From the really artsy cover to the hard electric guitar riff mixing with jazz influences, everything about this album is great. Every single string Carlos strikes has this soulful feeling that only a few guitar legends can genuinely create with no effort. But effortless doesn’t mean simple. The music is really complex and Santana doesn’t fail to captivate, showing a really interesting versatility going into some safe groovy jazz influenced environment to a hot Latin one with Spanish vocals and wilder music. Throughout this album you’ll see how Carlos never fails to impress.

I guess the expression ”He made it look easy” totally applies in this case. Listening to somebody who’s mastered a guitar like him, you might even forget how hard some of those chords really are or how complex this whole thing is. The starting song is really smooth and seriously doesn’t really represent the whole album faithfully. The following is a lot better in my opinion going with some really long and complex guitar parts that are really entertaining. Carlos has a relaxing voice too, on some like “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen”. There’s also the amazing instrumental “Samba Pa Ti” which speaks a lot with the simple mean of electric guitar and drums. On this particular song, Carlos basically does a bit of a showing off, demonstrating how much he controls that guitar like no other.

I haven’t really talked about Carlos’ voice. His voice is as versatile as his guitar playing. He can go really smooth or sing a bit harder like on “Hope You’re Feeling Better” in which he delivers a really harder rock performance that is sure to be noted with some heavier guitar playing compared to the earlier songs and also louder drums. The album’s end was a bit deceiving since it simply contains drums and no guitar at all. Although for any drum-fanatic this may be the way to go but I’m more of a guitar-man myself so this song is a bit uninteresting to me.

Well, this is the way to go for every music fan. I think everybody can find something that they’ll enjoy in this great album whether it’s the hot Latin rhythm that emerges from some songs or it’s Carlos’ undeniable talent with a six-string instrument. Personally, it was a bit of everything that attracted me. It’s such a complete album that I don’t think anybody can deny how great this album is even if it has a few flaws but overall you’ll see that it’s a beautiful picture of great guitar, cool vocals and wild drums.

by Jean-Guy