On the Stereo: Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Mogwai, Larkin Poe, Kane Brown
Plus Steve Vai/Joe Satriani/Eric Johnson's G3 Live, Jasmine.4.t, Willow Avalon, Kane Brown
Bonnie "Prince" Billy—The Purple Bird [2025]
As an admirer of Will Oldham, not a devotee, I will occasionally miss a record by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the name the singer/songwriter has used since the late 1990s. I have to admit that The Purple Bird arrives with a hook I found irresistible: this is Bonnie "Prince" Billy's stab at a traditional country album. Working with old friend David Ferguson—a Nashville staple who engineered Johnny Cash's American Recordings and its sequels, then produced such Americana mavericks as Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers—Oldham followed some of the rules of Music City, co-writing with pros and cutting the record with seasoned session men. The Purple Bird still has some stark, spare moments but they're only moments: the stillness of "Is My Living In Vain?" eventually becomes fleshed out with the hushed moans of strings. It's a trick that's performed often on The Purple Bird, when ballads and love songs are given layered arrangements that are warm, not opulent; the steady-rolling "One of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend the Whole Night With You)" and midnight regret of "Boise, Idaho" both recall different aspects of the pre-Outlaw progressive country boom of the early 1970s. As quiet as they may be, these numbers show how Oldham gets a charge out of playing with other musicians—a quality that also animates "Downstream," a modern spiritual performed as a duet with the old outlaw John Anderson—just as much as "Tonight With The Dogs I'm Sleeping," a quite welcome comic tale would've been riotous in the hands of Bobby Bare. As much as I like that Oldham is pushing humor to the forefront—in the case of "Guns Are For Cowards," the joke is pitch black—what really attracts me to The Purple Bird is its warmth, which is as emotional as it is musical.
Joe Satriani/Eric Johnson/Steve Vai—G3 Reunion Live [2025; 2024]
When Joe Satriani launched the G3 concert tour back in 1996, he and his fellow six-string shredders Steve Vai and Eric Johnson already seemed like rock & roll relics. The age of the stunt guitar had passed: it had been roughly a decade since David Lee Roth hired Vai for his post-Van Halen band and since Surfing with the Alien made Satriani the first successful rock instrumentalist since maybe Jeff Beck. If G3 seemed old in the age of post-grunge, G3 Reunion Live—an album documenting the trio's limited tour celebrating the 25th Anniversary of their original jaunt—seems like an entirely forgotten world in 2025. The times have changed but the virtuosos haven't. The three guitarists are still united by a love of technique, the anchor of ace drummer Kenny Aronoff, and a set of reference points—when they jam together on the encore, Satriani introduces "Crossroads" with "How about we do some Cream"—on their quest for transcendent tone. The guitarists may be kindred spirits, each playing at a blinding speed, but it's easy to differentiate between all three. Vai still plays wild, careening solos constrained only by the limits of a locking tremolo, Johnson burrows into the nuance of tube amp-driven tone, while Satriani manages to find a middle ground between showboating and crowd pleasing. Those distinct approaches hammer home the main difference between the original G3 and this reunion. Back then, this kind of virtuosity was dismissed as technical and soulless but now it plays as ridiculously human: no algorithm or AI would make the choices these three players choose throughout G3 Reunion Live.
