STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
Tiny Music...Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop
(Atlantic) ***
What could you buy in the Vatican gift shop? Cheesy imitation relics and mementos, I assume. If it were the gift shop of the Church of Rock, I suppose you could buy Stone Temple Pilots songs, neatly packaged to fit under your seat on the plane ride back to L.A.
The time has come to step back, open our ears, and let ourselves enjoy Stone Temple Pilots. We nodded along to the hyper-grungy Core, crooned to the addictive Purple, and now they give us Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop. STP is successful enough, and rich enough, to make an album sound any way they want . That appears to be what they have done with their third prospective big seller.
Tiny Music is their most diverse effort, with messier packaging and more finessed creativity. "Adhesive" even brings in a trumpet, which sounds out of place next to just about everything else this band has recorded. The first radio single, "Big Bang Baby," unabashedly adds hand claps to the percussion section.
Other divergent interests have been allowed to surface as well: the instrumental "Daisy" belongs next to Oasis' "Married with Children," while "And So I Know," the most distinct selection, feels like it snuck out from inside of George Michael's "Heal the Pain." The disparate elements appear in close enough proximity to prevent the boring aspects of Core. The musical style isn't entirely consistent, and neither are the songs themselves: filler with trumpets is still filler just the same.
While songwriter and bassist Robert DeLeo's work has shown marked improvement, most of Scott Weiland's lyrics are still easily and safely ignored. In the past, he has often been accused of pilfering other artists for song ideas. But now, with three years of rock star status under his belt, he has experience even his detractors can't deny.
Weiland has injected a degree of musical self-consciousness into his words; he is not afraid to say things that someone might have once said about him: "Just because you're so clichéd / It doesn't mean you won't get paid." Possibly referring facetiously to his past lyrical work, he muses, "Here's a song now if ya care / We can all just hum along / Words don't matter anymore." Never getting legitimacy from without, Weiland now asserts his independence and questions the self-appointed judges: "Does anybody know how the story really goes / Or do we all just hum along." You might not think he's legitimate, but he doesn't care; he'll keep playing slick, gift shop-ready pop rock-and maybe sell a few records on the side.
-Dan McGarry
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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