GUITAR NOIR

My copy of "Guitar Noir", purchased used off the web, is an Israeli pressing in which the track order is dramatically different from that presented above. In addition, while there are no official bonus tracks, there is one unannounced addition at the end called "Cassandra", which, while AOR laden, features perhaps Hackett's best lead work on the album.

Like many, I lost touch with Steve Hackett during the 1980s, and assumed his work had continued to get less interesting like that of most of his ilk. However, a chance encounter with the lovely and tender song "There are Many Sides to the Night" gave me impetus to reconsider, and I'm glad for that.

"Guitar Noir" is a return to the form of "Defector" and "Highly Strung", while eschewing some of the superficial efforts of that time and replacing them with a Latin undercurrent here and there. Of course, it's all modernized and treated with the tastefulness that we might expect from Hackett. Although a guitarist, he has never been one to downplay the importance of keyboards in his mix, and, while it seemed in the old days he could only sing throwaway tracks, here he sings material that suits his limitations, at times sounding like Andy Latimer, another singer without much vocal range who has recently found his voice if you will.

Apart from a few throwaway rockers like "Lost in Your Heart", "Little America", and "Vampyre with a healthy Appetite", most of the tracks are entertaining and varied without sounding like they emanated from 10 different artists. Instrumentals like "Sierra Quemada" and "Paint your Picture" portray the man's charms with the bombastic and the light classical. "In the Heart of the City", "Take these Pearls" and "Dark as the Grave" are suffused with laid back Spanish influences, which indicate continued progress for the artist. Some of the quieter instrumentals could tone down the reverb a bit, but this remains a compelling work by a major artist. Both a worthwhile addition and a plausible place to start a Steve Hackett collection, "Guitar Noir" was a bright spot in the prog lexicon of its time.