Sunday, September 21, 2014

Luti-Kriss - Throwing Myself


Like many instrumentalists, my musical story begins in my teen years. This period introduced me to my favorite bands, watched me develop my bass playing into something vaguely unique, and was the soil that birthed my first band, Sock Full of Pennies. Later, in high school, SFOP had morphed into the ska-punk outfit Nothing to Prove, which gave me my first exposure to the ups and downs of being in a local music act. Looking back at our inexperience in song writing, performance, and life in general, I find I am not embarrassed of those days, because they were the genesis of my musical life, the first steps on a crazy journey along which I am still reeling.  
When I listen to my favorite bands, it is hard to believe that they were once as young, or as bad, or as naïve as we were, or that they too have a youthful genesis, made up of days filled with heartbreak and overblown emotion and madness, days they hold dear and rarely let slip into the open. However, all musicians have an act that is to them what Sock Full of Pennies is to me, the act where they learned to give music their all. For Norma Jean, one of my very favorite bands, this forerunner is the group Luti-Kriss, and when I finally laid hands on a copy of their full-length, Throwing Myself, I was given the opportunity to experience the youthful push of some of my idols.
While most of us leave behind many smoldering bridges before we meet the creators that help crystallize our vision, interestingly, the line-up for almost all of Luti-Kriss’ existence is the same line-up that began as Norma Jean. In fact, Norma Jean would most likely still be tearing it up under that original moniker if not for the southern rapper who shares the same name (hardly a shame, if I’m being honest). However, with the name change also came a shift in sound—Luti-Kriss is heavy, but Norma Jean is far heavier—and so both members and fans alike tend to regard these acts as completely separate entities.[1]
The band’s name may scream of immaturity and youth, but the roiling timbre that Luti-Kriss provides feels experimental but hardly underdeveloped. Throwing Myself is a testament to the days when these musicians were still figuring out just how heavy they could be, and as the band was born during the rise of both metalcore and nu-metal, this record features a strange blend of both genres. Scottie Henry and Chris “Derr” Day rage against their guitars, peppering the tunes with tritone chords and palm-muted chugs. Josh Doolittle nails down the low-end, locking endlessly with the flamboyant drumming of Daniel Davidson, whose extensive cymbal collection seems perfectly mic’d. Layered within this maelstrom is Josh Scogin’s throaty growls and howling screams, adding a touch of hardcore to the blend that pulls this band away from the nu-metal label into something infinitely heavier, a sound Davidson affectionately labeled “Cron.”[2]

This smooth synthesis of nu-metal and metalcore gives Throwing Things a rather unique sound, as Luti-Kriss finds ways to slip between the “heavy that makes it onto the radio” and the “heavy your parents can’t stand.” Songs like “Petty Larson” and “Last Breath/First,” while loaded with Scogin’s screaming, back away from the breakdowns and chugs of metalcore, focusing in a more digestible sound palate, yet “Light Blue Collar” and “The ‘Anni Hilat’ Ion” are driven with the barbed whips of tritone chords and dastardly palm mutes that quickly turn a crowd into a mosh pit. Throwing Things shows five kids wavering between two distinct genres, leaning sometimes towards the sound of Mudvayne and sometimes towards Underoath, and though their future endeavors let us know which side they chose, it is fascinating to hear Luti-Kriss develop in the path of that choice.
As the sound of the record shows, Throwing Things was obviously part of the learning process for Luti-Kriss, a record where they began refining their music to reflect those things they hold dear. This is manifested also in the lyrics of the record, which kick off a campaign that most of these musicians have shouldered since. Though Scogin is responsible for the lyrics here, the whole band at this time shares his heady and positively Christian outlook, probably since they all became Christians as a unit. According to Scottie in an interview with Decapolis, “before we got saved we were just [making music] for fun….but after the change….we wanted to glorify God as much as we could and reach out to as many kids like us that we could.”[3] After this moment, their purpose for making music took on a larger-than-life meaning to them, and since this can’t truly be expressed through the instruments, Scogin took it upon himself to focus all of his lyrical writing through the lens of God.
With one listen, it quickly becomes obvious that Scogin is no poet, focusing on praising his inspiration rather than exploring it or interpreting it. However, he does utilize biblical imagery rather well, mixing religious and militaristic ideas with a very “Old Testament” feel. He even inserts direct references to the Bible: “An Act of My Own Volition” calls on the iconic two thieves,[4] while in “Catharsis,” Scogin implores that God to “bathe [his] feet among the wicked.”[5]



