Sunday, September 18, 2016

Stone Temple Pilots - Core




While riding shotgun in my mom’s minivan at age thirteen, I had my second ever musical “a-ha” moment (the first being my discovery of Goldfinger). After some begging, my mother let me put on the local rock station for the remainder of the ride. As I turned the dial, booming vocals began to pulse through the speakers along with a massive guitar riff laden with distortion and reverb, and in that moment, I knew that this—whatever “this” was—was definitely how rock’n’roll was supposed to sound.

I later discovered that the song was “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots, off of their debut Core, an album somehow even bigger and more “rock” than the single. Released in 1992, the record’s production calls back to the 70’s in its enormous sound—Eric Kretz’ snare drum booms like a mortar shell, while Dean DeLeo’s guitar chords sound the product of forty instruments rather than just one. The composition is largely straightforward, all pentatonic scales and 4/4 timing, yet STP really guts that simple formula for everything it’s worth, piling soaring solos and bombastic basslines into each piece until it seems about to burst.  

The sound of Core screams rock’n’roll, yet it isn’t all loud guitars and reverby drum fills. Stone Temple Pilots explore a very diverse sound palate on their debut record, shaping a classical landscape in “No Memory,” playing with an eastern-tinged bridge in “Sin,” and being all-out goofballs on the improv’d “Wet My Bed.”

 

Similarly, while much of the record is definitely loud, the band proves to have a fantastic understanding of dynamics as well. “Dead and Bloated” may be explosive in its syncopated hits and distorted riffs, yet “Creep” carries just as much power, albeit in a different form. The acoustic guitar meanders through gentle open chords, Robert DeLeo marks changes with atonal bass fills, and Kretz wields his sticks more like paintbrushes than hammers. Core is an example of a band in control of its sound, four musicians able to turn their intentions into audio without compromise.

Yet for all its exploration and diversity, Core is foremost a hard-rocking record, and no song drives that point home harder than “Piece of Pie.” The tune is composed of riff after monstrous riff, the guitars chugging in a drop tuning over a visceral drum beat. Singer Scott Weiland growls his microphone into submission, using his voice to build the intensity of each verse until the chorus goes off like a grenade. “Piece of Pie” is Stone Temple Pilots in top form, the band’s huge and heavy sound employed to full effect. 

 

As a whole, Stone Temple Pilots creates a gigantic monolith of rock, but it is lead singer Scott Weiland who truly demands attention. He brandishes his voice with extreme discipline and power, which allows him to produce multiple different timbres, a true anomaly amongst rock singers. His vocals boom loud and deep in “Plush” and “Where the River Goes,” yet in “Naked Sunday” he hones an edge onto his notes that is sinister and yet endearing. Similarly, in “Creep” his words take on a gentle and mournful rasp as he sings “I’m half the man I used to be.”

Scott Weiland commands a vocal style simultaneously methodical and multidimensional, the secret weapon that makes Core such a potent and evocative record. Like its instrumentation, the lyrics are largely simple and unadorned, yet the writing certainly fits the intensity of the album. Weiland describes his lyrics as “small, sick poems” which explore the macabre: “Plush” relates a piece of news describing the discovery of a murder victim’s body, while “Wicked Garden” touches on the loss of innocence. Weiland has stated that he finds “the darker shades of life more attractive than the yellows and oranges,” and the lyrics of Core certainly dive right into that darkness.

Weiland shies away from no topic or perspective, and no song exemplifies this better than the first single “Sex Type Thing.” For this song, Weiland pulls from a deeply personal experience in which a former girlfriend was raped by a group of men. And as if that very idea wasn’t dark enough, Weiland takes on the perspective of the rapist, using lines like “you shouldn’t have worn that dress” and “I know you like what’s on my mind” to embody the sociopathic sense of entitlement the man feels for the woman’s body. Weiland’s fearless personification of a heartless, misogynistic criminal in “Sex Type Thing” draws attention to the intense wrong of the situation without giving him an ounce of credibility or quarter, using the position of power in this scenario to take away any and all justification or excuse.

 

Stone Temple Pilots use colossal instrumentation and dark subject matter to give their album serious weight, and almost twenty-five years after its release, its imprint remains firm and defining. To me, Core is through and through a fully-formed rock record, and one that I’ve returned to countless times since that day in the minivan. It is both a staple of 90’s alternative rock and my own music library, and no matter how many times I’ve heard “Creep” or “Plush” thump through my car’s speakers, each listen remains fresh and monumental as the first.
Tunes To Check Out:
2) Piece of Pie
3) Sin

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