Cyrus Pireh, “Thank You, Guitar” (Palilalia, 2025)
I had not encountered this Detroit-based guitar visionary’s work before this debut for Bill Orcutt’s Palilalia label, but it seems like Pireh was already blowing minds with his previous album (2022’s Visitor). It is easy to see why Pireh’s playing would appeal to Orcutt, as the two share a love of scrabbling note flurries and ragged, soulful catharsis, but Thank You, Guitar does not resemble many other solo guitarists that I have heard (though Fred Frith is name-checked as a reference point in the Tom Carter-penned album description. Carter also zeroes in on one of the main things that sets Pireh apart from other artists in avant-guitar milieu, which is that he is a proper shredder armed with a goddamn 9-string guitar (very amusing that he wound up on a label run by a 4-string guitarist, incidentally).
As a former aspiring shredder myself, I tend to grimace whenever a guitarist is praised for their technical mastery, but Pireh’s dazzling dexterity is thankfully an enhancement to a singular and compelling vision rather than an endpoint unto itself. Summarizing that vision is a tall order, however, as he covers a lot of unusual stylistic terrain over the course of Thank You, Guitar’s ten songs. That eclecticism is partially explained by the amusing bio on Pireh’s website, as he is an flamboyantly mustached Iranian-American anarchist with a graduate degree in music and an interest in building/modifying amps and pedals. That bio also notes that he was a high school valedictorian who has variously worked as a projectionist, a nanny, a janitor, a sound engineer, a school bus driver, a restaurant host, a mosaic glass cutter, and a music teacher (among many other things).
Surprisingly, “conceptual artist” is missing from Pireh’s wild resume, but there are a couple of impishly amusing pieces here that fall into that category. The first is “Amen Family,” in which he transposes the iconic Amen break into convulsive, scrabbling harmonics. Elsewhere, Pireh unleashes a roiling, tremolo-picked single-note assault as “Infinite Shred,” which sounds like something I would expect to hear right before ‘80s-era Slayer emerged from a haze of fog to launch into “Hell Awaits.” Amusingly, it ends abruptly rather than transforming into something more, but “Amen Family” unexpectedly turns into a cool coda of chiming, interwoven arpeggios. “JRA is Legend” is another ambitiously unusual piece, as a meditative arpeggio theme acts as the backdrop for a host of subtle, sliding fretboard sounds that resemble a ghost turntablist absolutely ripping shit up at the ghost club.
The strongest pieces tend to be a bit more straightforward, however, though there are some notable exceptions. The opening title piece is the most instantly gratifying of the lot, as a pleasantly chugging motif is beautifully enhanced by melodic arabesques of sweeps and hammer-ons. The closing “Truth” is similarly delightful, as it sounds like the introduction to the greatest song that Built To Spill never wrote, but it remains stuck in a mesmerizing state of stuttering, tumbling, and overlapping suspended animation rather than moving forward. Elsewhere, “Free Palestine” is a more subtle pleasure, as it sounds like overlapping out-of-phase tape loops of an simple, pretty melody, but the way the notes hesitate, linger, and bleed together into ephemeral smears of distortion is quite beautiful. More nakedly beautiful is “Sheep Graze,” which sounds like something that would be performed at a beautiful outdoor autumn wedding if all of the guests were artists and musicians.
While I imagine some guitar fans will wish that the album’s balance leaned a bit heavier on fully formed pieces, I quite liked all of Pireh’s more eccentric and indulgent interludes, as almost every one seemed to have an unusual and genuinely compelling idea at its core. Technique aside, Pireh is one hell of a distinctive and fascinating artist and this is one hell of an album. Thank You, Guitar is pretty much essential listening for anyone remotely interested in the current cutting edge of underground/avant-garde guitar stylists.
Listen here.
