Game:

Rock Band 3 (2010)

Duration: 7:59

340 views

19

Another one of my absolute favorite customs that we've done so far. I dread to sort through all rock music of the 21st century to call this a definitive opinion, but this just has to be the best guitar solo in modern music, right? Let's take Selkies as a counterpoint. You like Selkies. I like Selkies! But if you forced me to sit down and write the best solo ever, it'd probably sound a lot like Selkies. Acoustic filter to start, overdubbed guitars at the halfway point, ends with a long sweeping section into a tremolo down the fretboard and back into the outro riff. I love it all the same but it is a fairly "manufactured" and robotically written kind of solo.

But Guthrie Govan is one of the masters of improv playing, and it's not like he dives into virtuosic wankery. Steven Wilson said something to the effect of most of Guthrie's first take, completely improvised, being used for the final mix, but it still sounds so rich, so full, so emotive and colourful. I'm way too biased when I say this but I think the big solo in Black Light Machine is the only solo of the past 15 years that comes closer to giving me goosebumps.

And then of course there's the rest of this song, which is this very sad tale of a man losing a loved one in a car crash and suffering a mix of amnesia and survivor's guilt. It's probably the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the lyrical content of the Raven That Refused To Sing album, though.

Other Statistics