Soundgarden
Down On The Upside
»
Soundgarden
Down On The Upside
A&M, 1996
RiYL: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Faith No More, Screaming Trees, Led Zeppelin |
Those who survived the city's grunge explosion in 1992 learned an important lesson -- evolve or be run over by the likes of Bush and Weezer. No one learned this lesson better than Soundgarden.
The band came onto the scene in the late '80s as alternative rock's premiere metal band. It refined its sound and was pulled up in the grunge tide with 1991's Badmotorfinger. Punk and psychedelia mixed with Black Sabbath riffs created the illusion of grunge, but Soundgarden was something else - it never bought into the media's perception of itself.
On 1994's Superunknown, Soundgarden abandoned all traces of the g-word for a more accessible sound. The result: "Black Hole Sun," once described as the best song the Beatles never wrote, became the band's biggest hit ever. The move was both brilliant and pretentious, since Soundgarden's greatest asset was its integrity. By eschewing not only its grunginess, but its metal base as well, that integrity was called into question. Yet the album made the band huge beyond belief.
Down On The Upside, the band's sixth and, as it turned out, final release, goes in two directions -- toward popularity and integrity, making it more than a little uneven.
Some songs, such as "Burden In My Hand" are outstanding. The band has mastered Kurt Cobain's lessons on the dynamics between loud and soft, and every part of the song is as hummable as possible without sacrificing intensity. The same goes for "Blow Up The Outside World," heir apparent to "Black Hole Sun" with its trippy vocals and laid-back beat. "Dusty" might be vocalist Chris Cornell's happiest song ever, with lyrics such as "I think its turning back on me / everything's easy / I think its turning back on me / everything's real to me."
But even with all Soundgarden's nods to pop, the band still revels in the excess of metal, such as on "Never The Machine Forever," which guitarist Kim Thayil uses as an excuse to play every Black Sabbath riff he ever dreamed. "Applebite" and "Tighter And Tighter" border on art rock with their pretentious arrangements.
A few of the experiments sound great. "No Attention" and "Rhinosaur" stretch the band's scope by incorporating a sort of R&B boogie, while "Ty Cobb" and "Never Named" come with clenched fists out of the '80s hardcore scene, sporting manic tempos and half-shouted lyrics.
When this record was released in the spring of 1996, Soundgarden had the opportunity to really assert itself as the foremost American alternative band, what with Pearl Jam holed up recording No Code and R.E.M. toiling through New Adventures In Hi-Fi. And in many ways, Down On The Upside seems like an attempt to seize just such a mantle.
Unfortunately the album doesn't go far enough in that direction. And ultimately the band couldn't decide whether it wanted to be alternative nation darlings or a less-commercial, more metallic enterprise. In the end, Soundgarden opted for neither and called it quits later that summer.
PATRICK KASTNER | Affectionately known as Cousin Patty (yes, it's a "Throw Momma From The Train" reference), Patrick Kastner is a designer for the Columbus Post-Dispatch.