COLD TRUTH

Guthrie Govan delivers a faithful account of the Aristocrats onstage with Freeze! Live in Europe 2020.

- JUDE GOLD

IF YOU’RE A gigging musician, or simply one who enjoys live shows, you know that some nights are just better than others. For Aristocrats guitarist Guthrie Govan, a range of variables are involved when it comes to performance.

“Obviously, it’s more inspiring when the venue has great acoustics and quality monitoring,” the British guitar virtuoso says. “Also, for me, the ‘cleanness’ of the electrical supply is a surprisingly significant factor. If the venue has a lot of in-house hum, that will be a major distraction whenever I’m using a high-gain tone.

“Then there’s the matter of how alive we musicians feel by the time we actually hit the stage, because a bumpy six-hour van ride on show day can take a toll on a band. On the other hand, great feedback from the crowd acts as a kind of fuel that can sustain us throughout a show, even when we’re heavily jet-lagged.

“But that’s just the obvious stuff,” Govan continues. “There are also some more bizarre, nebulous forces at work. It’s fascinating to listen back to recordings of shows and hear what really happened. It will occasionally transpire that a show that felt like a real struggle actually turned out really well.”

Luckily, in February 2020, just before the pandemic shut the world down, Govan and his bandmates in the Aristocrats — bassist Bryan Beller and drummer Marco Minnemann — thoroughly multitracked a string of shows throughout Spain. The result is Freeze: Live in Europe 2020 (Boing! Music), a collection of live Aristocrats songs that allows you to hear in the highest fidelity those “nebulous forces”at work. Govan took time out to reflect on how one of the world’s most exciting prog-rock bands created one of 2021’s most exciting live instrumental albums.