Jaye Foucher
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Review of "Infectious Licks"
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By: Wendy Walsh
his is an instrumental CD by a guitarist named Jaye Foucher. She went to the Guitar Institute of Technology in California. She wrote all the songs and supplies the guitars, keys, and vocals. The credits also note bass by Luis Espaillat and drums by Justin Pacy. Van Halen and ELO are huge influences, also jazz and Celtic folk music.
Standout tracks are... "September" which starts out by setting an intense bass rhythm with some light sticks and gentle clear strumming over it...Then the guitar turns into intense noodling like on 90210 when Brenda leaves Dylan for good. Whoo. The next bit is jazz. Then hard-stepping rhythmical bass, with intense guitar glissandos that stay just this side of screaming. She has admirable control; "The Real Thing" sounds more like a pop song, the changes have little Celtic bounding rhythms. Very mellow guitar, though, not fiddle-like. She bends strings with masterful emotional expression at climactic points coming late in the track. I should mention the guitar here as one of the members of the band -- she uses Jackson/Charvel guitars, DiMarzio Pickups, and GHS strings; "Dis-jointed" has more rawness than the other tracks, definitive phrase finishes and rough transitions that add texture. A quiet break in the middle has murmuring bass and searching swells of guitar that are full and sweet, over restrained and dry percussion. It breaks into eddies of wildness, a stream falling over rocks. Then some pulsing, dry music. At this point, the song should end. Her signature guitar riffs, fine in themselves, just seem tacked onto the end.
Jaye Foucher has a lot of technical power. She's a good studio musician. If she lets her guitar speak in that sublime way more often, she will be more than that.
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Wendy Walsh / The Noise
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