The last time we heard from the loveable Stone Temple Pilots in 1996 was after the release of
Tiny Music...Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, which seemed more like a sense of enlightenment and maturity from the harshly criticized band, labeled as nothing more but 5th rate Pearl Jam ripoffs trying to be successful, or more specifically, a trend band. That was true in
Core with Dead & Bloated and Crackerman, but the band attempted to break away from their critics, by making an attempt at a quantum leap with their sophomore album,
Purple. Purple is a wonderful album by itself, but had minimal results with songs like Lounge Fly and Unglued.
Tiny Music sounds nothing like Core or Purple, with major improvements from the band. While it may still have the same hints of grunge in Scott's lyrical style, guitarist Dean DeLeo was able to majorly aid the band change their sound into a more psych-pop influence, with the new psychedelic licks he used perfectly in Lady Picture Show and Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart. That one single album widened the band's musical plateau, and set the mood for an epic follow up from their success in Tiny Music.
The band decides to split because of Scott's drug overuse and upcoming solo album,
12 Bar Blues, while the rest of the band forms the side project band, Talk Show. No one was able to earn much success from their side projects, so in 1999, the band reunites to record their fourth album, ironically titled
No.4. It might have been good that the band reunited, but the only thing wrong is that No. 4 feels like a step back into the hard rock stages of Purple rather than advancing their plateau even further.
Down was a great song at first, showing a darker side of the drug troubled Scott Weiland, but it immediately got boring and dull with the major repetitiveness throughout the first 2 minutes of the song with the lyrics and same riffs. One thing I do like is that the production done on Eric's drums sounds clearer than ever, and it's truly a refreshing sight to see that the band was able to somewhat keep maturing in Down, but the only thing I have to call Down is nothing but a second-rate ripoff of Meat Plow from Purple.
Pruno goes back to the psych-pop influences found in Tiny Music, and this is easily one of the best songs on No.4 in this fan's opinion. Scott has wonderful vocal ability, and he shows it well in the bridge while providing the harmonzing background vocals.
Sour Girl is definitely the song that caught everyone's attention, with the well written lyrics that showed Scott's fading marriage to his wife, Mary. Again, he holds notes with incredible quality as usual, and a big surprise in this song has definitely got to be Rob's bass. This is one of the few well produced songs that Brendan O' Brien has shown mastery on, and the bassline in this song is rather refreshing. But then we have
No Way Out, which this song, along with
MC5, are the two worst songs on this averagely weak album.
No Way Out has some of the weakest lyrics I've heard, as Scott randomly yells, "Keep it away, now, mother***er, now, Keep It Away!" and "Away now, No Way Out!" The song's formula is very simple: a 4 line stanza, followed by the first chorus, then another 4 line stanza, then followed by the second chorus, as the first and second chorus repeat, then the first stanza repeats again, and then fades with the second chorus. This shows the lack of originality and creativity from Scott Weiland that I've seen, and Dean doesn't even change his tab patterns much. And now for MC5. While this does have an excellent and unexpected drum solo from Eric Kretz, the band continues the No Way Out formula. I shouldn't have to waste my time explaining that formula, so I won't.
While No.4 does have its atmospheric moments and continued musical progressions from Tiny Music, the weakest moments of this album really bring the album down and shows the band's slowly fading musical ability, while ripping off Purple in the process. Purple had much better song writing and masterpiece worthy songs, which is what No.4 tries to recapture, but ultimately fails in the process and starts to open the band's casket into their doomed fate. A band that did such a great job to break away from the Pearl Jam ripoff labels in Tiny Music, only just to throw it all away in No.4 and the band's final album, Shangri-La Dee Da, showing the band's last days of their decade reign as the creme de la creme of '90s grunge rock bands. Because of this, my final rating for this attempt at a return is a 2.5, succeeding in some places, but failing in many.
