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
1) Mailman
2) Fresh Tendrils
3) Like Suicide
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