Audioslave – Audioslave

Hey, it’s RATM and Cornell! Cute, but they ran out of ideas halfway through.

5/10

Best song: Like a Stone

2002 Epic/Interscope

Audioslave’s self-titled album is like a big-budget movie with an all-star cast. The band itself is the “head” of Soundgarden, grunge screamer/sex symbol Chris Cornell, and the “body”, or instrumentalists, of left-wing funk-metalheads Rage Against the Machine. The album is produced by Rick Rubin (whose credits would take me all day to list), and the cover art was done by Storm Thorgerson, the man behind Pink Floyd’s best album covers. The sound is a mix of 70’s hard rock like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and more modern post-grunge, and like in RATM, there are no samples or synthesizers to be found on the record. It sounded like a great idea at the time, but like most Hollywood blockbusters, the hype betrayed what this album truly is: an hour-long borefest without enough new ideas and lacking the things that made Soundgarden and RATM really click.

I hate to be a pessimist, though, so we should at least start with the positive. The album opens with a barrage of guitars, bass and drums with “Cochise”, as guitarist Tom Morello shows off his chainsaw buzz and the rhythm section of Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk play a threatening groove. After about a minute of instrumental insanity, Chris Cornell steps up to the mike and lets out some of the best classic rock screams since, um, his Soundgarden days. It’s a great song, and a fantastic way to introduce not only an album but a then-new band.

And “Cochise” is not even the best song on the album. That honor would go to the funky “Show Me How to Live”, where Cornell gives yet another astounding vocal performance (listen to that final scream of “Show me how to liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!”), or the introspective ballad “Like a Stone”. The latter song in particular is a real gem, and it’s a real departure from the thrashing funk of RATM. Tom Morello pulls of a fantastic melodic guitar solo, and the rest of the band is able to play with a very subtle beauty that is hard to find on rock songs these days. Another great song in the same vein of “Like a Stone” is “I Am the Highway”, a laid-back song with a very interesting guitar riff and a soft but powerful vocal melody. Oh, and there’s also “Set It Off”, which begins with a weird Buckethead-style riff but quickly changes to a heavy, grungy rocker that really showcases the technical talents of each individual member of the band.

However, after “I Am the Highway”, Audioslave degrades into this boring mess songs with the same tempo, rhythm, and tone. Tom Morello’s riffs and solos suddenly stop being catchy and start being boring, derivative, or, in the case of “Exploder”, downright irritating. Brad Wilk plays the exact same drumbeat for nearly every song, and Tim Commerford’s bass lines become stale and ordinary. And the more Chris Cornell screams, the more I realize that A. he’s really ran out of ideas as far as melodies go, and B. his lyrics are absolutely atrocious. Read these words of wisdom from actual Audioslave songs:

“Then when he turned away I shot him in the head/Then I came to realize I had killed myself!” (Exploder)

“Every time the wind blows/Everything you don’t know/Turns into a revelation” (Set It Off)

“Roll me on your frozen fields/Break my bones to watch them heal” (The Last Remaining Light)

“I am a virus!” (Bring Em Back Alive)

Now, I understand that Chris Cornell is an awesome heavy metal singer and being Bob Dylan is not his primary agenda. But the music community has reached a point where all this post-Nirvana angst and Scott Stapp fake spirituality has got to end. Worse, the rest of the band doesn’t even bother to make up for Chris Cornell’s faults. Sure, “Gasoline” is a hard rocker from the first half that really packs a punch, and “The Last Remaining Light” is an interesting power ballad that at times sounds more like Radiohead than Audioslave. But who cares? By about track number 9, it becomes very obvious that all of these songs are little more than padding for what is an unnecessarily long album. All of these songs are either slow to mid-tempo rockers or slow to mid-tempo ballads, they all take way too long, and none of them are really well-written. It’s hard to sit through this whole album without wishing that Chris Cornell could spit out politically charged lyrics like Zach De La Rocha did, or that the guys in Rage Against the Machine could pull off the same majestic rock songs that Soundgarden could write in their sleep.

