Stone Temple Pilots
Tiny Music...Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop
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Stone Temple Pilots
Tiny Music...Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop
Atlantic, 1996
RiYL: Jane's Addiction, Temple Of The Dog, Brad |
Prior to the record's release, lead singer Scott Weiland was in and out of drug rehab, nearly causing the band to break up. Robert and Dean DeLeo, bassist and lead guitarist respectively, wrote all of the songs for Tiny Music without the singer present. Weiland then added his vocals separately, casting a bleak picture of the band's future.
Tiny Music is a puzzling album, both in Weiland's role in its production, and the general redundancy of the music therein. The disc opens with "Press Play," a terrific instrumental driven by the hooky bass work of Dean DeLeo. It's surprising that STP couldn't make a song out of this riff when one considers the fluff elsewhere on the album.
"Pop's Love Suicide" is definitely a statement song by Weiland, as he decries glorification of wrong-doing and suicide by rock stars. He sounds eerily similar to Kurt Cobain as he asks "can you figure out what I want / pull the trigger with a pop gun."
But such lyrics aren't the only eerie aspect of the album. The sound of Weiland's voice, radically different than on the band's first two discs, is so surreal that one is tempted to check the CD's liner notes to make sure it really is him. The best example of this is "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart:" Not only does the track heavily retread Purple hit single "Interstate Love Song," but Weiland sounds positively Perry Farrell in the chorus. Robert DeLeo nearly ruins the song with a nonsensical guitar solo at track's end.
First single "Big Bang Baby" features a riff that sounds like the theme from "Spy Hunter." It is surprising this song was chosen as the first single -- it sounds exactly like everything else the band has released, besides Weiland's vocals. If his weird lyrics and weirder intonations don't bug listeners, his half-hearted attempts at filling out the songs with silly lyrics, as on "Ride The Cliche" sure will.
The bright spots, though few and far between, rival the best of STP's previous work. "Adhesive" is a simple song made interesting by drummer Eric Kretz' Fender Rhodes piano overdubs, Dave Ferguson's trumpet work and splashes of loud grungy riffs that follow Weiland's vocal crescendos, while "And So I Know" features jazzy cymbals and soothing guitar. Weiland actually sounds like his old self here.
Though the band was never the innovators that Nirvana and Soundgarden were and Pearl Jam continues to be, Stone Temple Pilots has at least produced some decent material here to shake its less-than-favorable reputation. Still, whatever new direction was being aimed for on this disc doesn't appear to be a worthwhile one.
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?"