the new decade, music fans who longed to hear the two Strat giants together got their wish as Jimmie and Stevie Vaughan finally recorded a duet album, Family Style. 

Tragically, Stevie Ray passed away a month before the record’s release. For a time, Vaughan shied away from the spotlight, but gradually he returned to making music. On his most recent album, 2019’s Baby, Please Come Home, he dusted off rare blues gems.

13. Brad Davis

If you’re going to nickname yourself “The Shredder,” you had better possess some mad skills. Brad Davis has crazy-mad skills – and then some. With his lightning-fast flatpicking chops, the Commerce, Texas, native proves that country guitarists can blaze just as hard as metalheads. 

Davis first came to prominence during his nine-year stint in Marty Stuart’s band. In addition, he’s worked with Warren Zevon, John Jorgenson, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yokum, David Lee Roth and Billy Bob Thornton, among others. 

Inspired by Eddie Van Halen’s two-handed tapping, Davis came up with his own method of playing similar rolling patterns with a flatpick called the “double-down up” technique. Over the years, it’s bewitched and bedeviled players worldwide.

14. T-Bone Walker

He’s been called the “Father of the Electric Blues Guitar,” and when you consider the guitarists T-Bone Walker influenced – Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, the three Kings (B.B., Freddie and Albert), and many others – the title is deserved. 

Born Albert Thibeaux Walker in Linden, Texas, Walker played a variety of instruments, including guitar, and by 15 he was performing professionally under the tutelage of family friend Blind Lemon Jefferson. Billed as “Oak Cliff T-Bone” (the moniker was soon shortened), he made his recording debut with “Wichita Falls Blues” in 1929. 

Unlike other bluesmen, Walker incorporated swing and jazz elements into his playing – his smooth tone and artful phrasing made 1942’s I Got a Break Baby one of his first hits. His signature song, 1947’s Call It Stormy Monday is a masterpiece of chordal composition and innovative double-time soloing. Walker continued recording right until his death in 1974 at age 64.

15. Doyle Bramhall II

Some guitarists just have it in their DNA. Such is the case with Dallas’ own Doyle Bramhall II, son of Doyle Bramhall Sr., who played drums for Lightnin’ Hopkins, Freddie King and the Vaughan brothers. 

On his own, Bramhall toured with the Fabulous Thunderbirds and formed the Arc Angels with Charlie Sexton. He’s cut four solo albums that show off his emotive singing and crisp, piquant blues-rock guitar playing. But as a sideman, collaborator and producer, Bramhall has led what he calls a “charmed life,” working with everybody from Sheryl Crow to Elton John.

Among his most high-profile gigs was playing guitar for Roger Waters’ In the Flesh tour and his extensive affiliation (as touring guitarist and producer) with Eric Clapton. In 2000, Bramhall played with both Clapton and B.B. King on their album Riding with the King.

16. Polyphia: Two in one!

Polyphia guitar virtuosos Tim Henson and Scott LePage don’t sound like they’re from Texas, but the truth is, they don’t sound like they’re from anywhere on this planet. 

Inspired by players such as Steve Vai, Guthrie Govan, Joe Satriani, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, they’re also equally enamored with pop, deathcore, hip-hop and EDM, all of which they pack into their gloriously adventurous brand of progressive music. 

On releases like Renaissance (2016) and New Levels New Devils, they mixed sophisticated guitar wizardry with funk and electronic grooves, and their newest release, Remember That You Will Die, sees them going even deeper, mixing nylon-string flamenco-flavored cuts into their thrilling yet uncategorizable musical stew. 

17. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

Revered by blues artists, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown always bristled at being pigeonholed. He called his sound – a potent mix of jazz, country, rock ’n’ roll, folk, Cajun music and, yes, blues – “American music/Texas life.” 

Born in Vinton, Louisiana, and raised in Orange, Texas, Brown, who earned his nickname when someone said he had a “voice like a gate,” was a natural multi-instrumentalist, but it was on the guitar where he truly excelled. Inspired by T-Bone Walker, he first came to prominence with the wildcat, swing-inspired track “Boogie Uproar” and the sparky, horn-laden gem “Gatemouth Boogie.” 

Known for his aggressive, punchy single-note style of picking (thumb and fingers), he could also lay it down soft and smooth, as he did on his signature cut, 1954’s Okie Dokie Stomp, during which he stops his rhythm section cold for a series of buttery slides and sinuous bends. Brown continued his genre-bending ways right up to 2004’s Timeless, released a year before his death.

18. Gary Clark Jr.

Being called “the next big thing” can often backfire, but Gary Clark Jr. lived up to the hype and then some. The Austin guitarist got his schooling at Antone’s (Jimmie Vaughan was a big booster) before scoring with The Bright Lights EP. 

On subsequent albums like Blak and Blu and This Land, his hot-blooded mix of blues, rock, pop, soul, hip-hop and funk (with even a splash of stoner rock) established him as the real deal – oh, and we can throw in some Grammys, too. 

Although Clark is steeped in tradition (Curtis Mayfield, Elmore James, the Three Kings), he bristles at purists and revels in throwing left curves into his guitar playing, often going outside pentatonic shapes by adding 9ths and ringing open strings in his solos. He’s used various guitars on stage and on record, but he’s partial to Epiphone Casinos and Gibson SGs – in recent years he’s designed signature models of both.

19. Blind Lemon Jefferson

The Father of Texas Blues, Lemon Henry Jefferson was called Blind Lemon Jefferson as he was born blind – or partially blind – in 1893 (though it could be in 1894) in Coutchman, Texas. 

Originally a street musician, he was one of the first fingerstyle blues guitarists – he even taught T-Bone Walker blues rudiments. Along with his distinctive playing style that mimicked a ragtime piano and a crying, high-pitched singing voice, he began recording sides for Paramount Records in the early 1920s. Among his most popular recordings for the label were Long Lonesome Blues and Booster Blues. 

Moving to Okeh Records, he scored hits with Black Snake Moan and See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. Arguably his most famous song is 1927’s Matchbox Blues, which was covered as a rockabilly number by Carl Perkins and later by the Beatles. Jefferson died of a heart attack at age 36 way back in 1929.

20. Steve Miller

With hits such as The Joker, Fly Like an Eagle, Take the Money and Run, Swingtown and Jungle Love, Steve Miller dominated AM and FM radio during the ’70s. As a child in Wisconsin, he received his first guitar pointers from none other than family friend – and his godfather – Les Paul. 

After moving to Dallas, he immersed himself in the blues. One of his first hits, the 1968 car-driving anthem Living in the U.S.A, is steeped in blues tradition. Soon, his songs took on more of a pop-rock sensibility, and in each one he wove economical guitar licks that were as crucial as the chorus. 

Rock’n Me features a standout barre chord and hammer-on riff that’s pure gold. And Jet Airliner takes flight with a turbo-charged, blues-boogie intro that mixes simplicity with rock-star flash.

21. Johnny “Guitar” Watson

Houston son John Watson Jr. got his first guitar from his grandfather provided he didn’t play “that devil’s music,” which was precisely what the young Watson went on to play. By his early teens, he was jamming alongside Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland, and after his mother took her with him to Los Angeles, he turned heads in clubs with his flamboyant stage presence and unbridled approach to the guitar. 

Billing himself Johnny “Guitar” Watson, in 1954 he released his first single, Space Guitar, an out-there instrumental that proved revolutionary in terms of reverb. His jarring, scattershot playing on 1956’s Three Hours Past Midnight inspired Frank Zappa to play the guitar, and through the years he influenced others such as Jimi Hendrix and the Vaughan brothers. 

He scored hits in the ’70s with Real Mother for Ya and Gangster of Love (a re-recording of his 1957 song). In 1996, he collapsed and died on stage while performing in Japan.

22. Paul Leary

Thanks to his scorching, throbbing, growling and strangely beautiful guitar tone, Texas native Paul Leary, co-founder of the Butthole Surfers, has become one of the most distinctive and emulated guitarists in punk and alternative rock history. 

With singer Gibby Hayes, he formed the band in 1981, and on albums like Hairway to Steven (1988) and 1996’s Electriclarryland (which included the hit single “Pepper”), Leary mixed the energy of garage rock with the smarts of art rock while spinning lines of psychedelic madness into his solos. 

Over the years, Leary has produced records for Sublime and the Meat Puppets, among others, and with the Buttholes on hiatus, he released his second solo album, Born Stupid, in 2021.

23. Omar Rodríguez-López

“I’ve never considered myself a guitarist, and I’ve never liked the guitar,” Omar Rodríguez-López once told us. Nonetheless, the Puerto Rican-born musician (who grew up in El Paso, Texas) made peace with the instrument by abusing its sound with effects, first in the critically acclaimed post-hardcore act At the Drive-In and then with the commercial successful experimental band the Mars Volta. 

On the latter band’s gonzo cut Cicatriz ESP (from the album Deloused in the Comatorium) he and guest John Frusciante go bonkers on a hallucinogenic guitar jam. Over the years, the avant-garde axeman has released over 20 solo albums and has ventured into film composing, collaborating with Hans Zimmer for the movie The Burning Plain.

24. Stephen Stills

When Dallas-born aspiring folkie Stephen Stills settled into the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of L.A. in the mid ’60s, he was on the cusp of a musical revolution that rivaled Liverpool. His is a career that can be measured in milestones: As a member of seminal folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield, he wrote and sang the enduring anti-war anthem For What It’s Worth. 

With the enormously popular supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young), he contributed classics like Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. Along the way, he recorded the historic Super Session with Mike Bloomfield and Al Cooper, worked with Hendrix and Clapton, formed another supergroup (Manassas), and continued a thriving solo career that would keep most musicians busy. 

As a guitarist, his astonishing versatility spans elegant yet sophisticated folk patterns, scorching shred improvs, deep Delta blues and anything else his muse dictates.

25. David Grissom

In the pantheon of journeymen guitarists, few have had a career as rich and varied as David Grissom. After moving to Austin (from his native Louisville, Kentucky) in 1983, Grissom joined Joe Ely’s band for a six-year stint, after which he became a member of John Mellencamp’s group from 1991 through 1994. 

From there, he went on to tour or record with the Allman Brothers, the Dixie Chicks, Robben Ford, Chris Isaak, Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan and John McMurtry, among others. 

Along the way, he recorded four solo albums and was part of the band Storyville, which included Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton from Double Trouble. Schooled in blues, jazz, rock and country, Grissom is one of music’s true chameleons, able to tailor his own distinctive sound to suit the song and artist.

26. Charlie Sexton

Young Charlie Sexton could have folded when his much-hyped major-label debut, 1985’s Pictures for Pleasure, failed to make him the next Billy Idol. But the Texas-born guitarist was built for better things, and blues ran through his blood. By his mid-teens, he was already a prodigy who could hold his own with the Vaughan brothers and other Austin greats at that city’s famed nightclub, Antone’s.

In 1992, he rebounded mightily with his band, the Arc Angles, which included Doyle Bramhall II and the Double Trouble rhythm section, before beginning a long tenure as Bob Dylan’s lead guitarist. Able to switch from fiery Hendrixian leads to swampy delta blues to even Celtic-tinged folk rock, he’s become an in-demand sideman and producer. Recently, he reunited the Arc Angels for a string of shows in Texas.
St. Vincent

27. St. Vincent

Just when the world needed a new postmodern guitar hero, along came Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), who turned things upside-down with an inventive approach that mixes metal-tinged two-handed tapping with dynamic, effects-drenched soundscapes on deeply personal songs that veer from jazz-pop to electronica to sophisticated indie rock. 

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she grew up in Dallas, Texas, and started playing guitar at age 12. After studying at Berklee College of Music, she released her daring debut, Marry Me, and never looked back. 

She’s issued five more provocative albums (her latest is 2021’s Daddy’s Home), and in 2014 she fronted Nirvana for the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Since 2016, she’s collaborated with Ernie Ball Music Man on her own signature guitars.

28. Buddy Holly

A towering figure in rock ’n’ roll, Buddy Holly had an immeasurable impact on young musicians in the late ’50s and early ’60s, most notably John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were inspired by Holly to write their own material. Among his many innovations, Holly created the template for the now-standard rock lineup of two guitars, bass and drums.

Born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock, Texas, Holly (who later dropped the “e” from his surname) played guitar to country and western, blues and gospel in his early years, and by the age of 16 he went pro. Backed by his band the Crickets, he issued a string of magical singles – among them Peggy Sue, That’ll Be the Day, Not Fade Away, Maybe Baby and It’s So Easy. 

As a guitarist, he popularized the Fender Stratocaster, and his energetic, twangy playing style – emphasizing downstrokes on the top three strings – seamlessly mixed rhythm and lead. Tragically, he died in 1959 at age 22 in a plane crash that also took the lives of Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.

29. Larry Coryell

Galveston-born jazz guitarist Larry Coryell was called the “godfather of fusion,” and with good reason – his mid-to-late ’60s recordings with the pioneering jazz-rock band the Free Spirits, followed by his work with the Gary Burton Quartet – ushered in a revolution in which players mixed straight jazz with rock, as well as Latin and eastern music. 

Among his many solo albums, his 1971 record Barefoot Boy is cited as a game changer that proved how jazz could be as edgy and exciting as rock. During his career, Coryell formed the fusion ensemble the Eleventh House, and with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, he was one-third of the Guitar Trio.

Following two performances at New York City’s Iridium Jazz Club, he passed away from heart failure in February 2017.

