Albums by this artist

Shangri-La Dee Da (2001)

No. 4 (1999)

Tiny Music...Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop (1996)

Stone Temple Pilots

Shangri-La Dee Da

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» PIERO SCARUFFI | STAFF WRITER

Stone Temple Pilots Shangri-La Dee Da Atlantic, 2001 RiYL: Live, U2, The Doors, Creed

The news is that Scott Weiland is sober, for the first time since Stone Temple Pilots started climbing the charts in the early '90s. It is probably irrelevant for the artistic values of Shangri-La Dee Da, the album in which the other "pilots," ie., the ones who actually play the music, graduate to elegant and seasoned arrangers.

Even the riffs of "Dumb Love" and "Coma" are carefully crafted so as to contribute to a whole dynamic, not just to a refrain. The result is a collection that is eclectic to the point of sounding confused. Where previous albums like 1999's No. 4 were dogmatically homogenous, monolithic, and repetitive, this one changes from song to song, never letting the listener guess how the guitar and the bass will fight in the next song, how the drums will accompany the vocals, how Weiland will sink under the riff, and so on.

Hard rock is not even the dominant genre anymore. "Regeneration" has the crazed attitude of psychedelia, while "A Song For Sleeping" is bare and lean like acoustic folk. The two "commercial" highlights, "Days Of The Week" and "Long Way Home" (not to mention "Wonderful" and the absurdly titled "Bi-Polar Bear") are pure pop. But Stone Temple Pilots were not artistic revolutionaries before, and they certainly are not now that Weiland has sobered up.

PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.