I’ve always loved acoustic interpretations of music that isn’t necessarily meant to be played acoustically. Alice in Chains’ Unplugged record, which incidentally chronicled Layne Staley’s last live appearance with the band, is undoubtedly one of my Desert Island Top 5 albums. I love it more than any one Alice in Chains album, and not just because it’s got a great mix of songs from all of them; there’s just something about the instrumentation and the performance that’s absolutely captivating.

While MS reader Ben Watson didn’t go so far as to say that Devin Townsend’s acoustic performance in Redmon, WA on Saturday was Desert Island-worthy but he did seem to have a great time at the gig. Ben tells us that Devin played a bunch of songs from Ki in between fits of guitar noodling, and that he debuted a bunch of new songs that “had tentative lyrics and titles that he ‘bumbled’ through.”

Here’s footage Ben captured of the new song “Radial Highway,” which Devin [accurately, in my opinion] proclaims “sounds a lot like Trainfire.” Devin shows off some tasty slide guitar licks then flubs a section, and he definitely appears to be “bumbling” through the lyrics… but it’s all good. Hopefully we’ll hear this song in its fully realize glory on either Deconstruction or Ghost, the forthcoming 3rd and 4th albums in the Devin Townsend Project suite.

You can watch most of Devin’s acoustic performance here (skip to the 01:12:00 mark) and here.

-VN