While Scogin’s messages are surely suited for a Christian audience, they end up pretty hard to digest for anyone who isn’t of his faithful persuasion. It doesn’t help that his vocals are all but unintelligible—his screams are heavy but poorly expressive, and even when he does attempt to sing in songs like “Patiently Philadelphia,” his vocals are so buried in the mix they’re almost nonexistent. Interestingly, however, Scogin seems to be completely aware that both his singing and his topics aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and addresses as much in “For Shadows” where he asserts his convictions with the lines “I see a controversy / and the world looking at me / Eighteen years / I’m done with chairs.”[6] It takes guts to be so gung-ho about one’s beliefs, and so even though the blatant Christian overtones might lack subtlety, it’s hard not to give Luti-Kriss credit for putting their youth to a purpose so fully.
Along with the marginal lyrical work, there are a few other decisions on Throwing Myself that don’t quite work. Vocals aside, the whole mix is rather messy, especially on the hidden track—the guitars very easily blend together and the drum kit is stacked with enough reverb to make an 80’s hair-metal band sick. Also, about half the songs also feature Mick Bailey on turntables and sampling, parts which apparently weren’t removed after he left halfway through recording,[7] but simply buried in the mix. His only real contributions are the bottle-rocket glissandos that pepper the heavier riffs, but ultimately, he was completely unnecessary to the sound, because the parts are so sparse and pointless, you forget he was even there.
These faults are pretty prevalent when the record is in heavy rotation, but I am more than happy to chalk them up to the naiveté of youth and count them as steps on the road to refining their sound, because there are moments when they get everything right. One example is the song “Light Blue Collar,” in which these five musicians encompass the entirety of their metal upbringing: the main riff centers around a thrashed tritone chord, which is whipped about on the tail of some disturbing palm mutes and hammer-ons. Davidson’s drum sticks batter his kit into submission in the multiple breakdowns, and just as the song begins to unwind into chaos, Josh’s arrogant scream rips it into a heavy chugging riff followed by a melodically destructive outro. “Light Blue Collar” epitomizes Luti-Kriss’ sonic intentions, grabbing with both hands to define this corner of music as their own.


In a review from the website jesusfreakhideout.com, Sherwin Frias calls Throwing Myself “the opening salvo that sets the stage for any future mayhem their later incarnation would be known for.” Despite the youth-driven decisions and overconfident message, this record stands on its own as heavy, hearty, and honest. For me, the raw and untested sound to which Luti-Kriss gives life on this full-length is one that I cannot help but appreciate, for it led to the conception of one of my favorite bands. Without every mistake embedded on this disc, Norma Jean would not have evolved into the intelligent, technical, and powerful act that I have come to adore. Luti-Kriss and Throwing Myself are a pivotal part of Norma Jean’s story, just as Sock Full of Pennies and Nothing to Prove are parts of mine; without our origins, the humans and the creators we are today hold little significance, because they have none of the hard-earned truth that gives all art both meaning and life.

Tunes to Check Out:
1) Light Blue Collar
2) Petty Larson
3) Patiently Philadelphia
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Monday, September 1, 2014

Our Lady Peace - Clumsy


            If you’ve ever tried to create alongside another person, especially in the field of music, you don’t need to be told that being an innovator is damn hard. It’s almost impossible for a band to be successful or original if its member’s don’t work together, or at the very least work around each other. Thus, it is a very rare thing to see a unit connect so strongly in both theory and action that their creative endeavor takes on a life of its own, growing a voice that belongs solely to its creators. To devise a presence that can literally be found nowhere else is impossible, and so listening to Our Lady Peace’s sophomore record Clumsy is like pulling an album out of an alternate dimension, because they somehow manages to do it extremely well.
            The sound of Clumsy is best described with two words: simple and disturbing. The composition on the record is remarkably straightforward, though by no means boring. Almost all the songs avoid deviation across key and time signature and rely on weathered and reliable structures, instead drawing their power from profuse and well-employed dynamic changes. This alternation of loud-quiet and heavy-soft perfectly plays into the creepy tone that seethes from this CD, a feel that Our Lady Peace has worked hard to hone. Both Raine Maida and Mike Turner have uniquely dark approaches to their instrumentation and performance, combining wavering falsettos with dissonant, effect-laden guitar riffs to envelop their record in a mood that is wholly uncomfortable at times. Add to this the band’s penchant for whispering through almost inaudible volumes, only to dive into a fiery explosion seconds later, and the resulting sound is absolutely unique and unsettling.
            The distinctively dark sound on Clumsy is a child with four parents, as each member of Our Lady Peace brings their own remarkable flavor to the mix. The driving force of the instrumentation appears to be Mike Turner’s guitar playing, as his heavy chords and sickly melodies really lead the rhythm section along through energy and emotion. His guitar riffs drive most of the songs forward—when Turner is heavy, OLP is heavy, but when he backs off onto clean chords or dissonant picking, the band becomes a quiet echo of his riff. And although much of his playing is rather simple, he overlays melody and chords which interlock exquisitely, such as in “Big Dumb Rocket,” the chorus of which features a heavy chord progression punctuated with wailing bends and whiny trills. Mike Turner’s approach to his guitarwork is three-fold, creating a foundation, fluctuating the velocity of that foundation, and peppering it with intricate melodies, all of which meld in a seamless whirlpool of sound that belongs nowhere else but on Clumsy.


