Music I Like to Worship the Guitar Gods

My heavy metal origin story is so embarrassingly cliche: I started dating a guitar player in high school. In my defense, I was studying violin myself at the time, so I also came by my preference for strings honestly. But there’s no denying that however much I broaden my musical horizons, I love a good guitar noodle. Here is some of the guitar-worshiping music I’ve liked lately (and a couple classics for good measure).

Myoora

Mmmmm, so good. Myoora introduce themselves on Bandcamp with:

Hi! Myoora is Daniel Nesci & Daniel Pinto, we play guitar and write music.

and I’ll be damned if they don’t do exactly what it says on the tin. The guitar tone on skyward reminds me of Joe Satriani’s Flying in a Blue Dream. But where Satch is all noodle, Myoora give equal weight on Skyward to the “write music” part.

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Joe Satriani

What the hell, let’s just include the Joe Satriani album where it all started, shall we? Yes, so Flying in a Blue Dream came out shortly after I started dating the aforementioned guitar player. I bought him the cassette for his birthday. I got a special dispensation to the “no dates before you’re 16” rule to attend the concert. I haven’t listened to old Joe in a long time, but he did convert me to worship at the altar of the guitar. And this track is still sublime.

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Bill Orcutt

Odds Against Tomorrow is stripped down to nothing but Bill Orcutt‘s electric guitar. But like Robert Johnson before him, Orcutt convinces you there are more than just six strings making all that noise. I don’t know, maybe there are. It’s a folk/blues album that is sometimes as dissonant as a garage band, and sometimes approaches the sublime.

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Animals as Leaders

I feel really dumb that I slept on Animals as Leaders for so long. I’ve heard the name for years, but somehow had lumped the project with Strapping Young Lad in my head, filed under “Brilliant but not really fun to listen to.” Recently I realized I had never really listened to it, and had no basis for that opinion except for maybe the information “Named like a band but really all about one genius dude.” So I gave Animals as Leaders a listen and realized, that, why yes, that actually is my jam.

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Yvette Young/covet

After focusing on other things for a very long time, my husband picked up his guitar again and as a result, we’ve been discovering some amazing guitar players. One of them is Yvette Young, who puts out acoustic and piano solo material, and some of the most evanescent guitar-focused instrumental tracks with her band covet. On effloresce, she reminds me a bit of Eric Johnson and a bit of what bubbles would sound like if they made noise. You cannot be unhappy when you listen to this goddess play.

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Salomon Jakobsson

Back in November, we were driving to Vancouver to catch our flight to Hong Kong, and the most amazing classical guitar came on the stereo. My husband said this guitar god was “some kid” from Gothenburg, but he couldn’t look up the name because he was driving. But the music was so good, I remembered to ask again when the trip was over. It was Salomon Jakobsson. Listen to In the Valley of Notes and you’ll know what I mean.

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Rodrigo y Gabriela

You can’t talk about classical guitar gods with mentioning Rodrigo y Gabriela, the Mexican duo with classical leaves and punk rock roots. Especially since their last release, Mettal EP, is classical reworkings of classic metal songs.

I really want to see these two live.