“The last thing I wanted to do with this band was make everybody believe we invented something,” Robert DeLeo told the L.A. It may seem unfair to frame Stone Temple Pilots in relation to the artists they were channeling, but originality was never their goal. They move with a newfound speed and ease, but their casual arrangements and flat melodies make them feel slight you can barely imagine them soundtracking a Surge ad, much less standing against the post-grunge glam that Spacehog were already perfecting. “Pop’s Love Suicide” and “Tumble in the Rough,” which kick off the album, both sound like they’re being hammered out of tin. While the band’s early singles like “ Plush” and “ Dead & Bloated” were more melodically developed, they could come off as plodding and a little pushy, cornering you like a grad student at a party who really wants you to get where he’s coming from. Rex, Bowie, and Exile-era Rolling Stones like those totems of exhaustion and bravado, nearly every song sounds like it was made at 4:30 in the morning.Įverything moves quickly and smoothly, Weiland’s voice raspy like a skate blade on old ice. The songs themselves are emotionally direct, conjuring T. Its experimental streak-while slightly overstated in later years-showed that they were willing to explore new sounds, but only if they resulted in pop gold. Their third album, 1996’s Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop-reissued for its 25th anniversary with a collection of alternate takes and a 1997 live set from Panama City Beach-is glammy and sexy in a way that would make Seattle’s gatekeepers blush. Remarkably, they didn’t bother putting on anything else. When the flannel grew too warm, they simply shrugged it off. At a time when authenticity was considered in terms of artistic novelty and personal torment-and when critics thought authenticity was music’s primary aim-STP understood alternative rock as merely another kind of pop music and were content to work within its established forms.
This, it seems, was also STP’s first priority. They wrote killer rock songs, and that was enough.
#STONE TEMPLE PILOTS TINY MUSIC PLUS#
But for the millions of teenaged Gen-Xers headbanging to “ Sex Type Thing” in their Geo Prizms, the question of whether Scott Weiland and his bandmates-brothers Robert and Dean DeLeo on bass and guitar, plus drummer Eric Kretz-had a cultural right to their Big Muff pedals and thrift-store clothing didn’t matter.
0 kommentar(er)
