COLMA

Since Buckethead recorded these songs for his mother, who was recovering from colon cancer, I thought the title of this album must be a portmanteau of "colon" and "coma." Turns out Colma is a cemetery city in California. So that makes sense, right?

Colma was my introduction to the artist's music. Prior to that I had known Buckethead as the guy who released an album every week, and I wondered whether this was the same guy who temporarily took Slash's place in Guns & Roses. Turns out it's the same guy. So I kind of expected this album to be shredded cheese, like Yngwie Malmsteen in a serious time crunch.

Well, I was way off. Colma is a new-age album,* and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It's a showcase for pensive, slightly jazzy guitar. For the most part, it's electro-acoustic, with lots of digital delay on the otherwise mostly clean guitar, and mostly programmed or looped drums. There's even scratching on a few tracks, with mixed results. Half of the songs don't include drums; "Big Sur Moon" is just Buckethead and his heavily-delayed guitar, à la the Edge. "Wishing Well" is primarily two guitars, maybe something like Steve Howe. And the final four songs ("Wondering," "Watching the Boats with My Dad," "Ghost (pt. 2)," and "Colma") also eschew percussion.

On the plus side, Colma has nice melodies, is expertly executed, and hangs together as an album. And "Machete" rivals similar efforts by Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson. But as a whole, the album doesn't stand out among the thousands of solo instrumental albums released by guitarists in the 1980s and 1990s.

*Colma is actually much new-agier than Howe's The Grand Scheme of Things, which hit #15 on Billboard's Top New Age Albums chart in 1994.