Best of 2022: Rock Instrumentals

I’ve enjoyed looking over lots of year-end “best of” lists, but there is something missing:  Instrumentals.  I get it—most pop and rock music comes with lyrics and someone to sing them.  Nothing wrong with that, but the purely musical aspect of what is called, after all, “music”, often gets neglected.

As a life-long mythology and folk literature geek (the Iliad, Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied, the Mahabharata etc.) I appreciate the importance of lyrics and story-telling.  But let’s face it, in a 3-4 minute song, it’s hard to tell a deep story that’s never been told before.  Got the hots for someone? Been there. Broken heart?  Done that.  Hate yourself?  Sadly, way too common.  But if the music really grabs me, the lyrics don’t have to be ground-breaking.

I love rock, and it’s mostly what I’ve been writing about, but the soundtrack to my childhood was classical music and jazz, where vocals are rarely the point.  (Opera is the exception, but you need to set aside an hour or three or fifteen to get the gist of the story.)  Classical and jazz audiences are in it for the music—both the composition and the execution.  We may not jump up and dance, or slam into each other in a mosh pit, but we are inwardly excited, even thrilled, to hear someone play something beautiful, especially if they play it really well.

And there’s the rub: classical music or jazz played by middling musicians isn’t mediocre, it’s unbearable.  If you ever had to sit through your kids’ high school orchestra holiday recital, unable to block out the violins that were just a little off on every note, you know what I mean.  It makes nails on a chalkboard seem ok by comparison.  There is no in-between.

Rock and pop are more forgiving.  You don’t have to be a virtuoso to be in the game.  If you write good enough songs and can play ok (or better yet, hire good musicians) you can move people and even become a star.  Rock is about the hook and the beat, and appealing to our most basic emotions.  Good songwriting, along with decent execution, can get you there.

But when you write great stuff, AND you have virtuoso-level skills, it puts you in a different league (think of Cream, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, King Crimson).  Artists in that league have ways to convey things musically that go deeper than words can.  By definition, you can’t explain it, but you  know when you hear it. 

With bands like that, whether or not there are lyrics, and whether or not they are great lyrics, the music itself is captivating.  If I focus on the instrumental part, I hear things that I would have missed if I were only focused on the words.  An actual instrumental is a pure form of that experience. 

These are my three picks for best rock instrumentals of 2022, in chronological order of release.

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Polyphia are an instrumental quartet from Texas, formed in 2010. They have gradually built a large following including a lot of fellow musicians, based on their beautiful, unusual compositions and their extraordinary skills.  They’ve had a couple of pieces make it high on the charts, but they still don’t get radio play, which is probably just fine with them. Their music has evolved from straight-up metal through experimental rock and even into mashups based on jazz and hip-hop, and they collaborate with a wide range of artists to enable them to pursue new sounds and styles. 

Polyphia consist of:

Tim Henson, Guitar

Scott LePage, Guitar

Clay Gober, Bass

Clay Aeschliman, Drums

In an quirk that is likely of interest only to gear nerds, all three of the guitarists are sponsored by, and have signature models with, Ibanez, the Japanese luthier now favored by a lot of elite guitarists. 

“Playing God” combines lush, almost romantic melodies and harmonies, with flamenco influences and splashes of funk and metal. The guys love lightning-fast harmonies and syncopated runs.  The bass is forward in the mix, which almost makes it danceable.

Asterism are an instrumental power trio from Fukuoka, Japan.  They consist of:

Haruka Noma, guitars

Miyu Yoshinaka, bass

Mio Yoshinaka, drums

They were formed in 2014 when Noma was 11 and the brothers were 12 and 14 respectively.  They were all playing at a talent fair for young musicians, when a music scout noticed them and suggested they play together. The result can only be described as explosive.

Miyu plays 4,5 and 7-string basses, and in his hands the bass is a co-lead instrument.  They are all outstanding talents, but the big draw has been Noma, known by her stage name Hal-Ca.  She has been likened to a reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix, with bits of Joe Satriani, Nuno Bettencourt and Akira Takasaki, among others, thrown in.  She writes most of the band’s music.

Much of their current youtube catalogue is fan-made live video footage, mostly from the Hard Rock Café in Fukuoka.  There are also a few clips from their one tour in the U.S., when they played Austin and Los Angeles, opening each show with a face-melting cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Scuttle Buttin’”.

They have done a series of covers of the theme songs from Japanese anime films.  This is my favorite so far.

“unravel” (instrumental cover of theme song from “Tokyo Ghoul”)

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I’ve posted extensively on Band-Maid in this newsletter, so I’ll keep the intro short. They are a Japanese hard-rock band whose fans call them the saviors of rock and roll — perhaps with good reason. They are doing more than reviving rock — they are reinventing it as they go. They go beyond conventional rock tropes, incorporating jazz, funk and metal elements into their songs. 

They are not primarily an instrumental band, but their five published instrumentals are all masterful. They just completed a 14-city North America tour that sold out within 48 hours of tickets going on sale. They played “From Now On” at most of the shows, and it brought the house down every time. They just dropped this on us in time for the holidays.

“From Now On”

More on all of these bands coming in future posts.