            Though Mike Turner’s guitar is certainly pivotal in the shape of this record, the most intricate musicianship is provided by drummer Jeremy Taggart. His approach to percussion feels both simultaneously calculated and improvised, an immaculate amalgamation of two completely different approaches to his instrument. And where Mike Turner governs the energy level of the songs, Jeremy adds an element of sophistication, defining every part with syncopated hits and fills to which the string section attaches itself. One of the best examples of Taggart’s supercomputer-esque drumming comes from the song “Carnival.” His metronomic snare rolls in the verse are so solid they might have been programmed, but they lead into a chorus brimming with syncopated cymbal hits and fills, a section that has long been one of my favorite examples of drumming. On top of this, Taggart slips underneath the quiet and wailing bridge with an improvisational line that seems almost random, but never lets the rhythm or beat waver. Jeremy Taggart’s drumming is a strange blend of accompaniment and lead, and so interesting that it is actually the loudest part of the album mix behind the vocals.


            In sharp contrast to the drums is the bass work of Duncan Coutts, whose contributions on Clumsy feel largely functional. Coutts seems to lack a real presence in the songs, which can perhaps be attributed to the fact that he was a new addition to Our Lady Peace at the time of recording, having replaced original bassist Chris Earcratt only a few months before. Though Coutts is really a background accent on the record (the bass guitar is hardly audible in the mix, and turning it up on the EQ boosts Jeremy’s toms rather than the whole low end), he by no means lacks skill or purpose. He holds down the rhythm section when Taggart drifts into uncharted territories, maintaining a very solid foundation that allows the other three members to explore their instruments. His decision to lay back and let the others play around helps keep the record grounded, but Coutts does not totally ignore his own flamboyant side. In fact, the bass on “Superman’s Dead,” the album’s opener and lead single,[1] is laden with intricate flairs and complex basslines, which manage to really stand out in the tune despite being in the very back of the mix. The song’s outro is particularly charged with low-end fury, as Coutts explores every inch of his guitar’s neck, punctuating each repetition as only a true bassist could. Though Duncan Coutts stakes no claim to the spotlight on Clumsy, his solid low-end stylings lays the roots from which Our Lady Peace can completely bloom.


            Above this threefold instrumental platform rides Raine Maida’s singing, which is so distinctive and multidimensional that it demands center stage on this record. Raine’s voice is truly one of a kind, as he constantly affects an accent that can only be described as paranoid: his notes crack in fear when he sings quietly, and hum in incredible vibrato as he wails. He integrates the very shape of his mouth into his singing, giving every word an eerie tinge that ranges from anxious to despairing. But Raine does not rely only on the sound of his voice to emote, instead allowing it to blossom fully as he moves up and down his range. His uncanny ability to jump from throaty lows up to the very top of his falsetto without losing an iota of power is simply incredible, and triples any effect his voice is creating. An easy third of Clumsy is sung in falsetto, which for any other band would be record suicide. Yet Raine’s disturbing affectation and powerful delivery never loses control, making tunes such as “Car Crash,” where Raine howls in anguish along the entire length of his range, immerse the listener in the darkness swirling about on this record.


