I noticed the difference too. Usually I find your critiques to be interesting and (for the most part) pretty accurate. The interesting part is definitely still there and you have clearly put in a lot of effort to explain your opinions. As far as the accuracy side goes, I really feel like we enjoy music in general for two vastly different reasons. Neither of which are "wrong".

I love this album (and specifically the songs that I rated highly) because of the emotion it evokes musically and vocally, but not necessarily lyrically. Lyrics are , in my opinion, the least important element of a great rock song. Lyrics can improve a song (again, for me) when they speak a truth that I feel or when they grab me at an emotional level. Likewise, lyrics can at times detract from a song when they are overly sappy or simplistic. I don't find this to be a problem on this record. The lyrical content of the songs may or may not be a huge plus to my enjoyment of this album, but they are certainly written well enough and interesting enough to be in no way distracting to my listening pleasure.

Musically I think this record has a lot of positives going for it. Songs like "A Thousand Days Before", "By Crooked Steps", "Blood On The Valley Floor", "Non-State Actor", "Bones of Birds", and "Taree" all sound spectacular to my ear. The musicianship is superb. The arrangements are interesting. Chris' voice is very strong, and all the band members are given an opportunity to shine. Every one of these songs has the ability to "move" me, with or without knowing the message Chris was intending to convey to the listener. In other words, the message of the lyrics could enhance or detract from the overall value of the song, but that impact (for me) is the least valuable part of the song. Maybe "Taree" is the best example of how lyrics in a good rock song are the least important element. I really enjoy everything about how the song sounds and "feels" and I don't have a damn clue about what Chris is trying to say. And ultimately, I don't care what the song is supposed to be about because all of the other element that I care about are there.

Stip, you are clearly a "dig deeper" kind of guy. A guy that needs to find a substantive lyrical element that you can relate to or at least understand and find value in. Maybe this isn't the case 100% of the time (as I know you stated earlier that one of your favorite Soundgarden songs is "Ty Cobb" (which I happen to love too) and you said you have no idea what it's about), but it likely is the case in the vast majority of instances. You have also stated in the past that this is a large factor in your appreciation for writers like Eddie Vedder and Michael Stipe. Chris Cornell is clearly a different kind or writer, yet I don't think that makes Soundgarden's impact any less emotional, they just accomplish the emotional connection in a different way. And maybe this isn't as effective of a way to connect with you, but I can say from my experience it is just as effective on me.

Also, to call Cornell's singing inauthentic or "mechanical" is pretty silly. There is no way you (or anyone else) can accurately judge his authenticity based solely on your own response to his delivery of the material. This is clearly more of an issue of weather or not you like the way his voice sounds. And if you don't like the way it sounds, that is completely fine. But I do think it is very unfair to him to say he is being inauthentic just because it doesn't resonate with you.

In conclusion, King Animal wails! That is enough for now.

Agree.

I think it depends on your taste. Fans of harder music tend to prefer Badmotorfinger in my experience. My favorites have always been Superunknown and Down on the Upside since I tend to go for moodier, more introspective music in general.

I agree, Badmotorfinger is pretty good but Superunknown and DOTU were a huge leap forward.

While it has a few spotty moments, I prefer Louder than Love to Badmotorfinger for the most part.

How are you feeling about King Animal now, Matt?

Nobody is really too keen on Ultramega OK, eh?

Including the band.

BMF, SU anf DOTU are their best work, i have a tendency to listen more to SU and DOTU because of the mood of those, but if you want loud music, BMF is a beast.
Louder than love it´s lower and UM OK has a few good songs, but the production is really dated.

To PhatJ:


Normally lyrics are important to me, but other than knowing the lyrics to By Crooked Steps because I was prompted to look them up earlier I have no idea about most of them beyond what jumped out while listening. SG has always been a mood band for me. I think people reading some of my critiques have assumed I subjected this album to the same standards I'd use for PJ, REM, artists like Tom Waits or Mark Lanegan. And I haven't. I've never really used them for SG. I usually like CC's writing fine, and he can come up with some snappy turns of phrase, but SG for me has always been about the overall mood their songs painted--whether they were darker, introspective, louder, or whatever. They were rarely successful at speaking to me personally, or even inviting me into the song (I've always felt like I was listening to SG, rather than pulled into the song. Like watching a movie over living an experience), but they were frequently great at giving me something I wanted to listen to.