30. Herb Ellis

Born in 1921 and raised near Dallas, jazz guitarist Herb Ellis rose to fame in 1940s and ’50s, first with the Jimmy Dorsey band and then, more prominently, as part of the Oscar Peterson Trio. Performing with his staple guitar, a 1953 Gibson ES-175, Ellis was revered for his fluid, beautifully phrased single-note lines in which he combined elements of bebop and blues. 

During his career, he recorded with Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, among others, and with Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd and Tal Farlow, he created a supergroup called the Great Guitars. 

On his own, he released dozens of albums, including the classics Ellis in Wonderland (1956) and Two for the Road (with Joe Pass, 1974). Ellis passed away in 2010.  

31. Junior Brown

Although he was born in Arizona and raised in Indiana, Jamieson “Junior” Brown is considered a true Texan to his legion of fans in the Lone Star State, particularly among the citizens of Austin, where the guitarist relocated in the early ‘90s. 

A musician since childhood, Brown became a hot commodity among the country circuit during the ‘60s and ‘70s, thanks to his virtuoso skills on guitar and lap steel. After performing with groups such as the Last Mile Ramblers, Asleep at the Wheel, and Rank and File, Brown started performing with his own outfit. 

At the same time, he created (with help from luthier Michael Brown) the “guit-steel”, a double neck instrument that combined an electric guitar and a lap steel, allowing him to switch effortlessly between the two during the same song. As a solo artist, Brown has released over a dozen albums, including his classic 1996 Western swing set, Semi-Crazy. 

His most recent album was 2021’s His & Hers, recorded with his longtime musical partner and wife, “the lovely Tanya Rae”.

32. Ty Tabor

King’s X guitarist Ty Tabor is another honorary Texan. Born in Pearl, Mississippi, he moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he met bassist-singer Doug Pinnick and drummer Jerry Gaskill. 

After a series of name changes, the trio settled on King’s X and relocated to Houston to be closer to their manager (and eventual producer), Sam Taylor. 

Tabor’s diverse influences – everyone from the Beatles to Allan Holdsworth, with heaping helpings of bluegrass as well – contributed to his unique approach to songwriting, but it’s in the area of tone where he’s a true trailblazer. 

One of the first guitarists to use the drop D tuning on record, he’s been referred to by fellow players as one of the pioneers of grunge – despite the fact that King’s X music has traditionally been labeled progressive rock. 

Tabor has recorded 13 albums with King’s X (including 1989’s groundbreaking classic Gretchen Goes to Nebraska), and he’s been a member of popular rock-fusion supergroups such as Platypus and the Jelly Jam. In addition, he’s released 15 solo albums – his latest, Shades, was issued this year.

She may only be 22 years old, but American singer and guitarist Willow already understands that time is precious. She currently has five albums to her name and there’s plenty of creative wind in her sails to ensure an array of releases could follow in quick succession, if she so desires. 

The daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith made her acting debut alongside her father in 2007 post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend when she was only seven years old, though in more recent years she’s been focusing on her career as a rock musician – following in the footsteps of her mother Jada, singer of nu-metal band, Wicked Wisdom.

This year’s fifth full-length, Coping Mechanism – which features no less than five singles – is Willow’s strongest and most musically rounded release to date, hard-wiring elements of alternative rock, punk and heavy metal into its own vast and multi-layered being. There are moments that might remind you of Deftones or Metallica, and others more akin to Paramore and My Chemical Romance, but as she explains in this exclusive interview, it’s all 100% Willow.

“I feel that rock is such an expansive genre,” she tells Guitar World, when we connect with her just before the holidays. “People focus on pop-punk a lot. We all love pop-punk, it’s beautiful and amazing. But let’s not forget the metal, thrash and classic rock. There are all these different forms that rock takes and all these different feelings it can express. This album is a love letter to all the flavors rock can have, from Smashing Pumpkins to Lamb of God.”

Given that both of her parents have juggled musical careers alongside high-profile film and television appearances, ranging from Independence Day to The Matrix trilogy, it would be fair to say strong work ethics were encouraged from an early age in the Smith household. If there’s anything she’s learned over the years, it’s how skills need to be continually improved and sharpened – there are no half-measures when it comes to art. What you put out into the world is ultimately what defines you.

“When I was young my parents were, and still are, extremely creative,” explains Willow, when asked what it was like growing up in the same house as two of the world’s most recognizable A-list celebrities. “They’re constantly stretching themselves into new areas and learning new things about their craft. Whether that was acting or writing or playing music, they were always expanding themselves in different directions. I could always see that. 

“From a very young age, it was clear to me how they were continually working on their artistic craft and I understood how important that is when it comes to your passions and things you want to do with your life. I guess I was hip to the game from early on.”

Take us back to the very start of your guitar journey. When did you decide it would be the instrument for you?

“Throughout my childhood I played the piano. I played guitar a little bit, but the piano was mostly my thing. That fizzled out. After I stopped doing the pop music I was working on at the beginning of my career, I took a detour, so to speak. I took some time to do some digging on what kind of musician I wanted to be.

“It was around the age of 13 or 14 where I felt like I didn’t just want to be a singer-songwriter kind of artist. In order to realize my vision, I needed to be a true musician. To me, that meant learning how to play an instrument and solidifying that into the way I write and perform music. So in my very early teens, that’s when I knew I wanted to pick up the guitar and make that my pride and joy.”

What do you remember about that first guitar?

“My very, very first guitar – and I’m counting from the first one I actually played rather than the guitars from my childhood – was a black Recording King acoustic. Well, I think it was a Recording King, but it was definitely black and acoustic! 

“The action was super-high and it hurt like hell [laughs]! I knew that it would help in the long run because I wanted to build calluses and all that jazz. I was really shitty at first, then I started learning simple power chord stuff and it just grew from there.”

Did you ever have formal lessons and tuition in order to progress or was it mainly YouTube?

“I actually didn’t use YouTube much. I’ve only ever had two guitar teachers. The first one was after I’d been playing for about two years already. He was really into classical guitar, so I trained with him for about two years, after the two years of me getting acquainted with the guitar myself. 

“We started working on classical stuff with a nylon-string guitar. After that I got with another teacher who was more into the electric guitar, with a classic rock feel. We did an intensive year and a half, close to two years, together. The rest has just been me figuring it out.”

What was the biggest moment for you in terms of learning? Was there a point where you felt everything fell into place?

“There’s a song I learned called Romanza, which is a classical piece. After weeks and weeks of practicing all day long, I remember playing it the whole way through with no mistakes and feeling so excited. Honestly, I was close to shedding a tear. I felt like, ‘Yes, I’m really doing what I set out to do!’ 

“That made me want to keep going and keep getting better. It was right after I’d done my album The 1st, which I recorded before I had a guitar teacher. I was just playing willy-nilly on that one – I listen back to it and it actually sounds pretty good.

“It’s crazy how intuitive a lot of that stuff sounds looking back now, but at the time I felt like my playing wasn’t that great. I was a bit down on myself about that. So the Romanza moment came after. That’s when I knew the work had really paid off; it’s the moment I knew if I kept going for it, these milestones would happen more and more.”

It’s quite interesting how the role of guitar has evolved over the course of your albums.

“Yeah! For example, The 1st – which was actually my second album – was all orchestral, with a lot of cello, violin, piano and acoustic guitar. It was very different to my other albums. That said, there was a song called Human Leech which had seven-strings and growling. It was actually my mom growling on that song in the background, which is pretty interesting.”

Let’s talk about your favorite gear. We’ve seen footage of you with a Jackson King V, as well as signature models from modern trailblazers like Yvette Young and St. Vincent.

“So with the Ernie Ball Music Man guitar, I have to start by being honest and saying I love St. Vincent. She’s one of my favorite musicians ever. The guitar is super-sleek and light, plus the action is low, which I love. It is very easy to move with and play. I feel like a lot of guitars are a bit harder to dance and move with. The St. Vincent signature is so comfortable in that sense. It’s such an inspiring guitar to play, even more so because I know it’s one she designed. She is one of my idols still to this day.”

How does it differ to the Ibanez YY10 Yvette Young sent you, out of curiosity?

“Yvette has this beautiful way of creating sparkly, ethereal sounds and I feel like her guitar is perfect for doing that. It gives the player this angelic kind of tone, and then there’s the color it comes in. Also, I just love Yvette. She is one of the best guitarists of this generation, if I’m being completely honest. 

“It was such an honor to receive this guitar from her. Her two-handed techniques are insane. When I first met her, she tried teaching me how to do a little bit of that tapping. Obviously, I’m not as talented at that as she is, but it stuck a little bit. There are a few riffs I’ve written since which have a good amount of tapping. I’m so grateful for the times we’ve spent together and the things she’s taught me.”

It’s really inspiring to see you and Yvette – two talented women from minority backgrounds – becoming the modern stars of guitar. Hopefully that will inspire others to start their own musical journeys and create more inclusivity and positivity in rock and metal.

“That’s one of my missions. I want women and girls of color to feel accepted and know that rock is for them. They can pick up the guitar, bass, drum sticks or microphone. I want to hear them scream and sing, putting all of their energy into this beautiful genre and change the world. And yeah, I agree, I feel like it’s changing!”

What was your approach to the tones and progressions we’re hearing on your latest album, Coping Mechanism?

“If we were talking about my Lately I Feel Everything or Willow albums, I could totally get into that with you. Realistically on Coping Mechanism, my good friend and amazing producer Chris Greatti took the reins. With a lot of the chords and changes you hear on this album, I’m not the kind of person who could be [like], ‘This is a C# major flat seven!’ or whatever. 

“But when something sounds nice, I know where I want it to go and can take it there. Chris being the expansive guitarist he is, with all of that knowledge, mixed with my discerning ear and knowing exactly what kind of sounds I want to create worked out beautifully. We gave you the masterpiece that is Coping Mechanism.”

What kind of gear do you plug into when you’re jamming at home?

“Actually I just started using a Kemper at home… which is ridiculous, having only just got one. I definitely should have started using one way before. I’ve been performing with a Kemper on the past couple of shows we’ve done, and also at home, I’ve been jamming on that with my Jackson V exclusively…

“I just love that guitar. I think the pickups are just so gnarly and the sound is really heavy. When I think of thrashing on the guitar, that’s the guitar that comes to mind. The sound is just wicked and very abrasive. That’s what I love about the Jackson guitar.”

That’s the guitar you were using when you briefly covered My Own Summer (Shove It) by Deftones – which has a harmonic minor feel that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Spanish guitar…

“It’s such a clever riff, it’s genius. And I agree 100% about the Spanish thing. I love that chromatic kind of feel. When I’m writing, I try to use some of those chromatic intervals for the dissonance it creates. I’m all about dissonance – that’s my thing! 

“I feel like Deftones do a really good job of mixing dissonance with ethereal beauty and harmony. That’s where it’s at for me. Chino [Moreno] is a big influence on me vocally: he’s the best. I also really love Crowbar. Lifesblood For The Downtrodden is one of my favorite metal albums ever.”

You recently uploaded a short cover of the Primus track Follow the Fool, which prompted Les Claypool himself to comment, “Fine guitar pickin’ there young fiery lass”. Nice work!

“Primus are so cool. You don’t have to be radio-friendly to be cool. Radio-friendly is dead! We only want amazing musicians, thought-provoking lyricism and the most hard riffs ever. That’s what sounds cool to me. Radio-friendly… whatever. We just want amazing music.”

Finally, what’s your next challenge as a player? What kind of style or technique are you hoping to master?

“I want to get better at the art of soling. There are a few moments in my show where I riff intuitively, but I’d love to get better at writing solos and paying more attention to what I’m trying to communicate with those specific notes. I’d also love to get better at tapping. I’m working on that stuff every day.

“I keep telling myself if I can play guitar as well as I can sing, then I will be satisfied. That’s always in my mind every day when I pick up a guitar. I sing with this reckless abandon and emotional courage; I hope that will translate into my guitar playing. I’ve been doing singing lessons for 12 years now. Every time I pick up a guitar, that is my goal: to get as proficient and efficient on my external instrument as I am with my internal instrument.”

That’s a great way of putting it.

“It’s all about the consecutive steps that become a lifetime of growth. I’m probably going to be doing this until the moment I die and I’m very grateful for that. When it comes to soloing, I’d love to sound more like my favorite two guitarists, Yvette Young and St. Vincent. I just went to see St. Vincent perform – obviously, it was so fantastic. And Yvette kills it every time. Those are two women I really look up to.”

• Coping Mechanism is out now via Roc Nation.

The first run of musical residencies on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will include week-long appearances from St. Vincent, Joe Walsh and James Taylor.

Each of the artists will collaborate with the show’s house band, Stay Human across a week of shows, beginning with St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) – who makes her first appearance tonight (July 25). Taylor will sit in the following week (beginning August 1) and Walsh then takes over from August 8. 

As Deadline points out, the move reprises a format that has proven successful on James Corden’s The Late Late Show, which also airs on CBS – though this marks the first time that any of the three artists announced have played with a house band. 

It’s a pretty stellar opening line-up and exactly the sort of thing you’d expect, given the draw of the veteran host. Nonetheless, Colbert’s house band Stay Human has some form of its own. 

As regular viewers will know, the ensemble – first selected by Colbert back in 2015 – features guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Louis Cato and is fronted by band leader and vocalist/pianist Jon Batiste. The band have previously collaborated with Wynton Marsalis, Nas, Billy Joel, Cory Wong and Chad Smith, to name a small but eclectic selection. 