            Instrumentally, Clumsy is superb, mixing four distinct approaches to composition into something that is so refined and yet so simple. Unfortunately, however, the lyrical content of the record does not quite rise to this standard. Raine’s writing is extremely basic for the most part, but also very vague—he often attempts to use metaphor, but his word choices and structure generally fail to deliver whatever message Raine had in mind. There are occasional interesting images, such as in “Big Dumb Rocket,” where he is “disgusted by my fingertips and what they’ve done,”[2] but for the most part his affectation of the language to his ideas is weak and confusing. This frailty perhaps stems from the fact that Our Lady Peace originally ran into a lot of trouble when writing the record, so much so that they scrapped most of the ideas and started over.[3] Despite this, there is one instance in which Raine’s use of language is extremely effective;  in the song “Carnival,” Raine deftly paints images of an absurd world with a “yoga class for cats,” and breathes new life into a dead cliché with the chorus: “You’re frustrated by the cracks in the pavement / and every mother’s back once again.”[4]
            Though individually, the songs on Clumsy lack for lyrical depth, there is a big factor that redeems the poor language choices: the lyrics on Clumsy unify the record with universal themes. The language and music combine in many songs to imply an absurd atmosphere, such as one might experience at a carnival or a circus.[5] In songs like “Automatic Flowers,” “Hello Oskar,” and “Superman’s Dead,” Raine creates characters who are outside of society because of mental illness, social disconnection, or poor self esteem. He gathers these characters under one umbrella record, a collective of outsiders which, when viewed by society, would easily be misinterpreted as a freak show.
            This idea of misperception is another theme Our Lady Peace explores, and one that unites with the record’s title. In a 1997 interview, Mike Turner discussed the significance of the album’s title: “There is a forgiveness to clumsy….If more people would make the assumption that others are clumsy, be it emotionally or physically, I think the world would have a great deal more compassion.”[6] Many songs on this record investigate this idea that perhaps the world isn’t inherently rotten, but that people are simply clumsy, being destructive without meaning to. “Big Dumb Rocket” greatly connects to this ideal, as it describes an instance in which Raine, while trying to play a prank, almost accidently shot his friend in the face with a loaded gun.[7] Songs like “Big Dumb Rocket” and “Clumsy” dissect the initial image we see, urging us to look deeper into a situation, in hopes that we might discover those humanity is not malicious, only ditzy.
            Despite somewhat weak lyrics and a mix that does the band absolutely no justice, Our Lady Peace presents a whole stack of interesting ideas with Clumsy, and does so with the simplest of approaches. Their musical style is wholly captured on this record, effectively communicating every ounce of the creepy, paranoid tone that is this band’s John Hancock. The songs want not for energy or intrigue, and the flawlessly interlocking coordination these four musicians have leaves Clumsy as a record I both highly recommend, if not for the incredible songs, then simply because nowhere else will you ever hear anything quite like this record.

Tunes to Check Out:
1) Carnival
2) Superman's Dead
3) Let You Down
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Sunday, August 17, 2014

Smash Mouth - Fush Yu Mang



            As my musical interests continue to grow and diversify, I’ve found that the greatest surprises don’t always stem from stumbling upon a little-known artist, but from rediscovering new things about the artists to whom I used to listen, whose CDs I spun to death in middle school and about whom I thought I knew everything. When I began exploring ska music in my senior year of high school, I was shocked to find that so many of the bands I loved and listened to either already fell into that genre or had dabbled in its sound. Thus, when I again came across Smash Mouth’s Fush Yu Mang, I was hardly surprised to find it soaked in upstroke guitar chords and horn arrangements. If anything, they only solidified my resolve to re-experience this band that, when I was quite young, had meant the world to me.
            For my eleventh birthday, I received as a gift my first ever CD, the inaugural album that would kick off a lifetime obsession. This album was Smash Mouth’s sophomore effort, Astro Lounge, and although I hardly listened to anything but “All Star,” for the next few years, I proclaimed Smash Mouth my favorite band. I quickly abandoned that record and that band, however, once Goldfinger entered my life, and it wasn’t until my senior year of high school, playing in a ska/punk band with my three best friends, that my drummer burned me a copy of Smash Mouth’s first record, Fush Yu Mang. As I spun the CD for the first time, I was floored to find ska and punk influences from a band I’d once loved, but had gone years without hearing, and with each subsequent listen, my former obsession with Smash Mouth again began to bloom.
            Fush Yu Mang is three things: energetic, diverse, and tons of fun. Smash Mouth is a band that thinks while it plays, and all four musicians provide us with intricate compositions that capture our attention without sacrificing an ounce of energy or enthusiasm. Furthermore, when they decide on a sonic avenue for a tune, they absolutely nail it: their punk thrashes about in distortion and slash beats, their ska skanks against the beat with upstroke barre chords, and their pop grooves with impeccable melody and upbeat progressions. Smash Mouth plays into each genre completely, but the music never deviates from sounding like Smash Mouth. The sounds these four gentlemen create are their own brand, through which they express and experiment with different tastes and styles, and the end result is brilliance.
            The distinct musical flavor of Fush Yu Mang stems from Smash Mouth’s commitment to their music. Their sound is honest and whole because they are first and foremost making this music for themselves—they play what they want to play, regardless of genre labels or outside expectations. In an interview with NY Rock, singer Steve Harwell remarked: “When we formed the band in 1994, we didn’t have one style of music in mind. We wanted to write songs that feel good to us and make others feel good. The question of a particular style never once crossed our minds.”[1]
It is this simple delight in creation that gives Fush Yu Mang such an accessible sound, one that invites the listener back time and time again. Furthermore, the fact that they produced this record entirely on their own, [2] without the input of countless detached corporate bodies, shows that Smash Mouth is a band committed to their craft and everything it represents about them as individuals and as a band.
            While there is a plethora of sounds to sample of Fush Yu Mang, the focus lies in the thin area between punk rock and ska. Greg Camp’s guitar playing is forefront in both mix and composition on this record, and his choice between clean barre chords or dirty power chords is the base to which the rest of the band reacts with immaculate fervor. For instance, “Flo,” the record’s opening track, tears out of the gate with a monster beat worthy of moshing. While the verses are peppered with ska, the song’s vehicle is distilled punk: Kevin Coleman trashes his kit while Harwell accusatorily shouts “Who the fuck you think you’re foolin?,”[3] pleading with his girlfriend to cease deluding herself in her unresolved feelings for her former lover. While “Flo” erupts off of the disc like a missile, in sharp contrast, “Disconnect the Dots” completely foregoes that punk vehemence to focus on a full ska arrangement. A bright and beaming horn section owns the intro, and Paul De Lisle’s bass walks perfectly lock with Greg Camp’s clean upstrokes. Topped with gang vocals in the chorus, “Disconnect the Dots”  encapsulates the ska side of Smash Mouth, standing in stark contrast to the more battering beats of “Flo” and proving this band has an incredible capacity for diversity in their music.