Where KA disappointed me is that many of its songs felt flat and two dimensional. There's only maybe 3-4 songs on here I'd rank up with their better work, and probably none in their top 10. Most of the songs that you highlighted as being really excellent musically were fairly boring for me. Retreads. Like with Taree. It's not that bad lyrics made me not care about what he was screaming about. It's that the whole song sounded somewhat passionless and bland, which made the scream at the end feel obligatory rather than heartfelt.


Also to clarify. Lyrics don't have to be deep to be good. They can be catchy turns of phrase. They can be nonsense that is fun to sing. They can be serious. They can be angry. They can be fun or funny. They need to fit a song well, and if they're trying to be deep then they should be well written. I think for the most part everything CC is writing on this album is meant to be well written. They are meant to be statements or songs with deeper meanings. Sometimes he is successful. Sometimes he fails.

But what has always kept SG out of my top tier (basically because I never really found a way into their songs) was not the lyrics. Like I said, I think CC is actually a pretty good writer much of the time. It's his voice.


When I say that I find CC to be inauthentic, I probably could have worded that better. I'm sure he believes everything he is singing. But it sounds artificial to me. It's not that I don't like his voice. It's just that I find myself unconvinced by him He sounds to me like he is singing someone else's words. It's missing (to my ears) a personal connection that I am sure he wants to be there. I'm sure he's hurt by the company he was keeping musically. But I just 'believed' his peers more than him (Vedder, Cobain, Staley, Corgan). Cornell has a more impressive voice than most of those guys, if not all. But I'd rather hear any one of them sing for the very real human elements in their voice--the way you experience what they're singing about. CC tells while they show.

I agree with you on every part of this, including preferring Louder Than Love to Badmotorfinger.

I really, really like King Animal. If I could change anything, it would definitely be Chris' vocals. They aren't as good as the demos or live recordings and they are double-tracked to the point of sounding like Ozzy or AIC. Beyond that, I really dig it. It's not on par with their classic albums but it's really solid and I'm looking forward to hearing a lot of the songs live in February.



The production stinks. It's as simple as that. They still like playing some of the songs on that album live, such as "Flower", "Beyond the Wheel" and "Incessant Mace". The thing to remember about Ultramega OK is that almost all of the songs predate even Screaming Life. Some of them, such as "Incessant Mace" and "All Your Lies" date back to the beginning of the band. It's an entirely different sound than what the band became, and it's one I really enjoy. I just don't listen to the album very often, as I much prefer the live shows from this period.

I feel like the next album is going to be incredible.

oh, Flower..what a song. i remember thinking WTF is this ??
it was way ahead of their time and their peers.

never listen to this

Are you giving instruction, or did you forget an 'ed'?

Dave Grohl might direct the new video of Soundgarden.

so this fucker is everywhere...now, he is the director for the video of King animal`s second single, By Crooked Steps ( i knew it).

Audiophiles, what's up with this album's production? I gave it a good headphone listen last night, and some of the lower end stuff sounded absolutely hideous. I actually thought that my headphones had blown their speakers, but I listened to Incesticide afterwards and everything sounded normal.

Audiophiles, what's up with this album's production? I gave it a good headphone listen last night, and some of the lower end stuff sounded absolutely hideous. I actually thought that my headphones had blown their speakers, but I listened to Incesticide afterwards and everything sounded normal.

Hey...audiophiles, what's up with this album's production? I gave it a good headphone listen last night, and some of the lower end stuff sounded absolutely hideous. I actually thought that my headphones had blown their speakers, but I listened to Incesticide afterwards and everything sounded normal.

G'dangit - How could you not love Dave Grohl?