In the end, Audioslave’s biggest fault is that it doesn’t even feel like a real album. The reason that there aren’t many good ideas is that RATM and Chris Cornell don’t gel in the same way the old bands did, and that the whole pairing feels like a record label exec came up with it while taking a sponge bath. Granted, when the band is good, they are good. But those moments don’t happen often, and as a whole, Audioslave offers little more than mediocrity and banality for $17.99.

Track Listing (highlights are in red)

All songs by Audioslave, with lyrics by Chris Cornell.

1. Cochise
2. Show Me How to Live
3. Gasoline
4. What You Are
5. Like a Stone
6. Set It Off
7. Shadow On The Sun
8. I Am the Highway
9. Exploder
10. Hypnotize
11. Bring Em Back Alive
12. Light My Way
13. Getaway Car
14. The Last Remaining Light

R.E.M. – Out of Time

The band expands their sonic palette, brings diversity to their style, and litters the album with experiments. Unfortunately, not all of them work.

6/10

Best song: Losing My Religion

1991 Warner Bros.

Out of Time is the album that will always be known for “Losing My Religion”, which was not only R.E.M.’s biggest hit single, but one of the greatest rock songs of the 90’s. Its ethereal beauty was the result of Peter Buck’s simple yet ghostly work on the mandolin (an unlikely instrument for a pop song, to say the least!), and Michael Stipe’s eerie vocals and brooding lyrics. The odd chorus: “That’s me in the corner/That’s me in the spotlight/Losing my religion”, is mysterious but very easy to relate to, and the “That was just a dream” hook is R.E.M. at their very best. It’s just too bad that nothing on Out of Time, with the exception of a few phenomenal album cuts, even comes close to the majesty that is “Losing My Religion”.

That is a true shame, because this album sounds like it had a lot of potential. While previous R.E.M. albums had a pretty bare-bones, minimalistic production, Out of Time changes that in a big way. Many of the songs here have lavish string arrangements, weird instruments like a harpsichord and the aforementioned mandolin, and guest appearances ranging from political rapper KRS-One to Kate Pierson of the B-52’s. Beyond that, the band went beyond jangly folk-rock and incorporated elements from classical and country music into their signature sound. All these new innovations are good, as they make the record more polished without sounding unnecessary or self-indulgent.

No, the chief problem here is not in the production but in the songwriting. This is inherently obvious in the album opener, “Radio Song”, a very awkward funk track with guest vocals from KRS-One. Now, it should be evident that “R.E.M.” and “funk” don’t quite fit in the same sentence (as “Lightnin’ Hopkins” from Document proved too well), but why are they putting a rapper in there as well? This is R.E.M., not Run-DMC! Needless to say, it was a bad idea and the song feels terribly out of place here.

Another big offender is “Shiny Happy People”, a song that everyone (including the band, who omitted it from their greatest hits album In Time) seems to hate. As much as I’d like to be the voice of dissent here, I have to agree with them: it absolutely sucks. God only knows how one of the most intelligent and inspiring bands of the past twenty years came up with lyrics like “Shiny happy people holding hands, people, laughing” and sang them as if they were at a funeral. Apparently, it was written about the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and was supposed to be an ironic attack on government corruption. The meaning was lost on pretty much everybody, though, and the song amounts to the most disgustingly happy tune since “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”.

And while those two songs are the only ones on Out of Time that are truly bad, there are a few other missteps to deal with. “Endgame” is a sort-of instrumental (there are vocals, but no words), which basically repeats the same melody over and over, and it’s incredibly boring to listen to. Then there’s “Belong”, which basically Michael Stipe reading poetry over some mindless country-style jamming. The poetry is all right, but the music is completely boring and the song just seems very filler-ish to me.  “Half A World Away” is a gloomy folk that is only notable for the fact that Mike Millis plays a harpsichord in it. The two closing tracks, “Country Feedback” and “Me in Honey” are slightly better, with the former having a creepy lap steel guitar part and the latter featuring Kate Pierson on backup vocals, but I’d be hard-pressed to call any of them gems.

