Joe Satriani has a reputation as one of the rare guitar wizards whose appeal is not limited to twang-bar nerds. Surfing With the Alien, his album of 1987, was the highest-charting rock-instrumental LP in more than ten years, and on Flying in a Blue Dream, he bolsters his crackling, mad-cat tone with an increasingly focused sense of melody and the first vocals he's ever recorded.

At his best, Satriani balances excess with economy. Not that Blue Dream is a modest affair; Satch wrote, arranged and coproduced the eighteen tracks and played guitar, bass, keyboards, harmonica and percussion. The title track, built on a delicate, Eno-esque keyboard progression, displays his talent for one-man harmony and counterpoint in a series of overdubs. Once he's built a foundation, Satriani doesn't skimp on the prestidigitation that determines rank within the guitar pantheon.

But he also displays admirable traits you won't find in peers like Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai – including a sense of humor. "The Phone Call," which bluntly mocks the selfishness behind most breakup songs ("I don't want what you want/I want what I want"), incorporates a banjo in a blues shuffle. "Strange" uses a giddy funk riff to create a mood of dementia, and the howling werewolf boogie of "Big Bad Moon" shows a similar knack for vivid sonic settings.

Satriani wasn't being falsely modest, though, when he described his voice as "a Long Island whine" (he often sounds like the dreaded Steve Miller on his six vocals), and his lyrics hardly reveal a poet in our midst. Most damagingly, Satriani devotes the second half of Flying in a Blue Dream to tedious finger-dexterity exercises. At sixty-five minutes, the album is, like so many others in the digital age, too damn long. For fret burners like Satriani, notes are always more abundant than ideas. (RS 570)

ROB TANNENBAUM