            Smash Mouth’s mastery of their craft is hardly limited to the instrumentals. Fush Yu Mang is laden with lyrics that are engaging, cognitive, and especially fun. Smash Mouth has a serious sense of humor which they constantly flaunt: “Beer Goggles” describes the 2 A.M. slump in standards, “Padrino” marks the invention of the new genre “mafia rock,” facetiously celebrating the lifestyle of the mob, and “Flo” and “Heave-Ho” both capture different chapters in the band’s history, retold in hilarious hindsight.[4] Other songs take on a more serious tack, addressing real issues of the world from which this band arose. “Nervous in the Alley” deals with the effects of parental abandonment, giving us graphic images of a girl “waiting for her fix” and paying for it with her body.[5] Similarly, “Walkin’ on the Sun,” the record’s seemingly upbeat lead single, is actually a call to arms, urging us to “snuff the fires and the liars” that dictate our world’s behavior before the entire thing gets “bushwhacked.”[6] Smash Mouth uses their debut record to paint a portrait of their world, and every tale is regaled through interesting language that ranges from hilarious to horrifying.
            In my opinion, Fush Yu Mang is a remarkably deep first record, and each track features some idea or riff into which I can really sink my teeth—with the exception of
one. Unfortunately for this band, there is one fatally crappy song on this record, the penultimate track “Push.” The instrumentation, while partially interesting with its effect-laden guitar parts and slight tempo changes in the verse, feels very rushed and underdeveloped, giving me the impression that this song was more than likely written in the studio right before recording. And if the riffs took fifteen minutes to flesh out, the lyrics must have materialized in less than five, as they completely lack for any semblance of meaning, emotion, coherence, or even rhyme. Harwell rants at some undefined adversary, seeming to cycle through every limp cliché he can think of while he “spin[s his] wheels and [tries] to figure it out.”[7] There is no focus for the song other than vague and meaningless expressions of frustration, but the vocals are front and center in the mix and composition, thus giving the listener absolutely nothing to which the listener can relate.


            “Push” might border on absolute drivel, but it is an anomaly in the sea of awesome music that is Fush Yu Mang. Every other tune displays deep thought and honest enthusiasm from start to finish, and none more so than “Heave-Ho.” A three minute Smash Mouth history lesson, “Heave-Ho” relates the band’s true experience with a crotchety neighbor[8] who is so unpleasant, even “church mice at St. Leo’s down my street / have moved so far away.” Because the band practiced (and later recorded demos of two Fush Yu Mang tracks) in Greg Camp’s apartment, they quickly received an eviction notice,[9] which they attributed to the complaints “lazy cow” next door. Harwell sings of the band’s plight with a serious tone, but his language is completely laughable, as he compares his future to hers: “Maybe someday when I’m jaded / 9 to 5 at a job I hate / I’ll come home and razz my neighbors too.”[10] “Heave-Ho” is an honest and hilarious assessment of the troubles of being in a band while hanging on those myriad naysayers that attempt to impede every musician’s crusade for creativity.


