Stone Temple Pilots
No. 4
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Stone Temple Pilots
No. 4
Atlantic, 1999
RiYL: Creed, Days Of The New, Alice In Chains, The Verve Pipe |
Times change, trends shift, and your singer gets repeatedly busted for drugs and eventually sent to jail. Do you at least attempt to progress from your grunge pilfering tactics circa '93, or do you shake things up, a la the largely unconvincing power-pop posturing on the 1996 album Tiny Music...Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop?
Three minutes into the No. 4 album, the answer is overwhelmingly clear. Amid all of its internal chaos and other assorted problems, Stone Temple Pilots are still churning out lumbering rock as if grunge never died and went to hell. Even this would be somewhat forgivable if the band had but the slightest interesting twist to offer, but there's barely a power chord or lamebrain lyric here that STP hasn't beaten into submission before.
Its members' apparent cluelessness to their outdated musical approach notwithstanding, an air of anti-climax hangs over the incredibly uninspiring No. 4, from the title ("hey, it's our fourth album!"), to the plain black and white album cover, to the warmed-over grunge of "Down" and "Heaven & Hot Rods." The band is still stealing ideas from Led Zeppelin and Pearl Jam, but even when STP attempts to "broaden" its scope, its lack of integrity is just too much to overlook.
The dubious Jane's Addiction-style chorus of "No Way Out" will surprise nobody, just as the admittedly interesting hooks in "Church On Sunday" have already been exhausted by the likes of the Verve Pipe and Matchbox 20. STP even retreads its own catalog on tracks such as "Sex & Violence," marked by Weiland's kiss-off to his ex-wife: "you're just a bitch I used to care about." If you make it to the end of this disaster, wince as Weiland apes Jim Morrison on the wildly overblown string ballad "Atlanta," forging new paths in musical redundancy.
What makes No. 4, and Stone Temple Pilots as a band, even more frustrating, is that occasionally, there's a glimmer of innovation peaking through the carefully polished exterior. "Pruno" nicely plies the same atmospherics as Zooropa-era U2, tacking on a hazy, chiming chorus. The pleasant "Sour Girl" aspires to Beatles-esque choruses and fails, but is one of the only tracks on No. 4 that resonates with any kind of real sincerity.
With Weiland toiling behind bars when this album was released, the rest of STP were powerless to promote No. 4 in any meaningful way. It's too bad Weiland can't get his act together, because he's helping write a sorry final chapter to an already lame-duck band.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"