Review Summary: Angst, murky, questionable production. Good stuff.
Stone Temple Pilots
Purple
Purple; Stone Temple Pilot’s second studio album was released in 1994. Following up their debut album
Core, this album solidified The Pilots as one of the top 90’s grunge bands. Despite being composed of heavy tracks and ballads this album maintains a consistent gloomy ambiance. Said gloomy ambiance had both positive and negative effects on the album. It helped to make the album seem more it gave the album sort of a calm, emotional feel (which was good), but at the same time this murky atmosphere could become boring and tedious at times. The tediousness stemmed from Scott Weiland’s voice. It wasn’t bad, in fact he has a fine voice. It’s just a little generic and doesn’t have much range. Now, that can be said for many vocalists, so usually it’s not a big deal. Unfortunately, it’s when it’s combined with a dim musical environment that it can become monotonous. Luckily, there were occasional solos and splendid riffs to keep the listeners attention, so the tediousness wasn’t too large a factor.
Lyrically, this album offers nothing particularly special. The lyrics weren’t horribly generic, or cheesy, but there was nothing original about them either. A few songs were delved into the topic of women. An obvious example being
Pretty Penny. The song appears to be about a mother (Penny) abandoning her family, or perhaps dying in an unfortunate accident. Either would make sense. The following lines should nicely exemplify this:
“Have you seen your mother, girl?”,
“Pretty Penny was her name, she was loved and we all miss her. Like I said, nothing special. Some songs had lyrics that were completely indiscernible. Take as an example the track
Army Ants. It’s lyrics are totally inconsistent. At first it appears Scott appears to be singing of an unknown person beating him;
You don’t look, but you kick me. Not too long after that it’s hard to tell just what he’s talking about;
Gotta, gotta now, gotta find the reason why a woman ain’t a man. The, closer to the end it seems he’s preaching about conformity;
Fall in those single lines, like army ants. Perhaps there is some vague message within the track, but it doesn’t appear so. Anyways, overall the so-so lyrics don’t effect the album too much. I doubt many people listen to this for the lyrics.
The guitar work was certainly solid and somewhat varied as well. In the heavier tracks the rhythm guitar was mostly assembled with power chords, while in the lighter tracks the rhythm guitar work was mostly regular chords. For an example of a nice little chord progression give
Intersate Love Song a listen. You’ll be able to hear it best during the intro. As for an example of a heavier power chord progression check out
Meatplow. None of the examples I just gave you are very complex, but fairly well written and suite the album’s atmosphere. I regret to inform you there wasn’t a whole lot of riffage to be heard in the album. There was the occasional stand out riff, but not as many as I would’ve liked to see. One of the stand out riffs came from the track
Unglued. It had neat distorted riff to get the song off the ground. Like most of the other guitar work, it wasn’t very complex, but it had good rhythm and was pretty catchy. Solos were even more scarce than the riffs. The only real stand out solo can be found in
Silvergun Superman. It was actually a pretty good quality solo. A nice blend of scales and climactic bends. Unfortunately, the solo was pretty much ruined be the horrendous rhythm and timing. It was almost like whole band was improvising the end of the song. Things would randomly stop and the timing would change. It was a really awkward ending. Overall, I think the guitar work could best be described as solid.
As expected, the bass had very little input. It was mildly audible throughout, but never really stood out by itself. There’s really no point in pointing out to you any of the basses highlight moments on the album, as there were none worth mentioning. All I can tell you is that the bass lines were fairly well written (thought sometimes just played root notes), I liked the tone and Robert did a good job of keeping steady rhythm.
As I mentioned before, the vocals were good at times and not so good at others. They were never unbearable, but never phenomenal either. Scott does have a fairly nice voice (as far as the genre of grunge goes) it just lacks range and is really same-y at times. I think the best way to describe it would be a cross between Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. Anyways, there’s nothing really wrong with it, it’s just that listening to him sing in the same key through the whole album got a tad boring. Another big reason it got boring it got boring was lack of passion. At times it gave off sort of a faux-passion, but a lot of the time it seemed like he just wasn’t that into what he was singing.
Much like Scott’s voice the production was a pro at times and a con at others. First off, it was pretty mediocre production. Luckily for any grunge artist, bad production only adds to the damp, angst feel that the genre usually gives off. That is exactly what happened with this album, the production just furthered the murky feel. However, at other times it was a little too poor and things started to sound queer. Most notably the guitar. During the heavier tracks notes would tend to run together, or the guitar would give off a slightly agitating buzz. It wasn’t like ear-bleeding bad, but certainly noticeable. I’m just going to briefly mention filler. In short, there wasn’t any. This album certainly has its cons, but filler isn’t one of them. Some songs were better than others, but all songs definitely met the album’s status quo.
So, in summary this is a fairly solid release from The Pilots. Solid guitar work, fairly good vocals, nice (though difficult to hear) bass work, no filler. A few drawbacks like production, lyrics and the vocals at times, tediousness, but still a damn fine album.
Pros Guitar
Vocals
Bass was satisfactory
No Filler
Cons Boring at times
Vocals
Production
Overall Rating 3/5
