Ascension

If you’d been missing the livid buzz of Ed Kuepper’s most hair-raising electric guitar playing – that wall of noise he constructed as the scaffold for the songs on the first two Saints albums – well, Ascension is a most welcome reintroduction. The difference is, it’s now welded to Kuepper’s advanced songcraft. The combination is a powerful one, as much as his more acoustic late ‘80s form made for some great albums. On songs like the opening “It’s Still Nowhere”, Kuepper’s guitar is bright white light, burning heat and fire into your forehead; “Like An Oil Spill” channels the unchecked fury of the Saints’ “This Perfect Day”; by the ending, eleven-minute “Ascension”, Kuepper’s flying free, duelling with saxophonist Tim Hopkins, making the title’s (perhaps unintented) parallel with the classic Coltrane album feel almost apposite. There are only a few guitarists who can slam a deafeningly loud E-minor chord into your earlobes and make it feel like the past, present, and future of rock’n’roll are simultaneously screaming through your skull. Kuepper is one of them.