However, there are three album cuts here that are friggin’ great, and two of them (surprisingly) feature Mike Millis on lead vocals. “Near Wild Heaven” is a fan favorite for a damn good reason: it’s a wonderful slice of jangly pop with harmonies that would make the Beach Boys jealous. If that “livin’ inside” refrain doesn’t make your heart soar, you’re not listening to the right band. “Texarkana” is a faster, darker countryish song with an awesome vocal hook and some great instrumentation. Both of these songs are written and sung by Millis, and they’re both so good it makes me wonder why he doesn’t sing more of the band’s songs by himself. Finally, there’s “Low”, a very slow, very sad song whose beauty is understated because it comes right after “Losing My Religion”. I’m not sure what it is that makes the song so great, but somehow the earthy guitars and the subtle instrumentation just bring out something incredible.

In short, Out of Time contains one classic song, three almost-classic songs, a bunch of so-so tracks and two major gaffes. As a collection of songs, it’s good, as there are enough great tracks to make sitting through the other stuff worth it. But as an album, Out of Time is patchy, and it’s not a record I pull from my shelf often. Their next album is much, much better.

Track listing:

1. Radio Song
2. Losing My Religion
3. Low
4. Near Wild Heaven
5. Endgame
6. Shiny Happy People
7. Belong
8. Half A World Away
9. Texarkana
10. Country Feedback
11. Me In Honey

R.E.M. – Accelerate

A “back-to-basics” record. Nothing that will change the world, but it’s great to hear R.E.M. sound like a normal band again.

8/10

Best song: Accelerate

2008 Warner Brothers

WOW.

I say WOW not only because it is a hook in R.E.M.’s song “Man-Sized Wreath”, off their latest album Accelerate, but also because this album has done what was previously thought impossible: bring a group of alt-rock pioneers who were left for dead years ago back in the spotlight. Everyone from snobby music publications and your local newspaper had something to say about Accelerate, and, for a band that’s well over 20 years old, the results were kind of shocking. Let’s recap: R.E.M. used to be one of the the biggest and best bands of the 1980s, growing from their humble (but oddly beautiful) beginnings with the album Murmur to their odd breakthrough hit “The One I Love”. Sadly, disaster struck when drummer Bill Berry had a brain aneurysm in 1996 and left the band. After that, R.E.M. seemed to lose their ground, releasing a trio of increasingly less accessible albums and culminating with the paperweight that was 2004’s Around the Sun. Fans longed for a “rock” record, an album that would return the band to their 80’s glory or at least make them sound like a normal band again. Accelerate is the record that granted everyone’s wishes, and while it may not be on the same level as their older classics, it’s a refreshing return to everything that made R.E.M. such a great group so many years ago.

After Around the Sun tanked sales-wise, the band realized that they needed to make an accessible, direct record filled with hooks. In that sense, Accelerate delivers: it’s short, at just 36 minutes, it’s loud, with Peter Buck’s guitar being the primary noise-maker, and it’s straightforward, with a very stripped-down sound thanks to U2/Bloc Party producer Jacknife Lee. All of this is very good news, because the songs on Accelerate are some of the tightest and, ah, fuck it, best songs they’ve released in years. Leadoff single “Supernatural Superserious” is good proof of this: it’s four-chord riff has more than a passing resemblance to AC/DC but the melodies (as well as Mike Millis’ wonderful backing vocals) are 100% vintage R.E.M. (A lot of music critics consider this song derivative and stale, but what do they know?) Another great example of this new old direction is the title track, which is a fast, ominous rocker with urgent and fearful lyrics. “Where is the ripcord, the trapdoor, the key? Where is the cartoon escape hatch for me?” vocalist Michael Stipe wonders, and Peter Buck’s eerie but fast-paced riff only helps enhance the feeling.

