I have a love-hate relationship with Joe Satriani. I love his music, but I hate that he ruined the guitar for me.

This may seem a little overdramatic, but hear me out. For when I was a young naïve lad, trying to learn the guitar, the first song I attempted was Joe Satriani’s “Tears in the Rain” from his acclaimed album The Extremist. This attempt failed miserably, forever turning me off of stringed instruments, and forcing me to swear a blood oath of vengeance against Satriani…

…all of which flew out the window the moment I learned I would interview him about his latest album, Unstoppable Momentum, released earlier this year.

“The whole album really is all about the different shades of my continuing, unexplainable enthusiasm about all things musical,” explains Satriani.

Enthusiasm is right. With over 14 released studio albums, the savant guitarist is nothing if not prolific.

“I think I’m much better today than I was 20 or 30 years ago,” he says, when asked how he feels his music has evolved since his beginnings.

“The hope is that you go into this thinking ‘I can do this better than ever before.’ And I know a better way to tap into what my true talents [are] and how to more effectively connect the hearts with the note and not let the profit of making a record derail my emotional intention.”

It’s that emotional intention that makes Satriani such a versatile composer. He draws on his life and day-to-day experiences and incorporates them into his music in order to create something people will find both compelling and relatable.

“When I was 14 years old, I was just so excited about getting into writing for the new album, turning into music all sorts of feelings that seemed to be surrounding me. Things going through life—the good times, the bad times; I really wanted to annotate musically and share it with people. The music on the record is a real journey. I think people will be able to see it’s a real cathartic record.”

Released in May, Unstoppable Momentum is a fantastic symphony of optimism and energy that has almost come to define much of Satriani’s work.

“One of the high points of this album was that there wasn’t anything that was really very difficult […] which is why I think the album is so energetic and accessible. I think the emotion you can get out of the track has a quality to it that is a result [of not having] to struggle so much.”

Along with enthusiasm and love of music, one of the more prevailing themes that Satriani has often visited in much of his work is that of science fiction. From Surfing with the Alien, which featured comic book character Silver Surfer, to album titles like Time Machine, there has always been an underlying sense of otherworldliness with much of Satriani’s music.

“Science fiction doesn’t seem that odd to me at all. It’s a method of telling the story of the human experience […] which is that we are human beings, on a spinning ball, that [is] part of a solar system that [is] part of a galaxy.”

“I’m not like a ‘Trekkie’ or anything like that,” he adds hastily. “I guess I’m a fan of science.”

Unstoppable Momentum is yet another fantastic album from the acclaimed musician, and if the album’s title is any indication, then it is clear that Satriani has no plans to slow down anytime soon.

“I’m living one day at a time, and I react with what goes on in my life by writing music, so I don’t know what’s coming at all.”

Joe Satriani performs at 7:30 p.m. on October 9 at Théâtre St-Denis (1594 St-Denis). Tickets are between $62-$92.

*This article contains spoilers*

Early on in the Breaking Bad series finale, Skinny Pete, friend and former drug runner for main character Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul), makes a remark that aptly sums up the episode and the series as a whole:  “The whole thing felt kind of shady, like, morality-wise.”

Through a dazzling series of parallels, self-referential images, and an allusion to a country song, series creator Vince Gilligan brought the bleak morality of the Breaking Bad universe to a staggering level in its conclusion, entitled Felina, on Sunday night.

The episode’s opening scene began with the use of the Marty Robbins song “El Paso.” The song, which gave the episode its title, narrates the story of a Texas gunslinger who murders a man after seeing him with the woman he loves, Felina.  The protagonist then flees to New Mexico and eventually returns to see Felina, only to be met by vengeful cowboys who shoot and kill him.  The reference suggests how twisted protagonist Walter White’s outlook on life has become: family is a crucial part of his ‘Felina,’ but it is rivaled by the blue crystal methamphetamine that increasingly became his one true love. This love, much like the gunslinger’s love for Felina, manifests itself in frightening ways.

Gilligan further elaborates on Walter’s perverted psyche by showing what he was like at the beginning of his descent into madness.  When he breaks into old colleague Elliot’s home, Elliot weakly brandishes a butter knife at him.  Elliot resembles Walter as we knew him in his early stages—brimming with emotion but too inexperienced to express it effectively.  Walter’s stoic response to Elliot’s meekness starkly reaffirms the progression he has undergone.

Walter’s later behavior leaves no doubt of this full transformation.  When he arrives at his wife Skyler’s home to see his family, the camera zooms in on him touching her face.  This powerful image is echoed in the episode’s closing minutes, where the camera zooms in on him touching his meth-cooking equipment in a similar fashion.  This analogy furthers the heartbreaking conclusion which Gilligan began hinting at with El Paso: Walter’s love for his meth has equalled or surpassed his love for his family.

Towards the end of Felina, Gilligan also references memorable images from prior seasons to make insinuations about Jesse and Walter’s morals.  After brutally murdering former partner-in-crime Todd, Jesse shakily aims a gun—given to him by Walter—at Walter, in a shot highly reminiscent of the closing sequence of the third season finale.  In the third season, Jesse chose to fire the gun at past cooking colleague Gale, but here he decides to leave it and make his escape.  Jesse was haunted by Gale’s murder, and it’s unclear here whether he spares Walter’s life to avoid mercifully putting him out of his misery, or because he doesn’t want to put himself through that guilt-ridden torment again .  The multivalency of the scene suggests the moral ambiguity that has long been the show’s calling card.

Finally, the closing shot recalls the image that concluded season four’s Crawl Space, the crane shot which zooms out from Walter laughing maniacally at his fate.  In this instance, the camera zooms out from Walter’s vacant stare as police storm the compound.  The former shows him losing his mind, and the latter depicts his physical death. In both shots, the initial focus on him is contextualized by gradually showing more of the world around him, thus signifying the effect that his evil has had upon it.

It is significant that Walter’s death is ultimately a product of his own invention, because it symbolizes how he has always been responsible for his fate. Throughout the show, Walter has consistently made decisions that have made him a less and less redeemable character.  In Felina, Gilligan showed us the ultimate consequences of such decisions, in a devastating but satisfying finale.