Soundgarden

I remember when that came out it felt like there was already this subtle shift in the wind. Hard to put a finger on but I kinda wasn't surprised that was the last album (for a while), but it wasn't just them, more like a collective 'hmm...now what?' (Sadly, that ended up being the dregs of third-wave ska and nu-metal...)

And swing. Don't forget the swing!

yeah ned otm - it was a weird period for a few years there

i just called it high school

Michael Beinhorn is the producer in the infamous Hole drummer story btw, despite having been in material he seems to have been the epitome of the interventionist label producer

lol xp

I remember when that came out it felt like there was already this subtle shift in the wind. Hard to put a finger on but I kinda wasn't surprised that was the last album (for a while), but it wasn't just them, more like a collective 'hmm...now what?' (Sadly, that ended up being the dregs of third-wave ska and nu-metal...)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, May 18, 2017 11:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I imagine the Pumpkins losing Jimmy and Jonathan dying that summer cast a pall over it all, a year later all of the leading voices of the early 90s were dead, inactive, or broken up (except Pearl Jam).

for pumpkins fans, maybe. idk that that really registered much w me anyway, pall-wise

i know i'm headed for the bottommmmmmm

Been working on another tribute thing and finding I Awake to be really REALLY difficult to listen to this morning

Yeah, Mailman is pretty underrated, basically a Queens of the Stone Age template.

Every single song on Superunknown is really good and really distinct. A tremendous feat for a fifteen track album.

Goodbye little brother. You're folded in now I'll carry you inside me. Thank you bless you pic.twitter.com/YhkDHATS8t

— Alain Johannes (@AlainJohannes) May 19, 2017

That's nice. Not to derail, but decades ago friends from LA used to tell me stories about what a talent Alain Johannes was.

Yeah, Mailman is pretty underrated, basically a Queens of the Stone Age template.

Agreed the new Ultramega Ok remaster is great

Speaking of Down on the Upside I was stuck yesterday at how good it is, it's really not much of a drop-off at all.... Though... One of it's best songs is not ruined but takes on a lot now :(

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUQNq5FjkT1/

Shot of audioslave getting some air

The second half of Down On The Upside drags a bit (or more to the point there's a big sag in the middle) but the opening seven tracks or so are so great that I'll forgive a lot of what comes afterwards.

"Ty Cobb" and "Blow Up the Outside World" is a hell of a one two punch. Going to spin King Animal later today since I didn't spend enough time with it when it came out.

I realize "4th of July" was about a Cornell acid trip but its lyrics are so vague even they seem extra sad to me now.

Bones Of Birds off King Animal is such a fantastic song, about how you can't protect your kids from losing their innocence

The second half of Down On The Upside drags a bit (or more to the point there's a big sag in the middle) but the opening seven tracks or so are so great that I'll forgive a lot of what comes afterwards.

Down On The Upside is one of the prototypical "too long" albums. If it was 45 minutes it would be considered a classic.

"Non-State Actor" on King Animal is such a "Soundgarden song title", I'm not really able to fully articulate this thought but they had very distinctive song title aesthetics

everything on down on the upside is great but the pacing is terrible. sort of the opposite of superunknown, which is 70 minutes long but every song seems to build on the previous in this really captivating way

I would def listen to a brad-sequenced DOtU

yeah brad u should do that on spotify...

also I had a !!!!! moment when I listened to Louder Than Love....the origin of the James Hetfields "Ye-AH!" OMG at the beginning of "Gun"

srsly though this def sounds like a template of sorts for Black Album and 90s Metallica...I haven't heard them address Soundgarden iirc but Soundgarden def was the grunge band that got respek on their name in metal circles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKSBK-aUKp4

Friends and I saw them on the Upside tour and it definitely felt deflated, like the band had lost some of its will, in contrast to two years earlier when we saw them with NIN at the height of their fame. I wasn't surprised when they disbanded shortly afterward.

As someone who loved Soundgarden in high school but didn't pay much attention to the lyrics aside from the odd cool-sounding phrase or image, it's terribly sad to read through them now in light of the illness he was obviously struggling with his whole life.

tbh i have no idea how i would resequence down on the upside, feel like the band did the best they could with the material

"Non-State Actor" on King Animal is such a "Soundgarden song title", I'm not really able to fully articulate this thought but they had very distinctive song title aesthetics

Incredibly true. They managed an insanely great trick of song titles that weren't entirely po-faced or straightforward, but weren't 'funny' either. More like this captivating blunt wryness that seemed to float in its own zone.

http://pitchfork.com/news/73603-soundgardens-chris-cornells-family-questions-cause-of-death/

from familial experience Ativan can be a motherfucker of a drug

it's such a weird set of songs

xxp

Maura did the man justice, of course.

http://pitchfork.com/features/afterword/10080-why-soundgardens-chris-cornell-was-more-than-just-a-grunge-frontman/

I realize "4th of July" was about a Cornell acid trip but its lyrics are so vague even they seem extra sad to me now.