Batiste also worked with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scoring the 2020 Disney Pixar film Soul. The trio later received an astonishing awards haul for their efforts, including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a Grammy and an Oscar.

Finally, this Reznor link brings us back to St. Vincent, who this week released a filthy and thundering cover of Nine Inch Nails track Piggy, featuring Dave Grohl on drums. You can listen to that above. It is menacing, messy, and has the sort of bruised post-party sheen of Clark’s most rock-oriented material. 

Either way, we imagine she’ll have plenty to chat about with Batiste on set at The Late Show…

A study conducted by Find My Guitar has found that from a selection of 226 leading signature electric guitars currently on the market, only 13 of them belong to female and non-binary artists – a ratio that highlights the need for greater diversity in the guitar market.

Of the non-limited-time signature electric guitars from the top 21 brands currently available to purchase, 213 of them belong to male guitar players. That figure means just 5.8% of female and non-binary players have signature electrics to their names.

In the study, Find My Guitar found that eight of the 21 companies had partnered with players who identified as female or non-binary for signature guitars. Even in these cases, the overwhelming majority of signature models from such brands heavily favored male artists.

Out of the 30 signature guitars it currently offers, Fender has three female and non-binary signatures in its roster. These are Chrissie Hynde's Telecaster, H.E.R.'s Chrome Glow Stratocaster and Tash Sultana's HSS-configured Strat. In comparison, 27 male artists have signature Fender guitars.

Ibanez has signature guitars for three female artists on its books: Yvette Young’s two Talman models, Lari Basilio’s LB1 and Nita Strauss’s JIVA10 and newly unveiled JIVAX2-GH. Again, this contrasts with the 23 male-owned signatures it offers, meaning Ibanez’s female representation sits at 11.5%.

The final female signature guitars currently on the market include Reba Meyer’s RM-600 from ESP – which in comparison has 30 male-named guitars available – St. Vincent’s Ernie Ball Music Man, Nikki Stringfield’s Schecter A-6 and Jenn Wasner’s Reverend JW-1.

Three Gibson/Epiphone signatures complete the list: Lzzy Hale’s various Explorer and Explorerbird models, Nancy Wilson’s Epiphone Nighthawk and Emily Wolfe’s Sheraton Stealth.

Of all companies consulted, the 13 remaining brands did not offer a non-limited-edition signature model from female artists. These names include Gretsch, which currently offers 14 male signature models, and Jackson, which has 16 male players on its books.

Other big names that currently do not offer a signature for female or non-binary artists include Charvel, Dean, ESP, Squier, Kramer, Sire, Solar, Washburn and Yamaha. All brands named offer at least one male-branded signature electric.

PRS currently offers an Orianthi Private Stock model, but as this is limited-edition, it was not included in the survey's results.

A survey conducted by Fender in 2018 found that 50% of all aspiring guitarists are female. In that study, Fender claimed “women continue to define the emerging guitar market” – a statement that conflicts with the representation artists are receiving at a signature guitar level.

When H.E.R.’s signature Strat arrived, the Grammy winner told Guitar World she hoped the guitar would “inspire a lot of young Black girls – and actually a lot of young girls in general – to pick up the guitar”.

Find My Guitar says its research highlights the need to “produce signature guitars that point directly to female guitarists who have shaped the music industry”.

To read the full study, head over to Find My Guitar.

Forthcoming movie Minions: The Rise Of Gru is set to feature a soundtrack packed with electric guitar talent, including St. Vincent, Phoebe Bridgers, Gary Clark Jr., H.E.R. and Tame Impala.

The soundtrack has been helmed by Bleachers man (and all-round savior of pop production) Jack Antonoff and sees an array of artists perform covers of ’70s classics, in keeping with the prequel’s timeline.

As such, St. Vincent covers Lipps Inc.’s iconic Funky Town, while Bridgers takes on The Carpenters hit Goodbye To Love and Gary Clark Jr. handles Vehicle, which was originally released by The Ides of March.

Elsewhere, Tierra Whack picks up Santana’s Black Magic Woman, Brittany Howard and Verdine White take on the latter’s Earth, Wind and Fire hit Shining Star, while Caroline Polachek covers Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang. We also particularly look forward to hearing Thundercat’s interpretation of the Steve Miller Band’s trippy trademark, Fly Like an Eagle.

In addition to the string of covers comes a new original track, Turn Up The Sunshine, which sees Tame Impala in an unlikely pairing with soul icon Diana Ross. 

It’s a line-up that could only have come together in this circumstance, with the combined pull of Hollywood commerce and the appeal of Antonoff’s involvement.

Music has long been a big feature of the enormously successfully Minions/Despicable Me franchise. The ’60s-set Minions featured songs from The Spencer Davis Group, The Kinks, The Who, Donovan and The Turtles, while Despicable Me 2 set the high-water mark when it launched Pharrell William’s giganto-hit Happy, which would top the charts in some 24 countries worldwide.

Minions: The Rise of Gru tracklist

1. Turn Up The Sunshine – Diana Ross ft. Tame Impala
2. Shining Star – Brittany Howard ft. Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire 1975)
3. Funkytown – St. Vincent (Lipps Inc in 1979)
4. Hollywood Swinging – BROCKHAMPTON (Kool & The Gang 1974)
5. Desafinado – Kali Uchis (Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto 1959)
6. Bang Bang – Caroline Polachek (Nancy Sinatra 1966)
7. Fly Like an Eagle – Thundercat (Steve Miller Band 1976)
8. Goodbye To Love – Phoebe Bridgers (The Carpenters 1972)
9. Instant Karma! – Bleachers (John Lennon 1970)
10. You’re No Good – Weyes Blood (Linda Ronstadt 1975)
11. Vehicle – Gary Clark Jr. (The Ides of March 1970)
12. Dance to the Music – H.E.R. (Sly and The Family Stone 1967)
13. Black Magic Woman – Tierra Whack (Santana 1970)
14. Cool – Verdine White   
15. Born To Be Alive – Jackson Wang (Patrick Hernandez 1979)
16. Cecilia – The Minions (Simon & Garfunkel 1970)
17. Bang Bang – G.E.M. (Nancy Sinatra 1966)
18. Kung Fu Suite – RZA
19. Minions: The Rise of Gru Score Suite – Heitor Pereira

Minions: The Rise Of Gru original motion picture soundtrack will be released along the film’s opening on July 1. Pre-save or pre-order your copy.

Best of 2021: Not too long ago, notorious tone-secret-keeper Josh Homme made a revelation that raised quite a few eyebrows. In an appearance on Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson, Homme dropped the bombshell that Peavey’s humble Decade practice guitar amp was the secret weapon behind some of Queens of the Stone Age’s most iconic tones.

The announcement, unsurprisingly, sent the price of Peavey Decades skyrocketing, with many flocking to second-hand gear stores to find the amp that gave birth to the earth-shattering bass guitar tones in No One Knows.

St. Vincent, as it turns out, was similarly inspired by the revelation, though took a far more pragmatic approach to capturing the band's sought-after sound.

Rather than forking out the $1,000-plus that vintage Decades now sell for – thanks, she acknowledges, to Homme’s revelation – she recruited gear guru Jason Moser to put the tiny ‘80s-era solid-state into a pedal. 

Speaking to Guitar Center, St. Vincent – aka Annie Clark – said,  “Queens of the Stone Age were very secretive about their guitar tone. It’s a bitching guitar tone, right?

“But the secret was this Peavey Decade – the amp that you get as a kid, that probably comes in a box with your first guitar. It’s this little, little amp that sounds so good, this hidden gem,” she continued. “They used to be $200.

“But then Josh Homme was on a Mark Ronson show, and finally was like, ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s the Peavey Decade.’ Now they’re like $3,000, instantly.

“Anyway, a guitar tech I work with, Jason Moser, builds pedals and synths. He built the Peavey Decade into its own little amp.”

The importance of the Peavey to Queens of the Stone Age’s sound can’t be overstated. While people at the time viewed Homme’s admission with skepticism, an old video recorded by Eric Valentine – the band’s former producer – confirmed the guitarist was being entirely serious.

“It has a really cool little saturation in there, and so it would get cool distortion and you could have it at a really low volume,” explained Valentine during the No One Knows breakdown. “It ended up being the majority of the bass sound. It’s an amazing sound."

Now, the only thing that remains to be seen is whether St. Vincent’s boutique pedal will be made available to the general public. The chances are, unfortunately, immensely slim, so it's back to Reverb and eBay for the rest of us on the hunt for that Queens of the Stone Age tone.

The nominations for the 2022 Grammy Awards have officially rolled in and – though the Justin Biebers and Ed Sheerans of the world got their fair share of nods as one would expect – there's plenty of other guitar greatness that's been recognized across the board.

Notably, H.E.R. – who earlier this year scooped up the Grammy for 2021 Song of the Year with I Can't Breathe – has been nominated for the Album of the Year award for Back of My Mind and Song of the Year again for Fight for You (a song that, mind you, already won H.E.R. an Oscar back in April).

The signature Stratocaster-toting guitarist and singer/songwriter was also nominated for half-a-dozen other Grammys – Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for the Damage, Best R&B Album for Back of My Mind, Best Traditional R&B Performance and Best Song Written for Visual Media for Fight for You, and last but not least, Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song for Hold Us Together (Hope Mix), her collaboration with Tauren Wells.

Back in March, we cited H.E.R. high in our list of 12 guitarists who changed the game over the previous 12 months, and we're certainly glad the Grammys feel the same way. 

• How to watch the Grammys 2022

Elsewhere, the nominees in the rock, metal and alternative categories were an intriguing mix of the old guard and the new.

Reliable stadium-fillers Foo Fighters, AC/DC and Paul McCartney all picked up multiple nominations – the Foos for Best Rock Performance, Song and Album, AC/DC for Best Rock Album and Performance, and Macca for Best Rock Song and Album.

Posthumously, Chris Cornell received a pair of nominations, for Best Rock Album (No One Sings Like You Anymore Vol. 1) and Best Rock Performance for his cover of Nothing Compares 2 U.

Weezer, Kings of Leon and Wolfgang Van Halen's Mammoth WVH also received Best Rock Song nominations, while Black Pumas were recognized in the Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance categories. The latter category was also rounded out by a nomination for Deftones, for the nine-string-driven Ohms.

Deftones were also nominated for Best Metal Performance, a category that was rounded out by nods to Dream Theater, Gojira, Mastodon and Rob Zombie.

Guitar-heavy LPs from Fleet Foxes, Halsey, Japanese Breakfast, Arlo Parks and St. Vincent made up the nominations for Best Alternative Music Album, while Snarky Puppy's Mark Lettieri – rounding out a year that saw the release of his PRS signature guitar, the Fiore – received a nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, for his Deep: The Baritone Sessions, Vol. 2 album.

Some top-tier guitar-slingers also made it into the country, roots and bluegrass categories. Billy Strings received nods for Best American Roots Performance (for Love and Regret) and Best Bluegrass Album (Renewal) and Jason Isbell (speaking of folks who got a signature guitar in 2021) was nominated for Best Country Solo Performance, for All I Do Is Drive.

Modern country superstar Chris Stapleton cleaned up as well, with nods for Best Country Song and Album, and Best Country Solo Performance for You Should Probably Leave. We assume though, that this isn't the recent You Should Probably Leave performance that Jimmy Fallon sat in on.

We haven't even gotten to blues yet, either. Between the two of them, the Best Traditional and Contemporary Blues Album awards saw nominations for blues artists both established (Joe Bonamassa, The Black Keys and Steve Cropper) and up-and-coming (Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Cedric Burnside and Shemekia Copeland). 

Finally, as we've noted, there's plenty of engrossing guitar work on the Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift albums that between them received a number of marquee nominations.

Let's face it, the Grammys don't ever please everyone with their nominations (we would've loved to see some recognition in the jazz categories for Julian Lage and his 2021 masterpiece, Squint, for instance), but if you come looking for the guitar in this year's categories – in any and all forms – you won't be disappointed.

For a full list of all 2022 Grammy nominees, head on over to the Grammys website.

On The Metallica Blacklist, 53 acts try their hand at reinterpreting one of The Black Album’s 12 tracks in their own voice. Here, four artists – St. Vincent, Ghost’s Tobias Forge, Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr and Rodrigo y Gabriela’s Rodrigo Sánchez – discuss how they did it, and what Metallica means to each of them.

St. Vincent – Sad But True

Why did you choose to cover Sad But True? 

St. Vincent: “I think every person has an internal BPM, their own kind of natural tempo. So I thought about doing a faster tune, but then I thought, You know what? I think my natural BPM is this, like, swamp-stomp Sad But True BPM. And as far as adding the programmed drums and the instrumentation, I just sort of asked myself, ‘Okay… how would Skinny Puppy cover Metallica?’” 

You play several guitar solos in your version. The first one is more of a blues-based lead, which isn’t the type of thing we typically hear from you. Was it fun? 

“It totally was. With that first solo I was like, ‘Okay, I need to do right by Kirk and pay homage to his choices.’ And so I learned his solo and then did my own take on it. Whereas the second solo, I just said, ‘Well, what would I do? What’s my natural instinct on this?’ And that solo, it’s all me.”   

How did you approach the song from a vocal perspective? 

“It’s interesting inhabiting the lyrics of the song, because they’re, like, full-throttle, hands-around-your-neck lyrics. And so I had to find my way into that. Because I don’t have a low Doberman growl like James Hetfield does. I had to think about it: how can I portray menace in this that isn’t coming from a deep baritone place?”  