            From its inception, Fush Yu Mang was never meant to be more than a collection of Smash’s Mouth’s enthusiasm for their craft, and there is no lack for integrity or intellect on this record. Both the content and the performance are exuberantly enjoyable, but the delivery system of genre-hopping composition and spirited word play keep the listener’s mind as engaged as the heart. Listening to it now, I now have no doubt as to why the eleven-year-old me loved this band, and why the eighteen-year-old me adored this record: there is simply too much fun to be had.

Tunes to Check Out:
1) Flo
2) Why Can't We Be Friends?
3) The Fonz
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Sunday, July 20, 2014

Song Spotlight: Soundgarden's "Like Suicide"

            In digging through my albums to find a subject for an article, many of the CDs I end up writing about are ones with which I have history. Some I’ve played almost to the point of breaking them, while others I’ve owned for years and have hardly listened past the radio singles. For records such as these, previous opinions of a younger and less-eclectic me are stuffed inside the jewel cases, and when I break out those discs to give them a true listen, I find that the new opinions and the old rarely match up. Often the songs I once adored, radio hits and catchy choruses, take a backseat to the deep cuts, where the artists weren’t afraid to experiment or embed some easter egg for the listener. And more often, the songs that I hated and misunderstood become songs I cannot stop playing, which was absolutely the case when I began spinning Soundgarden’s Superunknown.
              When I first listened to that record around the age of fourteen, there were a bunch of songs I just didn’t “get,” but none more so than the closer “Like Suicide.” Although the chorus was cool and catchy, my overall impression of the tune was a resounding meh. It was slow, Chris’ singing was drawn out and moany and lacked for the screaming power that he employed through the rest of the record, and worst of all, it was long. I didn’t understand it, and what I could understand I didn’t much care for, so I didn’t listen to it. I went years without ever tasting Superunknown in its entirety, because I knew that the final course was a drawn-out jam that took forever to get going.
            This impression of “Like Suicide” sat somewhere in my head for almost a decade, until I decided to return to the record with an open mind, and this time around, I felt as if I was hearing a completely different song. Immediately, Matt Cameron establishes a groove with his drum beat, releasing the snare and creating a more primal sound. As the guitars enter, alternating between a swelling riff and spacious chords, the song’s eerie and somber tone materializes, a perfect introduction for Chris’ soulful vocal. The song takes its time to slowly build in energy and intensity: Chris’ vocals increasingly push the volume and range upward, until Cameron flips his snare back on and smacks his drum, igniting the tune into a new level of heaviness. All of this leads up to a ripping solo from Kim Thayil, who completely melts the face of his fretboard with speedy runs and precise melodies. This lead pulls the groove all the way to the end, where the band sinks into a quiet and weighty final chorus.

              Perhaps it was my youthful naiveté that kept me from appreciating this song the first time around, but now I find “Like Suicide” to be completely fascinating. The song’s composition alone is extraordinary; with “Like Suicide,” Soundgarden avoids standard structure, delivering all the verses before building to the chorus, rather than alternating between the parts. The focus on dynamics, building the tune to the point of explosion, is brilliant and poignant, a musical background to the final breath about which the lyrics revolve. Also, the guitars’ Open-D tuning allows for a deliciously spacious timbre, creating room for Chris’ vocals to flutter about as they dive and rise. 
            Every choice this band makes for the song is well-placed and deftly executed, creating the perfect musical movement for Chris’ lyrics, which describe an incident that occurred as he was composing. According to an interview with Melody Maker, after hearing a loud thumping noise outside his house, Chris found “a beautiful female robin writhing on the ground. She’d broken her neck flying into the window.” It fell to Chris to end the creature’s suffering with a brick, immediately after which he was inspired to write “Like Suicide.”[1] Through the incident, Chris became intertwined with this bird’s final moments, and his connection with the suicidal robin bleeds into his poetry. In the first verse, he relates the discovery of his “broken gift” lying “dazed out in a garden bed / With a broken neck.” But as he ends her suffering, he becomes entangled in the experience of her death, finding a “taste so sour” in his mouth as he “wield[s] a ton of rage.” Finally, he memorializes this strange moment and strange bird that “lived like a murder” until the moment the brick fell.[2] Chris’ lyrics are morbid but poignant, and his vocal is as respectful as it is earnest. This combines with the dynamic approach of the music to create a sort of eulogy, a celebration of an uncommon death.
              Regardless of the intelligent and meticulous musical choices, the powerful inspiration stemming from the incident, the entire tune feels riddled with truth and reality. Listening to it now, I see easily how such a song could have completely eluded my young teenaged mind. Now, I find in its seven minutes so much honest connection with the concept of death, as well as the complete bewilderment it brings every time it seeps into our lives, for, as Soundgarden makes apparent, there is nothing the living understand less than death.