There are plenty of other rockers here that will satisfy any R.E.M. fan and maybe even bring in some casual listeners. “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” is a furious opener with some biting lyrics from Stipe, swooping backing vocals from bassist Mike Millis, and a some great guitar/bass interplay that, for some reason, reminds me of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star”. Then there’s “I’m Gonna DJ” a goofy dance-rocker that, with its “I’m gonna DJ at the end of the world!” refrain, could be seen as a 21st-century update to “It’s The End of The World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine”. You might love it, or you might hate it. I love it.

Even when the band slows things down, the sharpness and immediacy remains. “Houston” is a spooky and experimental folk number that begins with the spine-chilling line: “If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will/I’ve got to get that out of my head.” “Sing for the Submarine” is even scarier, featuring some awesome guitar lines from Buck and an astounding vocal performance from Stipe. While some other late-period R.E.M. songs focused on drawing the listener in over a period of time, all of these songs hook you in at the very beginning. This is all too important in an album meant to return the band to its roots.

And really, all of these songs are meant to do just that. You can link just about any of these 11 songs to one of the band’s previous albums (“Until the Day Is Done” could fit on Automatic for the People, “Supernatural Superserious” would work on Monster, etc.), and realistically, these guys aren’t really breaking new ground right now. Almost all of the songs on Accelerate are either mid-tempo to fast alt-rockers or slow to mid-tempo folk ballads. In addition, while the music is definitely enjoyable, it’s hard not to feel that this album lacks some of the mystery that made albums like Murmur so fantastic. This album is a deliberate attempt to rock out, and so the music and lyrics are a lot more direct than what R.E.M. fans are used to. Even some of the best songs on the album feel like they were made using a “how to write a radio modern rock song” instruction manual. This leads to a few of the songs on this album either being filler or not quite achieving their full potential. “Hollow Man” is an awkward mix of a piano ballad in the verse and a jangly pop song in the chorus, and the song just doesn’t feel right. The aforementioned “Man-Sized Wreath” is okay, but doesn’t have a great guitar riff, and the hook is kind of ugly. “Until The Day Is Done” is a throwaway, if only because the acoustic guitar arpeggios and sort-of mysterious vocals have been done before on about twenty better R.E.M. songs.

None of this really matters, though, because Accelerate, despite being more direct than previous efforts and having just a teensy bit of filler, is exactly what both R.E.M. and their fans needed. It’s a sharp, concise record that sucks you in from the very beginning. Sure, it’s not as jangly or mysterious as some would like it to be, but who can afford to be warm and comfortable in this day and age? And sure, it’s not on the same level as their finest albums, but what is? By making a record that is both exciting and dangerous, R.E.M. not only sound like a band again, but sound relevant and interesting again. Such an accomplishment can be summed up in one word. Wow.

Track listing (highlights are in red)

1. Living Well Is the Best Revenge
2. Man-Sized Wreath
3. Supernatural Superserious
4. Hollow Man
5. Houston
6. Accelerate
7. Until the Day Is Done
8. Mr. Richards
9. Sing for the Submarine
10. Horse to Water
11. I’m Gonna DJ

The Libertines – Up the Bracket

A half-hour thrill-ride, filled with nonstop hooks and lots of heart. It might just be the most unabashedly fun record of the decade.

9/10

Best song: Time for Heroes

2002 Rough Trade.

You might feel a little nostalgic the first time you listen to Up the Bracket. This is an album that proudly wears its influences on its sleeve – it’s got the hard-edged, peppy guitars of the best 60’s garage rock bands, the immediacy of a punk rock EP, and the dual personalities and unmistakable Englishness of the Clash’s finest records. Not only that, but with the record coming out just a year after Is This It, many music critics called the Libertines Great Britain’s answer to the Strokes. All of these claims have some amount of truth to them, but they all seem cruelly dismissive and don’t accurately describe this album as a whole. Like The Clash before them, The Libertines are more than their influences. It’s true that Up the Bracket sounds very familiar the first time you listen to it, but behind all those shallow comparisons is a record filled to the brim with energy, hooks, and excitement.

