Santamental

Look up in the sky, is that Santa’s flying sleigh or a Gibson Flying V? In what is the year's best play on the sentimental Santa season, Steve Lukather and his distinguished axemen like Slash, Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen and others such as Edgar Winter, mix up the pyro-techniques from the day with the merriments and potholes of the season in what also could be called SantaMetal. The guys do a fair amount of improvising here and there in a combination soft-jazz-hard-rock fusion that runs from the furious to fanciful. Visiting "Carol of the Bells," "Joy to the World," and "Silent Night" among the 10 tracks here, the guys never met a piano section they didn't love to solo over. Even when they go for the bloozey, down-and-out effect on "Broken Heart at Christmas," or warn, "Look Out for Angles," the spirit of the season and mingling of like-minded guitar slingers can't mask how much fun they’re really having in the jingle gym. And that's a fairly sentimental notion even a grinch could detect, however manic it sounds at times. -- Martin Keller