God bless Eddie Vedder. Soundgarden’s reunion, a return of one of the
Mount Rushmore carvings of grunge, is a cash-spinning, half-arsed
return that should have remained firmly in the mid-nineties. Fresh from a
triumphant headline slot at last year’s Download festival, Chris
Cornell and co have released their first LP in sixteen years,
an ageing rock-a-thon that pays more testament to Pearl Jam’s brilliance
and durability more than Soundgarden’s own relevance. Cornell’s voice
has always been a diamond that deserves far more credit than he, or
Soundgarden, are ever given, but ‘‘King Animal’’, the comeback album
from the Seattle rockers, only serves to typify this unfulfilled
promise. After the brilliance of his early Audioslave work, and a
hastily swept away Timbaland produced R’n’B’ turn, you would’ve expected
the Soundgarden frontman to come out blazing, rather than this under
gunned, somewhat dull return.Opening track Been Away Too Long is self-aware of its own importance, with an opening riff that is nowhere near as big or as long as it should be, a representation of much of this disappointingly OK album that would have surely benefited from letting Cornell scream and bleed a little bit more. Kim Thayil’s guitar work does sound fresh on second song Non-State Actor, with its follow up By Crooked Steps providing a gritty sound that would’ve worked so much better had it not been overdubbed by Cornell’s echoed and overproduced crooning. Blood On The Valley Floor offers a brooding resistance cut short by Bones of Birds with Cornell admitting ‘time is my friend, till it ain’t’ a dark admission of what surely could’ve been given such a fantastic voice.
Taree and Attrition showcase what is a much funkier return, with the severely downtuned acoustic focused Black Saturday offering an experimental turn that would’ve benefited from remaining solely guitar based, something also true of Halfway There, a victim of poor track placement.
As Cornell admits in Been Away Too Long, ‘I never wanted to stay’ unfortunately it may have been better if Soundgarden didn’t return, a harsh reality of what could’ve been a revitalising return. Though ‘‘King Animal’’ is by no means a bad album, it feels somewhat stagnated and self-aware, with Cornell never really letting his own talents, or that of his band mates, verge into anything unprecedented or new. Eddie Vedder’s got a ukulele album you know…