― Charles "Butt" Stanton (Neanderthal), Friday, May 19, 2017 8:18 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i used this song for a high school english project as an example of poetry in music. i think i said it was about the apocalypse or something

i also used a lyric from "limo wreck" as my senior quote lol

it does feel apocalyptic, doesn't it.

I love Limo Wreck

"Non-State Actor" on King Animal is such a "Soundgarden song title", I'm not really able to fully articulate this thought but they had very distinctive song title aesthetics
Incredibly true. They managed an insanely great trick of song titles that weren't entirely po-faced or straightforward, but weren't 'funny' either. More like this captivating blunt wryness that seemed to float in its own zone.

Yeah IMO they have the best song titles. Loud love! Slaves and bulldozers! Breaking the wheel! A room a thousand years wide! Jesus Christ pose! Omg so cool.

i know i've said this on multiple soundgarden threads but.... man, king animal is very good

that could be the tape he made in character for SINGLES, which is coming out as part of its deluxe reissue tomorrow

― maura, Thursday, May 18, 2017 12:41 PM (yesterday)

I just listened to the tracks from that but I think those sound a little more polished and full formed, the songs I remember were more rough, rustic and witchy... more songs in the vein of "Seasons" than "Spoonman".

That said, I couldn't find the Poncier version of "Seasons" but I could find every other Poncier song on the 'tube.

Michael Beinhorn is the producer in the infamous Hole drummer story btw, despite having been in material he seems to have been the epitome of the interventionist label producer

― fish louse (Jon not Jon), Thursday, May 18, 2017 9:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok. while reading the oral history i wasn't sure who to give the benefit of the doubt to, now i know it certainly wasn't this prick

yeah beinhorn is a major piece of shit though he's semi-responsible for two of my favorite rock productions of the '90s (superunknown and celebrity skin, superunknown obv was the band in contention with beinhorn where celebrity skin is a way sadder story)

this is my current fav jam from king animal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfQ_yBmOupg

also i've been listening to cornell's obligatory beatlesesque song from that record and uh crying a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxYCQJW89Wc

Beinhorn's other major 90s accomplishment -- Marilyn Manson's best album, Mechanical Animals.

oh yep ^^^^

Maybe this is all going to be obvious, but revisiting Badmotorfinger for the first time in a while I'm struck by how much of a bluesy riff rock/early metal record it is at bottom, with what seems like a lot of influence from Sabbath, Zeppelin, Motörhead, Priest. That and also just what a fucking weird and great song Rusty Cage is musically.

Really liked Maura's piece, but I'm curious why it skips over Audioslave completely.

i only had so much time alas

that's for when tom morello dies

Re man alive's comment: the thing about that (and the band, but taking Badmotorfinger as its own example) is that it simultaneously is and isn't as you describe. Which is part of why it resonates and works. I forget which edition of the Trouser Press guide said this about Soundgarden but per your point they said they called back to that protometal era of 'shirtless men singing about shirtless women.' But the whole point was that they didn't do that, at least not as some sort of raison d'etre -- and while they avoided Zep-style pseudohistorical narratives, they weren't Sabbath's bummer fantasies either. It was more like one foot in the 'real' world, one foot elsewhere, with everything refracted, kaleidoscopic. Per Jon's story above, it was like capturing something miasmic, in the air. It could be focused when needed, it could be overtly funny, but even so. And musically it took all you described and twisted it in knots -- compressed, encircled, but just as thorny as the lyrics could be. They could and did go big and slow but always felt like they were a Titan tied down, intentionally, as an aesthetic point. It was music for stomping all around the world, but caught in unavoidable and inevitable frustration, not triumph. "Rusty Cage" may be the great outlier -- it starts an album with escape and release but it ends with "New Damage," where you have to get out for much bigger reasons, and you might not be able to.

Is there any other massive early 90s rock record with as much going on rhythmically as Spoonman? I just listened again and it's astonishing how much it works into a big, anthemic, MTV-friendly rock song. And it's doubly astonishing that I didn't really notice all that at the time.