Steve Howe: electric, acoustic, virtual and synth guitars, dobro, steels, mandolin, dulcimer and vocals
Virgil Howe: keyboards, harmony vocals
Gilad Atzmon: sax, flute, clarinet
Derrick Taylor: bass guitar
Dylan Howe: drums

Steve Howe, the guitarist of Yes, is back with another solo album. But this time he gathered a band around him and even gave them a name, Steve Howe’s Remedy. Steve about this album: “Remedy is an encompassing musical ensemble that plays my music. Besides using sax on many tracks, we are joined by a seven piece brass section on two pieces to really push home the ideas I had. It’s like trying to cross rock with progressive but with a blues and jazz influence as well. There's more of an emphasis on me leading a band.”

The first style of songs on this album are the rock tracks, which are my favourites. “Accross The Cobblestone” opens the album with lots of keyboards from his son Virgil. Steve isn’t a top vocalist, but in this song he’s doing a reasonable job. Although I would recommend him to ask someone else to do the singing. Because of the lack of his vocals, I like “Bee Sting”, an instrumental rock track, a lot more. The other rock tracks are “Whiskey Hill”, a short groovy instrumental, “The Chariot Of Gold”, a rock song helped by the brass section, “Smoke Silver” and “Rising Sun”, the heaviest track of the CD, a real hard rock track.

The second batch of tracks are the jazzy, bluesy songs. “Westwinds” is real jazzy with a walking bass and the brass section. “Pacific Haze” is a quiet track with jazzy, groovy drums (by Dylan, another son of Steve) and a (too) long sax improvisation. “Inside Out Muse” is more rhythm and blues but again with a jazzy feeling.

There are also a few more ambient, psychedelic tracks on the album. Songs like “Hecla Lava” and “Sand Devil”.

And finally there are some songs that don’t fit into the previous groups. There’s “Where I Belong”, an acoustic piece with a country feeling, but I don’t like Steve’s singing on this one. “Load Off My Mind”: is a bad imitation of Leonard Cohen. Steve must have thought, if I can’t sing it, let’s just tell it, but to say it with the words of Frank Zappa: “Shut up and play your guitar”. “Tremolando” is what is says, a quiet instrumental with lots of tremolo on the guitars that reminds me of Twin Peaks.

In spite of Steve Howe’s name and the cover by Roger Dean, I can’t file this under prog. It’s a mix of rock, jazz, ambient, psychedelic rock and rythm & blues, with the emphasis on jazz and blues. Steve shows the dazzling diversity in his guitar play but this leaves us with a mix of all kinds of different styles. All of this is skillfully transformed into his own recognizable way of playing. Steve is one of the musicians who has built up his own unique style. The skill of the musicians and the variation of instruments is hiding the rather poor compositions. This is a good album, but I miss a song like “The Clap”.