Customer Reviews

Any Raw Flesh?

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This guy overdosed on Rush and Star Wars and blended it together to give us a healthy dose of progressive hard rock. One of the five best albums of 2001.

This is one of the very finest albums I've heard so far this year, and I love everything about it. Yogi's songs echo everyone from King's X to Steve Vai and many points in between. Each song is a gem. Killer riffs, great lyrics, vocals, and melodies, fantastic production, and excellent playing abound. Heck, even the packaging is top-notch. The whole deal looks and sounds great. My current favorite is the song Yogi put an MP3 of on his site before the album was released - My Love For Lois Is Real. This song makes me very happy. I play it over and over again and it's the best King's X song that King's X never wrote. They should've, too. But don't let the King's X comparisons fool you, there's a lot more going on here, and the whole thing is so fresh and full of dynamic writing and performing you forget quickly about the obvious influences and just groove on how magnificently Yogi has put them all together. Yes! This album is calling for you! Buy it now!

Yogi's guitar playing and singing is of particular note, but his band provides some awesome backing. Drummer Chris G and bassist Bryan Beller provide solid and exciting support for Yogi throughout. Bryan Beller, by the way, is the brilliant bassist for Mike Keneally & Beer For Dolphins.... Yogi would want you to, he's a huge Keneally fan as well.

Any Raw Flesh? is melodic pop-inflected hard rock the way it was meant to be. And it might just end up one of the very best albums of 2001....

Despite the cries of musicians everywhere shouting "But my music is completely original!", influences are indeed a good thing if used to help shape one's sound and not create a carbon copy. Such is the case with Yogi's release, Any Raw Flesh? You can hear the influence of artists such as King's X and Mike Keneally in the songwriting and Steve Vai particularly in some guitar tracks, but this album sounds like anything but a hodgepodge of the above - in fact, Yogi even has the class to thank them in the liner notes. Instead, all the best of the above plus Yogi's highly unique writing and guitar playing plus the first-class backing of professional-level sidemen like Bryan Beller (whose tone is to die for here - the best he'd even recorded on tape until his own solo album) on bass and Chris G on drums makes this an absolutely killer rock album. Add in the crystal-clear engineering by Darin DiPietro and it's a killer rock album that sounds amazing, something most modern releases lack in their need for "Too Hot For Proper Levels!" clipping and digital distortion. It's also a "progressive" album in the true sense of the word - moving forward with different styles and sounds as opposed to "how many 32nd triplet runs and sections in 19/16 can I fit into a 25 minutes concept opus?"... and this, my friends, is a very good thing. Replicating even the most difficult of techniques is easy given enough time. Creating your own recognizable sound and style is much harder, but ultimately much more rewarding as a musician. Yogi has done so remarkably well, and it's to our benefit that he has. Sure, he may gain a few dollars from a sale but we gain the beauty of his music, and there's nothing more satisfying than that in my book.

Don't let the title fool you into thinking this is some kind of angry head-banger album with screaming inperceptible vocals. This album is for real music lovers, and especially fans of skillful rock guitar. Yogi textures his heavy chord riffage with his own style of hooky, melodic fills and is complimented by a powerful rythm section, including drummer Chris G and bassist Bryan Beller, who has played and recorded with the likes of Steve Vai. That certainly doesn't mean Beller is "slumming" with Yogi, who is a virtuoso in his own right.

Hightlighted by the powerful "Firefly" and the whimsical "My Love For Lois Is Real," the album is deep in quality material and a pleasant musical journey from beginning to end, including the surprise bonus track which will ring familiar to almost any ear.

Yogi's "Any Raw Flesh?" is a fine example of what rock music should be, instead of what it most often is. It combines outstanding musicianship and tight vocals with clever lyrics and first-rate production. It's honest, it's fun, it's smart and it rocks!

This is a meat-lover's pizza of a CD in a world of plain ol' cheese.

Every now and then you stumble upon a cd that reminds you exactly why you love music. It's the kind of cd that isn't what everyone else is listening to, but they should be. The music is original, melodic, thought provoking, fun, well played, and leaves you feeling good and wanting more. Those cd's don't come along very often, but when they do they stay with you and make your world just a little bit better. This is one of those cd's. If you like melodic guitar, amazing vocals and simply great songs, buy this cd.

What can we say, where can we start! We just can't say enough about Yogi! If you dont like this stuff you just dont like guitars and grooves! Riff after riff - solo after solo and great lyrics. This guy just rocks; we listened to "My Love For Lois Is Real" 20 times the day he uploaded it! It just rocks! Hints of Kings X in the harmonies, Vai wah solos, and great pop lyrics!

Yogi - Any Raw Flesh? Guitar Player magazine review (July 2001)

In the liner notes to his latest album, Shawn "Yogi" Farley thanks Mike Keneally, King's X, and Steve Vai, among others. That should give you a good idea of what Any Raw Flesh? is all about. Farley mixes those influences into an appealing stew of quirky, clever tunes that manage to be rock, pop, prog, and shred - all at the same time.

Farley spins intricate, interlocking parts in "Throw Me A Bone", with a great, slightly dirty tone, then follows with a cool, melodic neck-pickup solo. He fills every nook and cranny of "My Love For Lois Is Real" with single-note lines, power-chord stabs, and clangy open-string fills, but knows exactly how to orchestrate his numerous parts so that the tune never sounds overly busy. The solo section is very Vai- complete with the requisite bass/drums breakdown and a ton of vocal-inflected wah work. The chorus of "Firefly" almost sounds like a Living Colour outtake, from a guitar and vocal standpoint. Throughout Any Raw Flesh? Farley shows a knack for playing a truckload of inventive music without being intrusive.

Any good guitar? Yeah.

-Matt Blackett