Zoe McCulloch began playing the guitar at the very young age of eleven. She caught on very quickly, and at the age of twelve, she recorded her first album. Six years and several albums later, McCulloch got in contact with classical guitar composer Mason Williams, and created her newest CD, Gypsy Noodle. On her latest CD McCulloch blends very classical sounding guitar patterns, with catchy rhythms and melodies.
Gypsy Noodle consists of sixteen songs that encompass the excellent guitar playing of Zoe McCulloch, along with the solid performance of her fellow band mates. Five of the songs off of Gypsy Noodle were written by McCulloch's mentor Williams. This definitely adds much needed maturity to the album. This CD is very well recorded and the songs sound really good with clean guitar cutting through the excellent performance of her band. Those are some of the positive elements of this album. One of the biggest highlights on this album is McCulloch's rendition of the very popular worship song "Forever" by Chris Tomlin.
Overall, this album was pretty solid, consisting of many several songs that deserve a listen; however, this could also be the main negative element of the album. Gypsy Noodle has some really well-done songs, but at the same time, has a lot of songs that sound very similar. Listening to this album for a long period of time can be very boring and possibly put one into a state of drowsiness.
While there are definitely highlights to this album there is simply nothing spectacular that would entice me into giving it another spin. With all honesty this album got really boring, really fast. All that said, one must believe that at only seventeen years old, we can look forward to great things in the future from this "Queen of the Stratocaster".
