[rating=7.00]
In its loose, all-instrumental camaraderie, guitar hero Harvey Mandel’s late 2016 winner of an album, Snake Pit, favorably recalled Jeff Beck’s halcyon jazz-rock fusion work Blow by Blow. And even though it’s not intended as a companion piece, Snake Attack, with its use of rhythm loops and electronic beats during numbers such as “Super Squid,” will also hearken to the British icon’s work of more recent years, namely Jeff.
Yet there’s a diversity within the album too that allows for the atmospheric likes of “Exotic Predator” with its orchestrated backdrop in place of rhythm loops. If the music lover or guitar hero-worshiper is not inclined to savor such a mechanical approach, repeated listens will reveal Mandel’s signature guitar work transcending its surroundings as in the form of the vaguely Eastern motifs intertwined throughout the title song. “Packin’” provides notice this is no antiseptic collection of tracks(as noted in his liner notes, recorded mixed and mastered solely by Mandel himself): congas and timescales add a percussive pop that complements the guitar parts as they mesh together.
With all of the ten tracks in the three-minute range, except for “Keeping the Faith” as 4:28, the brisk progression of cuts is a pleasure unto itself as well as a means of cementing the album together. The ominous rumble at the bottom of “Freak of Dawn,” for instance, enhances the effect of Mandel’s noisy guitar as much as the keyboards create a soothing cushion for a more temperate approach on the fretboards during “A Luscious Life;” the semi-sweet tone of that cut is as appropriate to its title as that of the insistent “Sinister” with it sharp breakdowns turning danceable before the conclusion.
As the artist himself recounts in the liner notes, Snake Attack is a work he completed wholly solo a few years ago. But with a discography dating back almost fifty years, including collaborations with British blues icon John Mayall and more recent accompaniment to Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, Harvey Mandel’s career simply becomes more storied with each and every new entry.