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Soundgarden - Superunknown


Though I’ve spent much of my time diving into mostly independent acts, my CD collection is hardly lacking for seminal records. In fact, much of my current exploration was kicked off by listening to those records that had been deemed imperative by rock enthusiasts. As I entered high school, my interest in Seattle’s grunge scene had begun to blossom, and when I received Soundgarden’s Superunknown for Christmas one year, I was overjoyed. For the next five years, I spun this record so often that my dizziness forced me to shelve it for a while, but in returning to it now, I find that I have an even deeper appreciation for the fifteen songs that define Superunknown.
Anyone who spins Superunknown will quickly realize just why this record is revered. The array of sounds that these four musicians compile throughout the album is extremely diverse, a fact hardly undue to the four talented musicians who put it together. Kim Thayil’s guitar seems to touch upon every possible genre and mode available to him as he grinds through heavy chords in “4th of July,” whirls along strange scales in “Head Down,” and shreds across the fretboard in “Like Suicide.” Chris Cornell’s vocals similarly climb and dive along energy, volume, and tone, screaming in songs like “Let Me Drown” while walking along above a whisper in “Fell on Black Days.” Behind this chaos is more chaos, as Ben Shepard beats strange and complicated lines out of his bass, and Matt Cameron smashes his set with steady hits and teases his cymbals into madness with gentle taps. This duo locks itself into a tight unit of rhythm while playing with high caliber attitudes, taking tunes like “My Wave” and “Spoonman” and turning them into rhythm-driven monsters.
The four members of Soundgarden are ostensibly a tight-knit unit with almost-familial chemistry, and this complete musical synthesis allows them to create extremely complex and intrinsically intelligent compositions. For Superunknown, all four members are principal writers, and the resulting conflicts and synchronicities in style and thought allow for insanely interesting songs to form. In an interview with Guitar World, producer Michael Beinhorn commented that this record is “four guys with completely different points of view about how they compose and what they like,” the results of which, while remaining undoubtedly Soundgarden, “represents more of what they're about as individuals.”[1]
This convergence of individual thinkers is one of the reasons why Superunknown is laden with technical choices, including a pile of odd time signatures: “Fell on Black Days” and “Fresh Tendrils” are in 6/4, both “Spoonman” and “The Day I Tried to Live” groove between 4/4 and 7/4, and “Limo Wreck” stomps through a maddening 15/8. Interlocking with these syncopal structures are the many alternate tunings employed by the guitarists, including Drop-D (“Spoonman,” “Let Me Drown,” “Black Hole Sun”), Drop-C (“Mailman,” Limo Wreck”), Open-C (“Half,” “Head Down,”), Open-D “(Like Suicide), and even the ridiculously overlapping EEBBBB (“My Wave,” “The Day I Tried to Live”).[2] And although Kim Thayil asserts that such insanities are naught but “a total accident,”[3] he may be suffering from a bout of humility; there is a clear method containing all this madness, for every note on Superunknown feels precisely natural. Soundgarden’s four members may have been writing for themselves on this record, but the ultimate product is something as cohesive as it is manifold.
Although the shape and structure of the songs on this album are as varied as snowflakes, these musicians connect best as a unit, and the consensus apparently was to write a record that is both dark and heavy. The guitars chug and the drums pound, while Cornell’s deviant and oppressed poetics mix with his soulful vocals to imbue dismal emotion with a terrifyingly gritty and brutally genuine authenticity. For me, one of the darkest tunes on the record is the trudging “Mailman,” whose pulverizing, distorted guitar progression sounds like a B-side from Black Sabbath’s Paranoid sessions. This slow progression is built over two initial measures of 4/4 followed by a measure in 7/8 and a measure in 6/8, a movement that reflects the slow but sure diminishing voice that plagues Chris Cornell’s lyrics. While the band slogs along beneath him with heavy chords, booming hits, and rumbling bass, Cornell intones in the voice of the formerly oppressed that have risen above their oppressors. Once the “dirt beneath your feet,” Cornell has finally found both recognition and power, and the crushed now gets to do the crushing. With an almost sickly moan, he wails “this time I’m sure you’ll know that I am here,” before riding the object of his loathing “all the way” to the bottom.[4] Chris’ character seems willing to destroy himself if only to even the score, his revenge fueled by pure hatred and unfettered by any sense of self preservation. Between the rattling main riff and Cornell’s vocal, “Mailman” is defined by absolute hopelessness, a song stained black with utter despair.