How did you get turned on to Metallica? 

“I was living in Dallas in 1991, ’92, and I think somebody was moving or something, and a box of CDs fell out on the sidewalk in front of her house. And in that box was Nine Inch Nails. Pet Shop Boys. Depeche Mode. The Black Album. Somebody had cool taste. I feel sorry that they lost their CDs, but, hey, good for us, right? And I started listening to The Black Album, and then it was on the radio, on MTV… I think there’s videos like Enter Sandman that just stick with you forever.”  

So The Black Album was actually the first Metallica record you ever heard? 

“It was. And then I started playing guitar and I got asked to join a metal band. But all the guitar spots were taken so they said, 'We need somebody to play bass.' I was like, 'Okay, I’ll do it.' Even though I didn’t play bass. But I figured it out, and we started covering For Whom the Bell Tolls. Which is a pretty sick bassline. So I started digging into the catalog that way. But I’ve been a fan since I was 10 – ever since I heard The Black Album.”

Ghost – Enter Sandman

How did you approach your cover of Enter Sandman? 

Ghost’s Tobias Forge: “We had performed that track when Metallica got the Polar Music Prize [Sweden’s biggest music award] in 2018, so it felt like something we knew how to do. But when it comes to covering other band’s songs, I try to find something that isn’t in the track in its original state. 

“And honestly, I find that difficult in a lot of Metallica songs because I feel they are pretty fully fleshed out. But with Enter Sandman, I could hear a piano. I could hear the vocal melody speaking in a way where you could build another chord sequence underneath. Which, you know, I can’t really do that on Of Wolf and Man.”

You definitely make it your own. 

“It wasn’t without a wee bit of anxiety. But the biggest part of that was the way I felt two or three years ago when we did that performance. Because that was on live TV and it was in front of Metallica and it was in front of the [Swedish] royal family and a lot of the elite in Sweden. So that felt like the big weight.”

Metallica have been huge supporters of Ghost. What has that meant to you? 

“Their support has been key. Ever since James started pushing the band about 10 years ago, from that moment on we definitely rose to bigger fame. We performed on their festival [Orion Music + More], and we also did some touring together with them when they were doing Sonisphere. 

“Eventually they asked us to support them on an entire tour. So I’d say that we have had a mentor/student sort of relationship. It feels, you know, like the most Miyagi of dojos – you get the hand of the sensei on you.”

Royal Blood – Sad But True

As a two-piece band with just bass and drums, tackling a Metallica song must have presented a bit of a challenge. 

Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr: “I think whenever you’re a two-piece and you try and do a cover, there’s always something pretty integral missing from the track. But with Sad But True, there’s such a sort of primitive aspect to the song. It felt like, ‘Yeah, we can do it with just the two of us and you won’t kind of miss the saxophone,’ you know?”  

How did you handle interpreting Kirk’s solo on bass? 

“Usually when I do solos I integrate them into one bass part, rather than overdubbing a lead. On this track, because of the nature of what it was and because the original solo is so epic, I decided to do a complete overdub. And it was so fun, especially because the changes that sit under the solo are just so wild and mad that it brought out some pretty cool parts.”  

Do you remember the first time you heard Metallica? 

“I was on a school trip – I guess you guys call it a field trip, which sounds like a boring journey to a field. But a friend had The Black Album on his cassette player, and there was just something badass about it. It felt like something I shouldn’t be allowed to be hearing, particularly with how young I was.

In 2015 Lars joined the band onstage at your gig at Slim’s in San Francisco to play drums on your song Out of the Black. 

“We’ve known Lars for years – he was a fan right from the beginning. Every time we came up his way we’d always hang out. So yeah, we were playing this small club show and right at the end, very spontaneously, Ben [Thatcher, Royal Blood drummer] invited him up. So I was riffing out with Lars, and Ben was out in the crowd just hitting a cymbal. It was great.”

Rodrigo y Gabriela – The Struggle Within

You incorporate every aspect of the song – the drums, the vocal, the riffs, the bass, the solo – into your acoustic guitar parts. How did you approach the arrangement? 

Rodrigo Sànchez: This is not the first time we’ve covered a metal track. Last year we released an EP [The Mettal EP] with three covers, and [Metallica’s] Battery was one of them. We had an idea of how we wanted to do this one because of our experiences through the years of playing some of these metal anthems with acoustics. For example, using a slide on the vocal lines, which detunes the notes similar to what you find in the normal voice. And Gab’s guitar, she has a massive sound, like a kick drum.”   

You replicate Kirk’s solo note-for-note on acoustic, which is no easy task.  

“Coming from the metal world, we know how important solos are for the fans. So I knew I was going to do that. And I started out playing thrash metal tunes on guitar, and I spent my first 15 years as a musician playing metal. So I have all these techniques quite settled in my bones. Also, I’ve known this song from forever. So I don’t think it was that complicated for me to transcribe that into acoustic.”  

You’ve covered Metallica songs on acoustic before. What is it about the band that is special to you?  

“I play guitar because of them. When I was 10, Kill ’Em All came out, and my older brother introduced me to them. The first riff I played on guitar was Seek & Destroy. Metallica is the reason I became a musician.”

• The Metallica Blacklist is out now via Blackened.

St. Vincent’s David Lynch-esque rockumentary, The Nowhere Inn, arrived earlier this month, and now Annie Clark has followed up the release with a Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance, during which she performed the film’s electrifying title track.

The soulful-yet-atmospheric rendition of the number, which pendulum-swings between stripped-back vocal-driven soundscapes and full-throttle high-fuzz stabs, sees St. Vincent don her famed Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar to devastating effect.

Supported by her backing band – who are dutifully accessorized with matching Annie Clark-style wigs – St. Vincent is given free rein to flex her formidable vocals and infectious guitar skills.

After rattling off some venue-rumbling strums, St. Vincent then straps on a metal slide for some pinpoint-accurate ‘board-spanning slides, before casting it into the shadows of the stage and continuing to push her DiMarzio mini-humbuckers to the limits.

The Nowhere Inn is taken from the Bill Benz-directed film of the same name, which follows a fictitious portrayal of Annie Clark who decides to fully embrace the St. Vincent persona. The results are, as you can probably imagine, quite strange.

It was Benz’s feature length directorial debut, having previously partnered with St. Vincent for the Down music video. 

Clark was joined on the cast list by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, both of whom also penned the script for the film.

Of her recent mockumentary, St. Vincent told Variety, "It was an incredibly warm and welcoming way to do my first foray into acting, because it was a script that I’d co-written with my best friend, and playing versions of myself. So it was as soft a landing as one could get."

St. Vincent’s recent feature film escapade maintained her hectic 2021 schedule, which has already seen her release the slinky Daddy’s Home – her sixth studio album – as well as a souped-up version of her signature six-string.

Thanks to his sonic adventures with celebrated progressive group Animals As Leaders, and courtesy of his business ventures creating some of the most forward-thinking electric guitars on the market with Abasi Concepts, Tosin Abasi is easily considered one of today’s most formidable metal players.

He is, however, by no means exclusively a speed demon and, thanks to a new social media post, has proven that his chops go far beyond the mind-meltingly insane fretboard explorations he’s known for. In said video, viewers can bear witness to his supremely sweet set of extra-curricular fretboard skills, characterized by jazz-y, blues-infused constructions.

And, in an effort to make his playing as eye-catching as it is ear-catching, Abasi opted for an axe that he's not been seen wielding before – St. Vincent’s recently unveiled Ernie Ball Music Man Goldie signature guitar.

Playing over a backing track composed by blues guitar hero Josh Smith that Abasi dubs “iMessage Notification Blues," the Animals As Leaders man brings a decidedly bebop-flavored solo to the table, combining clever string-skipping octave lines and ascending-then-descending chromatic passages.

St. Vincent – aka Annie Clark – was clearly as impressed with the post as we were, writing, “AMAZING!” in a comment.

Likewise, Clark wasn’t the only one to wax lyrical about Abasi’s quick-fire clip, with Tomo Fujita commenting, “Lovely phrasing!”, Josh Smith writing, “Yes!”, and the official Music Man account stating the obvious by writing, “SO good!!!”

Now we just need to see St. Vincent go to town on an eight-string Abasi Concepts Larada Master Series. Heck, while they’re at it, they might as well swap signatures and meet up for an all-out jam session. What a video that would be...

Abasi has been particularly active on Instagram in recent months, and recently announced that Animals As Leaders have finished tracking their new album by way of a tap-heavy teaser clip.

Both St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein have already had busy 2021s.

St. Vincent (the stage name of Annie Clark) released the slinky, funky, difficult-to-pin-down Daddy’s Home, reimagined Metallica's Sad But True for the Metallica Blacklist tribute album, and updated her Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar, while Brownstein teamed up with bandmate Corin Tucker for a new Sleater-Kinney album, the back-to-basics Path of Wellness.

In the meantime, the two are also preparing to release The Nowhere Inn, a Bill Benz-directed film that begins as a fairly straightforward rockumentary focusing on Clark, but soon morphs into... something quite different. 

You can check out the truly wild trailer for the film below.

In essence, the meta-fictional film shows Clark and Brownstein playing fictionalized versions of themselves attempting to make a documentary that, at first, seeks to peel back Clark's onstage persona for viewers. That is before Clark 180s, and decides to lean fully into the St. Vincent character, with some strange onscreen results. 

Dramatized, meta-fictional onscreen relationships aside, Clark and Brownstein are close friends and frequent collaborators. Clark appeared on multiple episodes of Portlandia – Brownstein's sketch comedy series with Fred Armisen – and produced Sleater-Kinney's 2019 album, The Center Won't Hold.

The Nowhere Inn, which also features the likes of Dakota Johnson, is set for a September 17 theatrical and video-on-demand release.

St. Vincent has shared one of the performances from the forthcoming Down And Out Downtown livestream show – a retro-tinted reinvention of Los Ageless.

You can see the full-band performance in the video above. The track was originally released as part of 2017 mechanical-sounding album Masseducation and has become one of the most popular St. Vincent tracks, nearing 30 million streams on Spotify.

The new version sees the songwriter – real name Annie Clark - channel the proto-disco 70s inspirations of her latest record, Daddy’s Home into a reinterpretation that feels a little more rock and guitar-centric.

In the video, Clark is also seen wielding her new Ernie Ball Music Man signature model, the St Vincent Goldie (in Velveteen finish), which was released back in June. 

The upcoming virtual show is described as follows: "St. Vincent makes her full length live streamed concert debut with Down And Out Downtown, a sepia toned tour de force of gritty grooves, hungover glamour and spellbinding musicality."

The full show is set to stream on August 5, 2021. Head there to buy tickets for the St. Vincent Down And Out Downtown livestream.

In 2021, the delay pedal is a pedalboard essential. But how did we get there? That there are so many flavors of delay is testimony to the ingenuity of the pedal-building industrial complex, but also to the creativity of the players who have found new ways of using the effect. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, we are standing on the pedalboards of giants. 

The evolution of the delay pedal has been underway almost as soon as the electric guitar was first recorded. In the beginning, echo was used in much the same way as reverb. Set short, to slapback, it added a sense of depth and space. But soon players realized that it could be more than that. 

Longer delay times and more repeats offered the opportunity for delay to distinguish itself from reverb. Here we are going to take a look at some of delay's best moments on record.

This being a list, there are omissions. We did not find room for Jimmy Page’s psychedelic freak-outs with the Echoplex and theremin. And yet we entered some guy by the name of Gilmour in twice. This list, like all lists, is not definitive, and it is not ordered. It’s simply 25 examples of some of the coolest things you can do with delay.

These applications needn’t foreground the delay pedal. You can, of course, set the delay, feedback (the number of repeats) and output level so that the delay will subtly thicken your tone, adding width to solos and buttressing a solo guitarist’s position in a band mix. 

But sometimes it’s cool to lean into the features a little and do something showy, because if there is one pedal that can be all kinds of spectacular and offer a launchpad for off-piste audio adventures, it’s the delay – some of those new designs on the market will blow your mind.

So, in no particular order, here are 25 of the greatest delay moments of all time…

1. Guns N’ Roses – Welcome to the Jungle 

Guitarist: Slash

Greatest delay moments? Oh, shoot and heck! Let’s start with something that really is just a moment, an intro that stopped the clock for thousands of young players as Slash pulled us into the hedonistic nihilism of Guns N’ Roses’ incomparable debut, Appetite For Destruction. 

This really is the delay as an effect, a pinch-hitting moment of audio-engineered voodoo to give the audience chills. Hearing this for the first time was to rock ’n’ roll what seeing Robert Patrick turn into liquid metal was in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It is the perfect intro to the perfect album. 

If Appetite was the acme of ‘80s rock hedonism – sleazy, nasty, dangerous – then the stabbed repeats here suggested the fracturing of morality and social decorum. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here, now, have a glass of room temperature Night Train Express and try to enjoy yourself…”

Primitive rock animal that he is, Slash was using a simple rig. There was his “Appetite ‘Burst” 1959 Les Paul Standard replica built by Kris Derrig, complete with a Seymour Duncan Alnico II humbucker at the bridge going into a non master volume Marshall Super Lead modded by Frank Levi and a Marshall 4x12. 

It was producer Mike Clink who provided the delay via the Roland SRV-2000 Digital Reverb. That’s right, a rack-mounted reverb (hey, it was the ‘80s) with a secret delay mode. This digital easter egg was accessed by holding down the Reverb/Non Linear, Write and Room Simulate buttons as the unit is being powered on. Thereafter, set the delay time at 318ms feedback at 30, and output level to 50.

2. Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia

Guitarist: East Bay Ray

Jello Biafra gets all the attention whenever people talk Dead Kennedys, but East Bay Ray was the real radical in the lineup. His tone and style was like the devil’s surf rock, a wiry, skronky tone that sounded like it was taken from a Spaghetti Western filmed in the Upside Down. 

Key to his tone in those early recordings was a Maestro Echoplex placed first in the signal chain and using it as a pre-EQ effect. Typically, it would come afterwards, so that your distorted signal was being processed by the tape echo. Having it the other way around mean that the repeats would clean up a little as they faded, making it a little more disorientating for the audience.

You can hear this throughout Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, on which he’d run a Strat or humbucker-equipped Tele through a Fender Super Reverb, but Holiday in Cambodia showcases the full dynamic range of this tone – and of the Dead Kennedys’ mordant wit and anti-establishment posture.

3. David Bowie – Let’s Dance 

Guitarist: Nile Rodgers

Let’s Dance is one of popular music’s greatest moments, let alone delays. Featuring both Nile Rodgers and Stevie Ray Vaughan – and, y’know, David Bowie – this is the apogee of high-concept pop. 

As Nile Rodgers has explained, adding delay to his guitar part was something of an afterthought. There was strange anti-disco consensus at the time that was putting the zap on Rodgers’ typically funkifiable creative flow as he adapted Bowie’s original folk chord progression, but once he had evolved it into a jazzier piece, it was time for some studio magic to take over and give the lick its signature rhythmic bounce. 

That's where the delay came in. Use a dual delay running two delay lines in parallel – preferably panned left and right in stereo – set one to an eighth note pulse (263ms) and the other to a quarter note (526ms), and, just as Rodgers says, “let the delay make the groove.”

4. Pink Floyd – Echoes

Guitarist: David Gilmour

No guitarist has done more to bend space and time to his will and promote the use of delay than David Gilmour. With Pink Floyd, he helped wrestle large, ambitious progressive rock songs out of the human semi-consciousness. 

In the early days, his delay of choice was the Binson Echorec. The Echorec was a tube-driven echo unit that featured an analog magnetic drum recorder. You can hear throughout early Floyd, on tracks such as Time and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. 

On Floyd’s Echoes: Live at Pompeii performance, Gilmour creates infinite violin sound with his slide, setting at around 310ms and using it to complement his Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, adding depth and sustain to his solo. One sure way to empty your bank account in a hurry is to buy a vintage Echorec online, but luckily you are living in the 21st century and there are some superlative digital alternatives.

5. Pink Floyd – Run Like Hell

Guitarist: David Gilmour

No guitarist has done more to bend space and time to his will and promote the use of delay than David Gilmour. With Pink Floyd… Oh no, wait! Sorry folks, but how else were we going to subvert the one artist, one entry rule for these lists but to insert a meta joke on delay? 

This being David Gilmour’s world – and we’re all just lucky to be living in it – he gets a second entry, and it's significant, too, because having switching to an MXR Digital Delay in the late ‘70s, the flavor of his delay changed considerably.

More precise, more pristine, the digital delay was perfect for rhythmically complex licks such as Run Like Hell, where he is playing along with the repeats. It is a technique that was later expanded upon by the likes of Paul Reynolds, the Edge, Buckethead and others, but all of these players have their own unique take on it. 

Run Like Hell was recorded in 1979, yet it still sounds exhilarating, provocative and new, the perfect early example of delay being used as an effect and compositional tool.

6. Devin Townsend – Greetings

A sonic frontiersman with a taste for the theatrical, Devin Townsend was always going to make his way onto this list somehow. Throughout his discography, you will find ping pong delays, epic celestial delays, and a sound that feels like it made a reverse quantum leap to find itself on our timeline. 

Found on the 1997 tour de force of prog metal, Greetings is one of those tracks where Hevy Devy’s tone assumes a quasi-utopian grandeur. It is immaculate and regal, a gift from the heavens. 

It’s funny listening to this now; this came out in the ‘90s, before guitar culture’s digital transformation. Nowadays, Townsend uses a Fractal Axe-Fx III. 

Of course, the entire Ocean Machine record is awash with clever and imaginative delays, so much so that Townsend’s signature Mooer delay/looper is named after it. There are more outré ways to use a delay but, here, it just sorts of gussies up the melody and gives it a patina of extra-terrestrial godliness.

7. Eric Johnson – Cliffs of Dover

Eric Johnson had his admirers before the release of Ah Via Musicom, but his cresting compositional nous and a most delicious, Michelin Starred tone helped the 1990 release catapult him into the consciousness and practice regime of nigh-on every guitar nerd on the planet. 

It is an album of many highlights, but Cliffs Of Dover is the one that can be heard from outer space, and remains one of the hallowed touchstones of instrumental guitar music. It is of particular interest here as an example of delay – or in this instance Echoplex tape echo – taking on an emulsifying effect on his tone. 

You will not necessarily taste it, but without it the creamy, violin sauce of Johnson’s hyper-melodic arrangements would have split. Johnson’s rig on Cliffs Of Dover saw him put his guitar through a Maestro Echoplex, then into a Chandler Tube Driver, and into a 100-watt Marshall half stack. 

The unorthodox echo-into-overdrive signal chain – really it’s like using a spoon to eat steak – evened out the delay/echo effect for an ambient effect during busier passages, and offered a more traditional three-dimensionality during his more restrained moments.

8. Queen – Brighton Rock

Guitarist: Brian May

The orchestral galaxy brain nestled safely underneath Dr May’s curly locks is never too far from breaking out with a show-topping rock overture. Queen’s oeuvre was forever bursting at the seams of rock ’n’ roll, the majesty of their voluminous songwriting imagination expanding our musical vocabularies with each passing release, and it sometimes felt as though May’s harmonized lead guitar could only be replicated in science fiction. 

As it turned out, May felt that way, too, and for live performances, where he somehow had to replicate the studio magic, he turned to the Echoplex for an answer.

Indeed, he turned to two Echoplex units, to be precise. Running them both with the same delay time and each into their own amplifier to avoid unwanted modulation, he could make his Brighton Rock a widescreen Technicolor supernova that defied physical law. 

All in all, you’ll need three Vox AC30s, two vintage Echoplex units (in working condition), a guitar built from the May homestead’s fireplace, and a splitter box – run the guitar into its own amp, take the signal from that into the splitter box and send that through their own individual Vox AC30s, and you’re good to go. Oh! And use a sixpence as a pick. Easy, right?

9. U2 – Where the Streets Have No Name

Guitarist: The Edge

Go out to your garden, hang U2’s discography from the tree and throw a dart blindfolded. You’ll be all but guaranteed to hit a song that exemplifies how delay can be used in a musical context. Just as Van Gogh used oil on canvas, the Edge uses the electric guitar through a cornucopia of delay pedals. 

He has used the likes of the Korg SDD-3000, TC Electronic 2290 Dynamic Digital Delay, the AMS SDMX Digital Delay and more, but it is not really a question of what he uses as how he uses. 

Where the Streets Have No Name – which, as the great Billy Connolly once joked, is about a mailman with the blues – is all bobbing, kinetic rhythmic repeats, dotted eighths on the repeats and populating the mix with a wall of guitars. 

Again, like May, the Edge is using delay to sell the illusion that there are more guitars onstage, each perfectly in time on an intricately composed rhythm measure. 

Pedal culture has truly exploded in recent years, and the internet allied to a new generation of circuit designers has played its part, but its tracks such as this that demonstrate just how a well-curated pedalboard and some imagination can create a signature sound that resonates far beyond guitar culture.

10. Allan Holdsworth – House of Mirrors

We will remember the late jazz-rock fusion trailblazer Allan Holdsworth for many things. For some it will be for chord voicings so complex they were like a four-person game of Twister.

Others are all in for his unique phrasing, or his gift for legato solo runs and his poly-modal scalar vocabulary. But he was a gear pioneer, too, and not only for his long association with headless Steinberger electric guitars and the SynthAxe, but for stacking of delays to engineer some of the most immersive clean tones recorded. 

Having used units such as the Yamaha D1500, Roland SDE-3000, Lexicon PCM-42, and the DeltaLab Effectron, Holdsworth set about paring down the rig, working with Yamaha on the UD-Stomp delay. Programmable and capable of running eight delays – four short with modulation, four long with mod and feedback controls – the UD-Stomp allowed Holdsworth to use delay very differently. 

Often he would use a volume pedal for dramatic swells, but one of the benefits of his multi-delay approach was he could use delay a little like reverb but with none of the washy ambience that you might get from using a long reverb. 

Hall of Mirrors is a great example of all things Holdsworth – particularly the chord voicings – but particularly for those sumptuous clean tones, given depth and width with multi-tapped delay.

11. The Police – Walking on the Moon

Guitarist: Andy Summers

Another guitarist whose life was changed upon discovering the Maestro Echoplex, Andy Summers had the perfect guitar style to jive with effects such as modulation and delay. He largely eschewed distortion for crystal cleans and light crunch, and his chord and note choices were ripe for some extra processing. 

Summers used an MXR Dyna Comp compressor, almost as a matter of good signal hygiene, before sending the tone right on round the bend with an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress. 

But tracks such as Walking on the Moon are made magical once the Echoplex is engaged. Indeed, there is something anti-gravity about that sparse intro, Summers’ guitar stabbing around Sting’s bassline. Most of the melodic information is carried by Sting, but that ambient fairy dust is sonically and thematically perfect.

Speaking to Guitar World, Summers said the Echoplex became a signature move from early on, a feature of the end of Can’t Stand Losing You. 

“I managed to acquire more things, but the big move was getting the Echoplex,” he said. “because I found that I was able to add another dimension to the band in terms of the reverb, and the largeness and scale of the sound.”

12. Elvis Presley – Mystery Train

Guitarist: Scotty Moore 

The earliest examples of delay in popular music were found in slapback echo of early rock ’n’ and roll, and none were better than the King’s own six-string lieutenant through his Sun Studio era, Scotty Moore. 

Producer Sam Phillips has got to take some of the credit here, too. Set the repeats to a quarter-second or less, and set the feedback so there’s just a few of them – quite literally slapping back at you – and you’ve got it. 

The effect through a clean tube combo is deeply evocative of rock ’n’ roll’s foundational moment. It officially became part of Moore’s rig in 1955 when, inspired by Chet Atkins, he acquired one of these new-fangled Ray Butts’ EchoSonic amplifier with an onboard tape echo.

In putting his 1954 Gibson L-5 CESN through the EchoSonic, Moore defined rockabilly guitar tone. Over 65 years later, Mystery Train still sounds exhilarating. Moore would switch to a Gibson Super 400 but the idea was the same, and the tone would go on to change pop culture for keeps. The rockabilly cat was out of the back and there was no turning back.

13. St. Vincent – Now, Now

The natural harmonic chime of St. Vincent’s Now, Now takes on an extra-dimensional quality with her clever use of pitch-shifting and a fast delay time that adds the illusion that the guitar is being doubled. 

Few players use effects so imaginatively. Pop, no matter how avant-garde or aesthetically bold, can be a hard medium for the electric guitar, but St. Vincent’s has the touch. 

She makes full use of this gilded era in effects pedals, curating a ‘board with a number of pitch-shifting, fuzz and delay options, finding a way to bend guitar tone out of shape and fold it into the mix. Whenever the tone is a little cleaner, the delay is almost omnipresent in her work, allowing her to tease out longer ambient textures without them turning to mush as they might with reverb.

On Now, Now, the delay makes it busy, while the pitch-shifter attracts a double take from an audience whose ears are surely deceiving them. This… is guitar?

14. Audioslave – Cochise

Guitarist: Tom Morello

Animal, vegetable, mineral, whatever – you name it and the man Morello will take out his guitar and mimic it. He’s like a myna bird, a player whose skill-set calls to mind Michael Winslow of Police Academy fame. And it’s amazing how this one-man sound effects unit can dip into the onboard presets stored in his brain and augment rock with weird textures.

The whirlybird chopper effect that opens Cochise is one of Morello’s best effects. Set the delay for a single repeat with a short delay time and set it at a level just under your dry signal. Mute the strings with your fretting hand and tap out the rhythm on the low E with your picking hand. 

Move your fretting hand position to adjust the pitch of the blades. Play around with this sort of thing and other ideas will come to mind. It’s a little like the choppiest tremolo you have ever heard, and it’s very rad. 

The best bit about trying to master Morello’s trick bag is that you don’t need much. Phaser, Whammy, wah, delay, and you’ve got all you need.

15. John Martyn – Rather Be The Devil

John Martyn’s Rather Be The Devil did for the acoustic guitar what Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption did for electric guitar. This act of brazen iconoclasm, using a DeArmond pickup mounted in the soundhole and a tape echo to accentuate his fingerstyle rhythms and warp the tone, inspired a new generation of players. 

Where Martyn went, the likes of John Smith and Ben Howard followed, amassing banks of delay and echo. Speaking to Total Guitar, John Smith recalled one of the formative moments in his career, playing the Barbican in London – a big deal – and not having a soundcheck because Martyn’s vintage Roland Space Echo had gone rogue.

Watching the video above from Martyn’s performance at the BBC is incredible. The only thing that suggests it was the 1970s is the screen resolution and the fashion. Otherwise, this is 21st-century guitar playing, and for anyone with a mind to embrace the possibilities of electric tech for the acoustic form, Martyn is essential listening.

