Pattern-Seeking Animals

THE PROG-ROCK SUPERGROUP IS BACK WITH A LUSH NEW ALBUM, AND THIS TIME GUITARIST TED LEONARD DIDN’T FORGET TO PACK THE GUITAR SOLOS

- Gregory Adams

THROUGHOUT ONLY PASSING Through, the third album from prog quartet Pattern-Seeking Animals, singer-guitarist Ted Leonard found strength in the single-coil sizzle of a treasured old Telecaster he had once considered trash.

“It was the first guitar I ever owned,” he says. “At one point the truss rod got stripped and there was no fixing it; I thought of [it] as a throwaway guitar.” Re-fitting the guitar with a full-scale scalloped neck and stacked Seymour Duncans, however, has since made it a favorite in the studio. That Franken-Tele is a character piece that brings a biting twang to the album’s “Said the Stranger,” whether Leonard’s quaking through spaghetti western ambiance or a blistering, if stylistically divergent set of runs.