Similar to the pervading darkness, Superunkown is defined by its unrelenting heavy tone, upon which apparently most of the time recording was spent perfecting.[5] There is a significant weight present in the guitar sound, which permeates each tune regardless of energy or subject matter, and for no song on Superunknown is this truer than “Head Down.” Penned and arranged by bassist Ben Shepard, “Head Down” features an acoustic rhythm guitar layered with a distorted and reverb-laden electric guitar, the combination of which is surprisingly deep and resonant. In an interview with Melody Maker, Cornell described the song as “a big, wide, open song” that “sounds like a place,”[6] and certainly the soaring and interlocking guitar parts in the main riff, not to mention Cameron’s improv-heavy drumming, paint their own musical landscape; however, when the guitars begin strumming chords under Chris’ falsetto, this scene suddenly becomes more nightmarish, as the blending acoustic and electric create a sound that is nothing but sinister. The sweeping space of the song suddenly shrinks into a stifling cell as Chris demands, “Bow down to live your life.”[7] Furthermore, the seemingly random percussion layered in the background is reminiscent of either hard labor or gunshots, thus morphing this cramped space into an oppressive one, such as a prison or POW camp. Though a relatively simple and quiet tune from this record, “Head Down” carries both a sonic and emotional heaviness on its back that contradicts its gentle demeanor.



Burgeoning from the lyrical content of Superunknown is a whole slew of dark themes and ideas that further knits the record together. Cornell contributed the bulk of the poetry on the album, and it is easily evident that he is in touch with his inner disturbances. Death and destruction are heavy influences on Chris’ hand, as he describes an LSD-induced apocalypse in “4th of July” and the karmic payout of decadence in “Limo Wreck.”[8] In a similar vein, both “Fell on Black Days” and “The Day I Tried to Live” revolve around the idea of being unable to conquer the troubles of living—in these songs, living is figurative suffering, an idea which is explored more literally in “Head Down” and “Mailman.”
One could easily argue these depressing themes have been far overworked in music, but Cornell’s linguistic choices in presenting them gives fresh breath to this beaten corpse. Although his imagery is relatively sparse, Cornell nails the listener with vivid images that become lodged in the head. Rather than focus on visuals, however, Soundgarden’s frontman employs heavy use of contrast, contradiction, and paradox, giving us phrases that ignite our brains into intellectual frenzies. In “Superunknown,” he uses his verses to destroy the automatic associations we create with words, such as “If this doesn’t make you free / It doesn’t mean you’re tied / If this doesn’t take you down / It doesn’t mean you’re high.”[9] A similar contrast is employed in “Fell on Black Days,” as he moans “Whomsoever I’ve cured I’ve sickened now / And whomsoever I cradled, I’ve put you down.”[10] Cornell even applies this idea of contradiction to an entire song in “Spoonman.” Written for the Seattle street performer Artis the Spoonman, Cornell states that “Spoonman” is about “the paradox of who [Artis] is and what people perceive him as.”[11] In such ways, the lyrics present on Superunknown effectively tap into the darkest parts of our psyche by breaking down both the language and the thought processes that give shape to the world around us, using our own minds to better capture and proliferate the themes of the record.



In crawling back to Superunknown after years of hiatus, I must say that I am even more impressed with how cognitive and tremendous this record is. I do, however, have one bone to pick with Soundgarden, or more specifically, Matt Cameron. Although an undeniably talented drummer (Pearl Jam picked him up, after all,[12] and he was also featured on Smashing Pumpkins’ Adore[13]), Cameron’s beats are very simple and full of open space. And while I can truthfully say I’ve never heard a drummer so effectively employ negative space, I feel that his lack of improvisation, attack or even fills pins the album’s energy to the ground, keeping songs that would otherwise explode in a fiery mass from even popping. There is so much dead air in his percussion that if that’s what you’re focusing on, you can very quickly lose interest in the music.
Despite this single misgiving, Soundgarden’s Superunknown has undeniably earned its place in the list of seminal rock records. With abrasive guitars, heady composition, and thoughtful lyrics, Superunknown’s fifteen tracks inspire the body to move and the mind to whirl. There is no shortage of interesting moments or innovative concepts on this record, yet the soul of the band is what is forefront, because, as Kim Thayil put it, “We’re not throwing our brain at people….we’re sharing our heart.”[14] With Superunknown, Soundgarden delivers both the cerebral and the meaningful via tunes that are extremely catchy, a prodigious combination that makes each listen as dangerous as it is brilliantly fun.

Tunes to Check Out:
1) Mailman
2) Fresh Tendrils
3) Like Suicide

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