That energy is tangible right from the get-go. Opening with a blistering rocker called “Vertigo” (which is way better than the U2 song of the same name) the band launches into a bouncy guitar riff and some irresistible harmonies. Right away, the band gives a few subtle hints at their street-smart rock n’ roll and their reckless hedonism with lyrics like “Down in the street below/You can hear the drunken archangel sing”. And after just two and a half minutes, the song stops abruptly and leads into two brilliant darker cuts: “Death on the Stairs” and “Horrorshow”. Both cuts layer their desperate vocals from singers/guitarists Pete Doherty and Carl Barât with well-written lyrics and outstanding choruses.

All the songs seem conventional at first, but with each listen you learn more and more about the band’s incredible versatility. My personal favorite track, “Time for Heroes”, is as anthemic as it is romantic. Pete Doherty delivers one of the coolest opening lines of the decade and sings, “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot?”, and pours his heart out with the screaming hook, “I WILL CHERISH YOU, MY LOVE!” “Boys in the Band” is a terrific follow up, with a classic rock guitar riff that leads into some amazing call-and-response harmonies. Libertines fans can’t help but imagine Pete and Carl pressed up against a single microphone, gleefully singing into each other’s faces. That’s the kind of happiness that shines throughout the whole album.

And even when the songs slow down, the record never takes a breather or loses its charm. “Radio America”, the sole acoustic number on Up the Bracket, is a fairly conventional song, but the boozy atmosphere and the eccentric ride cymbal make it an easy standout track. Then the punky title track rushes in, and the listener immediately feels a rush of euphoria. It brings that kind of drugged-up, shambolic feel that scores of indie bands have tried to perfect over the years: the feeling that at any moment, this song could completely fall apart and the band could suddenly burn out. But on this song, at least, the band stands up strongly.

This kind of excellent pacing and astounding delivery continues through all twelve scorching cuts. Like all albums, some songs are better than others (I’m not a fan of “The Good Old Days” or “Begging”), but pretty much every song is exceptionally catchy and has a lot to offer. The crashing guitars and exceptional vocal hooks are accented by the rough-and-tough rhythm section of John Hassal and Gary Powell. Meanwhile, The Clash’s Mick Jones gives the record a warm, fuzzy production that truly captures the spirit of the Libertines. In fact, that’s probably what really impresses me most about this record. Unfortunately, Up the Bracket isn’t a complete classic – its scope is a bit too narrow, and critical listeners can never really shake the feeling that they’ve heard all of this before. What really amazes me about Up the Bracket is the incredible sense of chemistry that the boys in the band radiate in every single song. Listening to this record, it’s hard not to see that Pete and Carl were best friends who would stick together through thick and thin.

It’s too bad they never fulfilled that promise – The Libertines broke up in 2004 because of Pete Doherty’s crippling heroin addiction. But for a little while, the band looked and sounded like they could conquer the world. Like the best punk rock bands, The Libertines seemed to ooze coolness and independence from their very skin – Pete Doherty explains, in the closing number, “I get along just singing my song, people tell me I’m wrong…Fuck ‘em.” In a music scene that was dominated by faceless chart pop and sterile nu-metal, these four guys brought a sense of honesty and integrity back into rock n’ roll. So what if Up the Bracket isn’t remarkably innovative? Most bands don’t end up in history books anyway. But if you give the Libertines a chance, they might find a way into your heart.

Track listing:

1. Vertigo
2. Death on the Stairs
3. Horrorshow
4. Time for Heroes
5. Boys in the Band
6. Radio America
7. Up the Bracket
8. Tell the King
9. The Boy Looked At Johnny
10. Begging
11. The Good Old Days
12. I Get Along

Also, if you get the chance, make sure to pick up the reissue. It contains two bonus tracks, the bluesy “Mockingbird” and the band’s amazing first single, “What A Waster”.

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My name is Jimmy A. I’m using this site as a music resource and a means of publishing my creativity. Here you will find album reviews, editorials, and maybe even some of my own music and lyrics. Right now this site is a work-in-progress, so there’s not a lot up yet. But while you’re here, why don’t you check out some of my articles and click on some of the fascinating links!