Alcibiades Jones, Refraction Mirage

Alcibiades Jones is a power trio that plays instrumental rock. Although a lot of the music on Refraction Mirage is funky in sort of a John Scofield vein, harmonically it’s pretty straightforward. With instrumental music there’s no singer to make or break the songs, so it’s a lot harder to be a really irritating instrumental band. On the other hand, it means you have to come up with something really good to draw the listener in. And Alcibiades Jones doesn’t really pull that off very often — a lot of the guitar player’s parts kind of sound the same, and the ones that are different aren’t necessarily any more inspired.

There are a few songs here that are decent, of course. “The Villa is Burning” is one of the funky ones — there’s a stop time part that gives it some energy (they really like stop-time parts). The double-tracked guitars give it more variety than a lot of the other songs here, although the part where it goes to half-time sounds like one of those irritating Eric Johnson instrumentals. “Switch” has a nice riff to it and a solo that gets crazy in a Stephen Malkmus way; mostly the solos on this record here are kind of the same, but here he tries something new. (Of course, it’s the second-to-last song on the record, so this one is as different as it gets.)

“Down with Uncle Jed” is also kind of fun, but it’s the fact that it’s the only number with just two acoustic guitars that makes it stand out, not any real qualities that the song itself possesses. It’s kind of a banjo breakdown travis-style picking tune with accompaniment on slide, which is nice…but the music doesn’t really go anywhere. The melody isn’t particularly developed, and it relies on its instrumental break for extra flavor, but the break can’t save the whole rest of the song (did I mention they really like those stop-time parts?). Most of the pieces have the same problem as “Down with Uncle Jed” — there isn’t a whole lot going on. The guitar parts in “Honduras” are even worse. They’re really clichéd — they’re common guitar riffs that you hear a lot of different places. There’s a change to 6/8 at the end that tries to make it interesting, but it’s too little, too late (to use another cliché).

“Mirage” starts off well, which is good because it’s also the extended jam of the disc. It’s got the most developed guitar part, but it’s annoying because they don’t ever go back to it. During the rest of the jam the guitar player comes up with some stuff that’s fine, but nothing on the level of the first part. It doesn’t even feel like the piece is intentionally multi-sectioned, because there’s nothing else in the jam that compares to it in complexity. So it’s a little mystifying that they start things off with the big riff and then just completely throw away.

A lot of the songs sound like they’d be better with a lead singer. Which is an embarrassing idea for an instrumental band. But hey, Bad Brains were trying to play jazz fusion before they got HR, so maybe these guys will be as lucky.