Recorded during live performances at two European festivals in Europe in January and June of 2003, Lonely Heart is the third proper Massacre offering by the guitar (Fred Frith) bass (Bill Laswell) and drum (Charles Hayward) power trio. Issued on Tzadik, the liner notes state that Frith left his toys -- like brushes, chains, and scissors -- at home and went straight at the guitar for a change. What begins as a moody exchange between Frith and Laswell soon becomes a pummeling, punishing tour de force of banging, clanging and near riff-a-licious interplay between the three members on the nearly 20-minute set. Hayward and Laswell set the tone and then Frith is off and wailing in power guitar hero mode. Feedback, multi-string fingering and slippery riffs push the band into a heroic kind of improvisation that has no middle and really no end. Everything, even in its quiet moments where Laswell and Hayward are simply playing a rhythmic vamp, is fodder for Frith who goes on a savage tear across his instruments' higher registers. The vamp of Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun, is the cue for such driving, over the red exaggeration in this trio, and Frith plays the living hell out of his instrument taking it ever further on the high wire until there is nowhere to get off. But it's more than just soloing that happens here: Frith is digging into the beat and the actual possibilities of shaded rhythm and color. Laswell is lazy and is the dull one in the trio, not being able to counter or challenge his foils with anything remotely interesting.

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