The album arrives trailing an impressive roster of guest musicians—Michael Angelo Batio, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, Tony MacAlpine—names that will quicken the pulse of any serious guitar enthusiast. Charlie Zeleny's drumming and James Amhelio Pulli's bass work provide the rhythmic foundation, while Billy Decker's Nashville mixing brings professional sheen to proceedings. This is instrumental guitar music as high-wire act, and Shouse has assembled a circus of virtuosos to help him walk the cable.
The backstory reads like a blues song written by an insurance adjuster: house fires, romantic dissolution, property renovation, pandemic retirement. Yet from this catalogue of setbacks, Shouse has crafted something audaciously complex. The title track alone boasts over seventy key changes, alternating between major and harmonic minor every four beats in the introduction, every eight in the chorus. This is composition as mathematical puzzle, music as Rubik's Cube. The challenge, as Shouse himself acknowledges, lies in preventing these contortions from sounding like stitched-together fragments—a challenge he meets by threading common melodic notes through the shifting harmonic landscape.
"Smiley faced emoji" (a title that could only emerge from our emoji-saturated present) presents a different sort of technical gauntlet: the entire lead played in major pentatonic, apparently a self-imposed constraint for a guitarist who typically eschews such traditional vocabulary. The result, appropriately enough, radiates an almost perverse cheerfulness, though one suspects the smile might be somewhat manic given the harmonic gymnastics occurring beneath the surface.
Shouse's influences trace a predictable but respectable lineage through the pantheon of guitar heroism: Chris Oliva, Warren DeMartini, Zakk Wylde giving way to Steve Vai, John Petrucci, and Joe Satriani. The comparison to "Satriani on steroids," which Shouse quotes with evident pride, isn't entirely wide of the mark, though it undersells the compositional ambition on display here. Where Satriani's best work balances technical prowess with melodic accessibility, Shouse seems determined to prioritize complexity above all else.
There's something undeniably admirable about Shouse's commitment to his vision. After years spent renovating lakeside property and navigating life's various indignities, he's returned with an album that refuses to play safe or court easy commercial appeal. "Jaded" is precisely what its title suggests: the work of someone who's seen enough to be wary of simple pleasures, who demands more from his music than conventional structures can provide.
Whether listeners will have the patience—or the music theory background—to fully appreciate these harmonic adventures remains to be seen. But as a statement of intent, as a demonstration of what instrumental guitar music can attempt when ambition outweighs commercial consideration, "Jaded" succeeds admirably. Shouse has returned from his fifteen-year hiatus with his chops intact and his compositional ambitions firmly maximalist. For the dedicated guitar aficionado, that may well be enough.