16. Steve Vai – Ballerina 12/24 

Steve Vai’s Passion and Warfare is one of shred guitar’s foundational texts. Every track has something to teach us. In the case of 12/24 Ballerina, it’s how some delay and clever pitch shifting can put a pin in the record for a jewelry box guitar instrumental. Countless forum pages are dedicated to Vai’s tone secrets on this. Such is the onward march of technological progress it is getting more accessible by the day. 

The studio magic of the Eventide H3000 Ultra-Harmonizer now is available in a compact form, in most good guitar stores, and yet it will never fail to amaze us. The trick is having the imagination to design such an an outré guitar tone on your device and then have the wherewithal to turn something so unlike the guitar into a guitar piece. We prefer the idea of some angels whispering the tone secrets and chord changes into the ear, just as they surely back at the Mothership. 

17. Radiohead – Karma Police

Guitarist: Ed O’Brien

The mindwarping conclusion to Karma Police is one of those OK Computer moments where the force of Ed O’Brien’s genius takes centre stage and – quite literally – multiplies before our ears. 

An anxious, disembodied and alienating composition, it finishes with a self-oscillating wormhole, created by O’Brien running his guitar through an AMS DMX 15-80S rack-mounted digital delay.

Now, maxing out the repeats is always interesting until a delay self-oscillates is always fun. It is 100 per cent guaranteed to get your dog to howl along – trust us, we’ve tried it. But it’s not necessarily musical. 

It’s the context that makes it so vital, and how O’Brien pulls back the delay speed to adjust the pitch and further loosen the bonds between reality and the subverted reality in which Radiohead pitch this track. Once it’s through, you want to take yourself to the shower to wash the mood off. The thing is, by the end of Karma Police that unease is under the skin. 

18. Flock of Seagulls – I Ran (So Far Away)

Guitarist: Paul Reynolds

Not enough has been written on the guitar playing of Paul Reynolds. Maybe it’s because the new wave sound of Flock of Seagulls has been ring-fenced by the passing of time and never adequately reanimated in the 21st century to merit a thorough audit of Reynolds’ genius. 

But he makes a fascinating case study in how to make an electric guitar work outside of the analog confines of rock ’n’ roll and the modern beat combo format. In a sense, it is players such as Reynolds who paved the way for St. Vincent et al. 

One of the difficulties when talking about great pop songs such as I Ran (So Far Away) is that the melody and the ensemble steamroller your attention, but iris in on the guitar playing and you’ll find Reynolds with his super-wacky 1980 Kramer XL-5 (aluminum neck FTW), playing through a Roland RE-501 Chorus Echo. 

Roland’s last mechanical echo unit was a beast – if you find one online in good condition expect to pay over $2,000 – that featured spring reverb, echo and chorus. Unlike other tape echoes, the tape was held in its own compartment as opposed to being wound on a cassette, all to prolong tape life and offer more pristine, wow/flutter-free performance for longer. 

While we do not know exactly what Reynolds used when tracking I Ran, it was certainly a go-to unit for live performances. On record, it is a textbook exercise in new wave guitar tone, clean processed tones, dotted-eighth delay times and a pseudo-doubling effect to make the solo really pop out. Having all but defined new wave guitar playing, Reynolds is ripe for rediscovery.

19. Van Halen – Cathedral

Guitarist: Eddie Van Halen 

If you look at his rig and some of the outré styles he had showcased on previous recordings, it was inevitable that Eddie Van Halen would get around to tracking something like Cathedral. 

If Eruption introduced us to his flamboyant gift for performance and meticulous technique, Cathedral gave him the opportunity to demonstrate just how all of the elements of his rig could be brought to bear on the urgent task of advancing rock guitar. 

This is what the EVH gear low-friction volume pot is for. Yeah, sure, use a volume pedal, you can’t walk about the stage, making eye contact and greeting the people when rooted to your ‘board.

In Eddie’s hands, those volume swells, the double-locking vibrato and the Maestro Echoplex created a strange brew of audio magic. The Echoplex’s legendary preamp adds a little heat to the "brown sound", but also allowed his guitar to transmogrify into a synthesized organ and have a conversation with itself. 

It’s like that bit in Close Encounters when the NASA cats and the aliens are having a jam off, except it’s all with one guitar and one man having a god-like moment of genius. On record it is ecclesiastic, onstage was a mind-bending spectacular.

20. Covet – Nero

Guitarist: Yvette Young

The most important effect in Yvette Young’s signal chain is Yvette Young. Of course, she has a fully stocked pedalboard, but really, you could just give her an Ibanez Talman and a capo and send her into the studio and she’ll come up with some gold. But that said, when she uses analog delay on tracks such as Nero, she finds an extra level.

It’s funny because many players will use a compressor as their tone-sweetener, or maybe an EP-3 preamp-style boost, but on Nero, it is as though there’s a Carbon Copy delay working with a compressor to make that solo sound extra pro.

There is something admirably high-wire about that choice, because as much as delay can thicken things up it can also create clutter if the playing is not on-point. This is lo-fi, analog virtuosity, a form of radical transparency that makes Covet, and Young’s playing in particular, so thrilling.

21. Buckethead – Big Sur Moon

Sometimes it is liberating when a guitar player writes, records and performs a track like Big Sur Moon, because here we were, fussing around with an endless procession of delays, controls up the wazoo, and along comes Buckethead who casts a spell on an analog delay to record a next-gen shred piece that is pure sci-fi. 

How does he do it? Well, he can count, and he can play. Like a metronome, delay repeats do not lie. Like the pseudonymous shred enigma that he is, Buckethead makes no mistakes. Here, he’s got a mellow clean tone, a melodic progression to work through, and the picking skills of a surgeon.

Of course, we are foregrounding the technical excellence required to compose and perform a piece such as this, but even if you approach this as a non-guitarist, Big Sur Moon stands up as a beguiling instrumental moment.

As for replicating it, the repeats have a dotted eighth feel to them and are clean, pronounced, and watching him perform it live it looks like the majority of this arpeggiated mind-melter is performed using upstrokes, with palm-muting used to control the dynamics.

Played at 159 BPM, a dotted eighth note would require a delay time of 283ms. Limit the feedback to a single repeat at unitary gain to your dry signal. Given that it’s best to embark on this slowly and build up speed, use a BPM-to-delay time calculator to adjust for tempo, and aim for precision and feel before getting faster.

22. Paul Gilbert – The Echo Song

All right, Mr Joe Buckethead, we see your Big Sur Moon and raise you one Echo Song… Okay, it’s not like that, it’s not a competition, and in mood and feel they are two very different pieces, but here Paul Gilbert is following in the footsteps of Buckethead’s technical excellence and giving it his own super-juicy overdriven twist on it. 

Again, this sort of technical excellence is not normal. If you find yourself sitting at home, performing The Echo Song, or perhaps writing and performing a similar piece, which sees the electric guitar have a busy conversation with itself in a strong "brown sound"-accented tone, then you have made it. Please share your secrets with the guitar world at large.

Again, it’s one where the repeats are as pretty much as loud as the picking, and the ability to count and pick accurately is the ability to save yourself from turning a fascinating arrangement into the unlistenable.

23. Mogwai - Helicon 1

Guitarists: Dominic Aitchison, John Cummings

The ur-post-rock sonic landscapers, Glasgow’s young team have developed their own form of sculpting, taking distortion’s dark energies and rendering it in aerosol form via reverb, modulation and delay. Helicon 1 – or New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 1 to give it its full title – is a perfect example of their genius at play.

As ever, the guitar melody is gaseous, the bass, played by Stuart Braithwaite as bassist Dominic Aitchison is seconded to guitar, carries a lot of the melodic information. We’ve heard delay being used as a doubler, as a performance-enhancing effect, or as a means of creating ambience without creating the wash of reverb, but here it is working in tandem with reverb to establish a mood.  

This is a masterpiece of languid twilight, but of course, this being Mogwai, a predominantly rock enterprise with nonetheless a similar appreciation of dynamics as a classical composer, the big noise follows the big mood, too – a savage ecstasy that sends every dial into the red before receding back into polite ambience.

24. Kaki King – Bari Improv

Okay, so Rotten Tomatoes has taken the critical temperature for August Rush and awarded it just 37 per cent on the Tomatometer but if Kaki King’s breathtaking acoustic improv piece was given a heavier weighting in the critical judgement we’d expect to see this up there with Citizen Kane. 

Where do you start with this? Well, you’ll need an Ovation acoustic, a grimoire of alternate tunings, a Boss digital delay, and then throw out pretty much all the received wisdom on how to play acoustic guitar.

Kaki King is cut from different cloth. Her playing style is so hard to climb inside because it exists outside the traditional/percussive axis. It is all of the above. It’s no surprise that she’s a drummer, too. 

On Bari Improv, she uses the strings percussively as opposed to the body, building a rhythmically and melodically complex piece, and using clean repeats at unitary gain to augment those rhythms.

It should be an essential piece for acoustic players to learn, and the biggest lesson to take from it is how to incorporate these techniques in your own compositions, and how the delay pedal can lift it and make it truly special.

25. Tash Sultana – Jungle

Tash Sultana is a 21st-century phenomenon with a sound that’s been workshopped on the streets of Melbourne and broadcast into homes and cellphones the world over via the internet. Like many solo performers, Sultana’s Boss RC-30 looper is a crucial component in performance delivery, but it’s the Boss DD-7 and TE-2 Tera Echo that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting with the tone on Jungle.

Watch how Sultana constructs the loop, building the song from the ground up with some ska upstrokes, before working in some spaced-out Jazzmaster cleans on top. Sultana keeps such tone secrets under lock and key, but with a Boss TE-2 Tera Echo on the ‘board, it could be that the TE-2’s reverb/delay hybrid tone is adding texture while the DD-7 is adding rhythmic complexity with dotted-eighth repeats. They are as much part of Sultana’s backing band as the looper.

You might notice 2:56 seconds into the video that Sultana’s dog is unimpressed, but we are. This is a new kinda magic.

Last week, Metallica announced The Metallica Blacklist, perhaps the most ambitious covers album ever assembled with an almighty 53 artists paying homage to the metal icons’ landmark 1991 self-titled effort, commonly known as The Black Album. We’ve already heard Miley Cyrus’s take on Nothing Else Matters, and now one of the record’s most intriguing pairings has broken cover, as St. Vincent tackles Sad But True.

Of course, Annie Clark being Annie Clark, this is no straight riffer. The 21st-century guitar hero’s take finds her dialing back the gain for a gritty, menacing tone that transforms the track into a Depeche Mode-meets-Nine Inch Nails industrial banger.

Clark is a huge Metallica fan, so it’s no surprise to hear that while the tone is far from the Mesa-fueled original, the playing is faithful to James Hetfield’s sledgehammer riffage.

Her voice on the instrument really shines as the guitar solo lands, however: first, Clark stomps on a glitchy fuzzbox for the song’s harmonized chromatic licks, before nailing Kirk Hammett’s bluesy leads – only the original’s Page-esque ascending pentatonic run doesn’t make the cut, as St. V launches into an altogether funkier harmonized passage that ties the whole lead into the track’s radical new direction.

The cover makes perfect sense given both artists have expressed affection for each other’s music over the years.

“The way she writes, some of her musical motifs are just so different from anything I would ever play,” Hammett told GW earlier this year.

“I find that so intriguing. And I love the fact that she understands totally what she’s doing and she understands the theory behind it. For me, that always adds another dimension of respectability – knowing that the person’s not just fucking winging it and all of a sudden stepping in something.”

Clark, meanwhile, told Rolling Stone that “Metallica became a part of my DNA in the years when I started listening to music. It’s just imprinted in me in a certain way.”

As well as St. Vincent’s rendition, British singer-songwriter du jour Sam Fender today revealed his own version of Sad But True, which adopts a piano-and-strings ballad approach.

The Metallica Blacklist, as well as a remastered version of the Black Album, arrive on September 10 via Blackened Recordings.

Profits from The Metallica Blacklist will be divided evenly between Metallica's All Within My Hands foundation and over 50 charities chosen by artists who appear on the record.

Since the release of Willow Smith’s recent punk-pop-infused single Transparent Soul, which in turn marked her sonic transition from rap warrior to fierce electric guitar star, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter has been known to favor one guitar in particular.

As seen in the track's music video, as well as her recent electrifying performance on The Tonight Show, Smith has solely sported a St. Vincent Ernie Ball Music Man signature for her six-string escapades so far.

However, thanks to the generosity of fellow guitar star Yvette Young, her arsenal of axes has just got even bigger, having been gifted a signature Ibanez YY10 by the fingerpicking powerhouse herself.

Smith wasted no time in putting the vibrant Slime Green Sparkle-finished model through its paces, and reeled off the upper-register lead line from Mac DeMarco’s Goodbye Weekend in a show of her ever-evolving picking powers.

On Instagram, Smith said, “Ahhh! It’s finally here. Big thanks to Yvette Young for sending me one of her signature YY10 Ibanez guitars! It’s so much fun to play,” to which Young responded, “Omg you make it glow.”

It isn’t the first time the pair have linked up in recent months, having collaborated on Smith’s current St. Vincent model, which sports a solar-inspired, hand-crafted colorway designed by Young.

Smith’s own personalized take on the Annie Clark original comes equipped with a constellation-flavored colorway, and is one of several models to have received a cosmetic pick-me-up from the Covet guitar player's own guitar customization company.

Who knows what will be next in Transparent Soul star's catalog of guitars? Perhaps there's room for a Willow Smith signature somewhere down the line...

If you caught St. Vincent on Saturday Night Live in April performing her awesome single, The Melting of the Sun, you may have noticed that she was playing a similarly awesome new version of her Ernie Ball Music Man signature electric guitar to go along with it.

Now EBMM has formally released that guitar, dubbed the Goldie. The reimagined model retains the radical body shape of St. Vincent’s original signature guitar, but adds in a trio of newly-designed Ernie Ball Music Man gold foil mini humbuckers, a three-ply parchment pickguard that has been relocated underneath the pickups for a more traditional look, brass saddles and a reverse headstock.

Additional features include stainless steel frets and chrome hardware.

Otherwise, the St. Vincent Goldie boasts an okoume body, figured roasted maple neck – finished in gunstock oil and hand-rubbed wax – and 22-fret ebony fingerboard with custom St. Vincent inlays.

There’s also custom parchment control knobs, pearl tuning keys, Schaller locking tuners with pearl buttons and a five-way pickup selector.

The St. Vincent Goldie comes in three new finishes: Cashmere, which St. Vincent used on SNL, Silk Charmeuse and Velveteen (which also adds in a rosewood fingerboard). The new model has a price tag of $2,999 and is available now.

For more information, head to Music-Man.

Never ones to settle in their ways, the generation-defining pop-rock rulers in Weezer have crafted not one, but two of their most unpredictably wild albums to date: the equally introspective and operatic OK Human (which features not a single lick of electric guitar, but instead makes use of a 38-piece orchestra), and the '80s hair metal-channelling Van Weezer (which is absolutely stuffed from cover to cover with rip-roaring riffs and soaring solos). To find out how these two boundary-breaking albums came to life, Australian Guitar caught up with frontman Rivers Cuomo – who also filled us in on Weezer's notably ambitious plan for 2022, which includes an epic four-album saga!

Before you dive into that wicked five-page cover story, though, why not catch up on all the latest happenings in the Australian rock world? In Australian Guitar #143, we're showcasing You Am I, DZ Deathrays, Polish Club, The Bamboos, Liz Stringer and Teenage Joans, all of whom have ripping new records they wax lyrical about with us. And from across the pond, we've got interviews with St. Vincent, Garbage, Dinosaur Jr, Wolf Alice, Manchester Orchestra, Royal Blood and Gojira – to name just a few.

We also got down to the wire with Pearl Jam shredder Mike McCready to chat about his stunning new signature Stratocaster from the Fender Custom Shop; then stepped behind the curtain with one of the actual master builders from the Custom Shop – the legendary Kyle McMillin – to hear the backstory behind his jaw-dropping inclusion in the 2021 Fender Prestige Collection.

Speaking of iconic guitar brands doing super cool things, we get a blast from the past with a story detailing how Gibson saved Epiphone from the brink of death in the '50s. Epiphone, of course, are best known for making the best guitars a future virtuoso could dream of getting their hands on – and for those budding players among us ready to shred up a storm, we've got five essential lessons for you to give a red hot go. Once you've got the technique down, learn some classic rock anthems with our trio of tablature highlights: "Lithium" by Nirvana, "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin and "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop.

But what if you don't want an Epiphone? What about one of the most beloved guitars of all time – the one and only Fender Stratocaster – instead? There are literally hundreds of Stratocaster models on the market, but never fear! In AG #143, we're diving deep with shootout of the best Strats you can buy right now. We'd suggest checking that feature out while you revisit the mammoth prog epic that is Tool's latest album, Fear Inoculum – then read all about how its producer, Joe Barresi, managed to capture that one-of-a-kind guitar tone in this issue's Producer Profile column.

After that, suss the Fresh Frets column to find your new favourite local band, and the Spotlight column to catch up with some of the buzziest names on the scene right now. There's also the Hot Gear column hated by wallets everywhere – and once you've drooled over all the goodies in that, head to the last pages of the magazine for a stack of reviews for the latest and greatest gear on the market.

Australian Guitar #143 is available from today at newsagents all around the country, and online via techmags.com.au or iSubscribe.

Artist interviews in this issue:

• The Bamboos
• Dropkick Murphys
• DZ Deathrays
• Garbage
• Gojira
• K.Flay
• Manchester Orchestra
• Mannequin Pussy
• The Offspring
• Pearl Jam
• Polish Club
• Rag'N'Bone Man
• Royal Blood
• St. Vincent
• Teenage Fanclub
• Teenage Joans
• Waterparks
• Weezer
• You Am I
• Joe Barresi (Producer Profile)
• Aston Valladares of Towns (Spotlight)
• Christopher Vernon of Belle Haven (Spotlight)
• Rosie Tucker (Spotlight)
• Tyne-James Organ (Spotlight)

All the hottest gear reviews:

• CME WIDI Master
• Focusrite FAST Series Plugins
• Sterling By Music Man Jason Richardson 7-String Cutlass
• Line 6 HX Stomp XL
• Fender American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster
• Cort G300 Pro
• Epiphone Inspired By Gibson J-45 + J-200
• Electro-Harmonix Oceans 12 Dual Stereo Reverb
• Victory V40 The Duchess
• Carl Martin Plexiranger
• MXR M251 FOD Drive
• MXR M305 Tremolo
• MXR M299 Carbon Copy Mini
• Boss GT-1000Core
• Boss Pocket GT
• Blackstar Carry-On Deluxe Pack
• PRS SE Custom 24 + 24-08 

Subscribe to the print edition of Australian Guitar, and you'll enjoy each new issue on the day it's published, delivered straight to your door. Click here for all the details!

As we move into the summer, and farther away from the busy spring release cycle, it’s not unreasonable to expect the pace of new music – and with it the guitar’s evolution – to slow slightly.

We’re happy to report though, that any reports of such a slowdown would be premature.

From a dreamy psychedelic opus from St. Vincent, a rapid-fire, twist-filled volley of metal from Fear Factory, some airtight blues guitar magic from Quinn Sullivan and a heavy-riffing comeback single from Angels & Airwaves, this week had a lot to offer, guitar-wise. 

So grab the cold beverage of your choice, open up your windows and let the breeze in, and unwind with these awesome tunes.

Angels & Airwaves - Euphoria

Tom DeLonge never really gets his due as the man who influenced a generation of guitarists. And while many of those fans will cite Blink-182’s pop-punk stylings as their reason to pick up a guitar, hardcore-tinged side-project Box Car Racer was a gateway to heavier dimensions.

So it’s gratifying to hear DeLonge hark back to that golden era with a track that fuses Angels & Airwaves’ synth-led sonics with gnarly BCR riffs, not to mention a, well, euphoric chorus.

Indeed, where modern rock can tend towards forcing overwrought refrains into arena-sized holes, Euphoria’s anthemic nature sounds entirely authentic, as DeLonge sought to “mirror the post-hardcore days of my youth, where the power of the music creates that feeling we once had as teenagers, where we wanted to break something and change the poisonous environment within our broken homes”.

And if that means capturing the magic of his early-Noughties heyday, we’d say he succeeded. (MAB)

Fear Factory – Fuel Injected Suicide Machine

Ahead of their upcoming album Aggression Continuum, longstanding LA metallers Fear Factory have unleashed the blisteringly quick Fuel Injected Suicide Machine. 

Following the record’s impossibly heavy first single Disruptor – which dropped back in April – FISM sees Dino Cazares discharge a rapid-fire volley of palm-muted alternate picking runs and fast-evolving chord progressions, underpinned by the indomitable rhythm section of bassist Tony Campos and drummer Mike Heller.

For added flavor, the track also includes the occasional melodic interlude, in which Cazares’s vocals are washed in an oddly soothing orchestral accompaniment.

"This record is one of my proudest achievements and I'm really excited for it to finally be released,” Cazares says. “This album is pissed! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are hooked.”

Don’t worry Dino, we’re hooked already. (SR)

Mdou Moctar – Taliat

With the release of his upcoming album, Afrique Victime, now a matter of hours away, Niger native Mdou Moctar is primed to be one of the guitar’s biggest breakout stars of 2021. 

Driven by a vibrant riff that seems to incorporate different delightful melodic flourishes each time around, Taliat – which follows the album’s title track, Tala Tannam and Chismiten – is an infectious rocker of the first degree.

With the laser-like instrumental and vocal support of Michael Coltun on bass, Souleymane Ibrahim on drums and Ahmoudou Madassane on rhythm guitar, Moctar is free to explore as he pleases. 

Touching on classic-rock showmanship, pop sensibility and the Tuareg musical tradition he was raised in, Moctar’s guitar work on Taliat is absolutely electrifying. Looking for a Friday listen tomorrow? Put Afrique Victime at the top of your list. (JM)

Quinn Sullivan – In A World Without You

If you’ve yet to come across blues-rock sensation Quinn Sullivan, treat yourself to the opening measures of his latest single In A World Without You. After being introduced to the pumping, blues-infused single-coil strums, two things are likely to crop up in your mind: ‘Who is this guy?’, and ‘Where can I find more?!’

At only 22 years of age, this guitar-slinging sensation has it all. Silky songwriting ability? Check. Smooth vocals? Check. Elite, ahead-of-his-age guitar skills? Double check. Taken from his upcoming album Wide Awake, which drops on June 4, In A World Without You is the perfect way to familiarize yourself with Sullivan’s six-string skills, and will have you trawling through his repertoire for more.

On more than one occasion, we’re treated to extended quasi-improvisational efforts that nonchalantly serve up effortlessly tasty Mayer-style licks, akin to the warm fuzz-y constructions found in I Guess I Just Feel Like, with a smattering of smooth melodic flourishes fleshing out the track into a certified fresh blues romp.

It’s hard to believe that, for a young guitar player who has already racked up appearances at Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and the RFK Stadium, the best is still yet to come. Nevertheless, we have a sneaky suspicion Sullivan is just getting started. (MO)

Born Of Osiris – Angel or Alien

You’re spoiled for choice in terms of metalcore this week. And indeed, after their recent playthrough of White Nile, you’re spoiled for choice in terms of Born Of Osiris content, too.

This week, the outrageously heavy Illinois quintet revealed the title and title track of their upcoming fifth studio album, Angel or Alien. 

Slightly less destructive than White Nile – although there’s plenty of heaviness to digest – Angel or Alien places emphasis more on lead guitar, with an array of dizzying six-string runs shared by guitarists Lee McKinney and Nick Rossi in equal measure.

On the upcoming album, McKinney comments: “We feel like we brought the best elements from each album in our discography and combined them into what you will hear on Angel or Alien. So, no matter what album you favor in our discography, this one should shine.” (SR)

Black Midi - Chondromalacia Patella

With their latest release from the imminent Cavalcade, the UK avant-garde collective continue to be utterly uncategorizable. Sure, Black Midi are art-rock. But their unique brand of sonic mayhem also borders on post, math, kraut, noise, jazz, even lounge at times.

Chondromalacia Patella crams all these nearly-there-but-not-quite-right genre labels into one five-minute rollercoaster. Bookended by abrasive chord work and elephantine horn stabs, the track also plays host to Reverend-toting frontman Geordie Greep’s boundless, inimitable versatility: conjuring cascades of beautifully phrased clean guitar figures one minute, summoning furious thrash leads the next. (MAB)

St. Vincent – Live In The Dream

One could argue that – behind the publicity and high-profile videos of her biggest, in-your-face singles – St. Vincent’s (the stage name of Annie Clark) greatest artistic achievements have always been tucked away in somewhat unexpected places. 

Nestled a third of the way through Clark’s new album, Daddy’s Home – a bold, deeply personal examination of parenthood and Clark’s father’s incarceration through the lens of neon-lit, theatrical and charmingly bizarre ‘70s funk – Live In The Dream gives Clark and her talents room to stretch out.  

Where other cuts on the album (sometimes to their detriment) musically contract, Live In The Dream expands. Over an entrancing, psychedelic sonic dreamscape of sitar, impassioned strings and beautiful guitar arpeggios, Clark sings sweetly to a friend who she’s just revived from an overdose.

She caps the opus off with what may very well be her greatest guitar solo to date – an explosive, wailing melodic masterpiece rich with vibrato, piercing bends and dramatic slides. 

In terms of songwriting, Daddy’s Home may not be Clark’s greatest or most cohesive work, but if you show up looking for guitar greatness, you’ll find plenty of it. (JM)

The Glorious Sons – Daylight 

Sometimes, you don’t know what you’re missing until you actually hear it. More appropriate words can’t be spoken for The Glorious Sons’ latest outing Daylight – an unexpected release from the classic-rock five-piece that merits the mantle of the “most welcome surprise of the week”.  

Sporting a series of Sympathy For the Devil-esque bongo beats to whet the whistle, Daylight explodes into a rollercoaster of raucous overdriven guitar chord progressions and upbeat drum pattterns, with a momentary reprieve appearing in the form of a solo-packed middle eight. 

Said to be the result of the band’s quest to make something more energized than organized, Daylight more than successfully hits the design brief, and is a glimpse into what has been tee’d up to be a high-octane 2021 for the Canadian rockers. (MO)

Our Hollow, Our Home – Better Daze

The colliding of metalcore with more pop-style vocal arrangements always tends to yield interesting results, but few artists deliver on the crossover quite like Our Hollow, Our Home.

Arriving ahead of the Southampton outfit’s new album Burn In The Flood, Better Daze is, as the band describes, “an anthem for the underdogs, [and] a beacon of hope to those who are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel after hard times.”

Seamlessly, the track transitions back and forth from an arrangement consisting of guitarist Tobias Young’s instantly catchy vocals and pop-punk-style powerchords to a thunderous, riff-heavy thrasher, in which the band’s musical chemistry and shared interest in starting mosh pits is palpable. (SR) 

 The Vaccines – Headphones Baby 

Few bands boast a repertoire as filled to the brim with arena-filling crowd pleasers and catchy sing-along lung-bursters as The Vaccines. From the sensational What Did You Expect From The Vaccines to the more mature but by-no-means less energetic Combat Sports, the formidable three-piece have been an ever-present force in the industry, and have rarely – if ever – missed a beat.

It should come as no surprise, then, that their latest offering Headphones Baby has continued their tradition of hitting home runs in the indie-rock department. It’s everything you’d expect from a Vaccines track and more: festival-field-filling guitar parts, catchy chorus hooks and an easygoing, carefree charm that never seems to waver.

So sit back, relax, and experience The Vaccines at the peak of their powers. It’s perhaps the second most important vaccine you need in your life right now. (MO)

Few artists have a reputation for innovation quite like Annie Clark – better known to the masses as St. Vincent – who, since dropping the chamber-pop classic Marry Me in 2007, has continued to reinvent herself with each new release. And not just sonically, either – Clark is a musical method actress, embodying the idiosyncratic spirit of the concept, style and ethos of her current project. On her sixth solo album, Daddy’s Home, she’s a sly, sultry queen of the New York club scene circa 1973, sinking deep down a rabbithole of warm analogue fuzz, velvety grooves and brittle percussion. 

An ‘80s kid herself, Clark looks to the musical palate of rock’s early-‘70s heyday with a detached, yet unequivocally devoted sense of nostalgia. Add to it the lyrical inspiration of her father coming home from a stint in federal prison, and even if it sucked, we’d still have one of 2021’s most interesting albums. But of course, this is St. Vincent we’re talking about – Daddy’s Home is an instant hit on all fronts.

Clark typically goes all in on her albums’ campaigns, preferring to meet with her interviewers in-person no matter where in the world they are. Obviously due to the whole ‘global health crisis’ thing, we had to phone in with Clark over Zoom – but somehow, our chat felt more down-to-earth and intimate than it likely would if we were shoved in a cold office boardroom with PR and managers hovering over our shoulders. Together, we riffed on the instantly memorable sound of Daddy’s Home, the authenticity of its recording process, and one thing fans of her Ernie Ball signature model should keep their eyes peeled for in the coming months…

After how wild the past year has been, what’s the vibe like in your world right now?
I mean, it’s actually surprisingly mellow, compared to other times when I’ve been putting out records. In times past, we would be having this conversation in person – y’know, I would be in Australia for 48 hours to chit chat. So it definitely mellower doing things from home. Which is great, because I never had to kind of get out of the flow of writing. I didn’t have to stop the creativity once I finished this record.

So are you already working on the next one?
Yeah, of course! What else am I going to do?

Musically this record is very hazy, funky, proggy – it plays out like a love letter to that little bubble of rock history in the ‘60s and ‘70s. How did you want to encapsulate that on the record?
I think what I find so appealing about that era is that music was so loose and free, but also really sophisticated. But they never shoved the sophistication in your face – it was just effortlessly cool and so musical.

The palate of tonal colours and flavours on this record is mind-blowing. There’s bits of disco, funk, psychedelica, jazz, blues, rock ’n’ roll… Was the intention to really cram in as much of that nostalgic influence as possible?
I don’t know if the intention was to cram it in, as such, but yeah, I picked a sonic palate – Wurlitzer and background singers, sitars and acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and then clean, tight-sounding drums – and then really played into that, like, “Okay, 17 percent psychedelic, 15 percent Talking Book…”

So what’s your philosophy in making that all come together without feeling it messy?
I definitely spent a lot of time sequencing this record. And I mean, I can tell you that I spent, like, two weeks making sure that there were the right amount of seconds and milliseconds in-between each song. So there’s that, and then there’s the process of going, “Okay, this is the story,” y’know?

I have to quote Rolling Stone – I read a piece where they noted that in comparison to a lot of your other material, Daddy’s Home “feels more human and lived-in”. Especially given the subject matter that inspired it, did you want this record to embody a sense of homeliness, or feel very down-to-earth?
Yeah, I think I wanted to make something more grounded – more, like, from the guts. [Clark looks up the definition of ‘homeliness’]… I promise I’m not being a dick – this is interesting! You used the term ‘homeliness’, and in North America, homely means, “A person who’s unattractive in appearance”. But in Britain – which is where your definition would’ve come from – it means, “Simple but cozy but comfortable, as in one’s home”. When you said ‘homeliness’, I was like, “Oh, okay. I’ve only heard that in a derogatory way.” 

Did you and Jack record this album with analogue equipment?
Oh, yeah! Definitely through good boards and preamps, vintage microphones and all that.

Is that typically how you tend to work?
Well, we’ve recorded through analogue gear into Pro Tools – so there was definitely a digital conversion at some point. But yeah, over the years I’ve built up a good setup of analogue gear in my studio, so it was very fun to make this record here. We did some at Electric Lady, too, which obviously has a lot of great things. We also did some at Conway, and then Jack did some at his studio, so there was a lot of great gear being passed around.

What was it like jamming out at Electric Lady?
Oh man, it’s really fun! It’s kind of one of the last great studios from that time [in the late ‘60s and ‘70s] – definitely in New York, at least. These days a lot of them are either Cheesecake Factories or condos for oligarchs. But [Electric Lady] just has such a good vibe – they take such good care of you, they have a lot of great gear, and it’s a place I feel very comfortable in. Whenever I’m in New York, I like to rent it out just to be there.

Does it foster a sense of creativity that you don’t get anywhere else?
Yeah, it does. Part of the creativity comes from biking or walking from my house to the studio, and just kind of getting to see real life happen around me.

What guitars were you rocking in the studio?
I think besides an acoustic that I borrowed from my friend, my Ernie Ball signature was the only guitar I played on the record. There was also… I want to say it was a ’72 Coronado, which we played quite a bit for the bass. I love that guitar so much. And then there’s a couple moments of acoustic that were done on these old, modded Kays that have piezo pickups in them. And I played a little bit of lap steel on this little new Supro guy that I have.

Are you much of a pedal-head these days?
I was a little bit less so for this record, because a lot of the tones on it are pretty direct-into-the-board kind of tones – just very clean. But I usually am. I got my Moogerfooger delay out again, and this Fulltone Distortion Pro which is quite nice.

A little bit later in the year, you’ll be launching the Goldie version of your Ernie Ball sig. What can you tell us about how
this one came about?
It’s kind of an homage to a lot of the guitars I was playing early on in my career, which were these Harmony and Silvertone pawnshop guitars, or Seers- and road-bought guitars that had those gold foil pickups on them. And so the Goldie is more a guitar like that – kind of chimier, less output-heavy… They have a really pretty, kind of crystalline pickup sound. I’d say the original model definitely has more of a burly, thick, ‘rock’ sound, and this is a little more chime-y. But they’re very different guitars – it’s an ‘and’ instead of an ‘or’.

St. Vincent has released Down, the third single from her upcoming album, Daddy's Home.

Following the '70s funk-infused Pay Your Way in Pain and the similarly soulful The Melting Of The Sun, the new track sees St. Vincent – the stage name of Annie Clark – infuse the same era-specific stylings with an array of groovy synth lines and staccato single-coil chops.

Its accompanying Bill Benz-directed music video features Clark in “full Candy Darling morning-after regalia, portraying a woman careening through a narrative that meshes perfectly with the song's urgent, anxious grooves.” Watch it below:

St. Vincent recently appeared on Saturday Night Live, delivering stirring performances of Pay Your Way In Pain and The Melting of the Sun. During her rendition of the latter, she debuted her new signature Ernie Ball Music Man model, Goldie.

Daddy's Home – Clark's sixth studio album – is set to be released May 12 via Loma Vista Recordings. It was produced by Clark and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, mixed by Cian Riordan and mastered by Chris Gehringer.

The record is available now for preorder in CD, vinyl, vinyl deluxe and cassette formats. Check out its tracklisting below:

1. Pay Your Way In Pain
2. Down And Out Downtown
3. Daddy’s Home
4. Live In the Dream
5. The Melting Of The Sun
6. The Laughing Man
7. Down
8. Somebody Like Me
9. My Baby Wants A Baby
10. …At The Holiday Party
11. Candy Darling

When Willow Smith released her latest pop-punk inspired track Transparent Soul, those who watched the accompanying music video would have noticed two things: the significant sonic shift that single represented, and Smith’s unique St. Vincent signature model, which boasted a planetary paint job.

Well, as it turns out, the guitar’s artwork was designed by none other than electric guitar hero and fingerstyle tapping ninja Yvette Young, who picked up the paint brushes for her latest artistic collaboration.

Based on the original Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent signature, Smith’s new six-string comes equipped with a solar system-inspired artwork, complete with planets, moons, and a smattering of star constellations.

Revealing the news on social media, Ernie Ball said, “@OfficialWillow’s Ernie Ball Music Man @st_vincent guitar is out of this world! Artist collaboration with @yvetteyoung.”

Of her latest collaboration, the multi-talented guitar slayer/art phenom said, “So honored I got to paint this for her. Willow Smith has a track out with Travis Barker and it’s a banger! Stuck in my head already.”

It’s not the first time Yvette Young has offered up her visual artistic vision for a custom guitar body paint job, having previously created an equally interstellar artwork for an axe as part of her own guitar customization service.

The rapidly rising star also has a long history with guitar customization, having released a sticker pack last year that she hoped would “encourage everyone to have a lil fun and personalize their guitars a bit”. 

“Ding those bad boys up and play the shit outta them!” she continued. “That’s what they’re made for.”

Of her newfound affinity for the guitar, Smith said, “I personally feel it’s just really important to play an instrument if you’re going to have a career in music. Songwriting is 15 million times easier when you can actually write the songs.”

Willow Smith's as-yet-untitled fifth full-length album will be released in summer 2021.

R&B singer-songwriter Willow Smith has unveiled her latest single, Transparent Soul – a guitar-heavy track that sees the rap star take a significant sonic shift and swap intricate lyrical flows for thrash-y pop-punk powerchords. 

The song is taken from the 20-year-old’s upcoming fifth studio album, which will be released via Roc Nation/MSFTSMusic later this year, and features Blink-182 rhythm king Travis Barker on the drums. 

Wielding an Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent signature, Smith serves up a series of sweet melodic slides and oversized open-string chordal hooks over a moody bass guitar line, all of which are driven along by Barker’s high-octane drum part. 

The lyrics of Transparent Soul were inspired by a quote from a "beautiful swami" Smith knows personally, with the song being described as a testimony to her desire to "be the highest version of herself".

Accompanying the new single is a companion performance video directed by Dana Trippe, whose credits include Haim, Demi Lovato and more.

Of her new punk-flavored musical direction, Smith revealed that the upcoming album took inspiration from her mother’s [Jada Pinkett Smith] nu-metal band Wicked Wisdom, which introduced her to a huge array of bands outside the R&B scene.

“I never felt like I could sing that kind of music because I was always trained to sing R&B and pop,” said Smith of her hesitance to unleash her inner rock star, before noting, “I realized that it’s not my voice that can’t sing this kind of music. I was afraid to sing this kind of music because I was afraid of what people would think.”

Citing pop-punk heroes Hayley Williams, Gerard Way and Patrick Stump as being the driving forces behind her sonic shift, Smith says the new album will showcase an artist who has made it to the other side of that anxiety.

Smith, who started playing the guitar at the age of 14, also commented on the role that the electric guitar plays in the upcoming record, saying, “I personally feel it’s just really important to play an instrument if you’re going to have a career in music. Songwriting is 15 million times easier when you can actually write the songs.”

Willow Smith's as-yet-untitled fifth full-length album will be released in summer 2021.

McCartney III Imagined, the all-star collaborative remix of Paul McCartney’s recent McCartney III album, is released today via Capitol Records – and it’s an absolute treat for guitarists.

Alongside previously released tracks from Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Dominic Fike and Beck, today’s release showcases remixes from St. Vincent, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, Phoebe Bridgers and Khruangbin for the first time.

St. Vincent tackles Women and Wives, transforming it from a piano ballad into a Portishead-esque trip-hop masterpiece, complete with a bluesy pentatonic solo – a rarity for Annie Clark.

There are similar six-string thrills from Josh Homme’s distinctly QOTSA take on Lavatory Lil, which is awash with his grinding guitar and bass tones, wailing overdubs and a lead that echoes George Harrison.

Bridgers, meanwhile, takes Seize the Day far from its Hello, Goodbye-style origins, with an orchestral epic that foregrounds psychedelic Leslie’d electrics and ethereal synths.

And Khruangbin manage to completely transform Pretty Boys into, well, a Khruangbin song, which moulds Mark Speer’s masterful modulation and delay lines into a trippy counterpoint to McCartney’s familiar vocal.

Other artists featured on McCartney III Imagined include Blood Orange, Damon Albarn, Anderson .Paak and 3D RDN.

Released in December 2020, the original McCartney III album is the third in Macca’s series of home-made and self-titled records, and was written, recorded and produced in isolation by the Beatles legend.

McCartney III Imagined is available to stream and buy now.