Review Summary: Starting to sound like tired old men
As the new millennium dawned, AC/DC essentially had nothing left left to prove. Like many bands of their generation, their legacy was well-secured as they remain a major concert draw, but creative endeavors at this point become less to map out a trajectory and more to periodically check in to see how the fellas are doing. Ballbreaker had a part in setting up a more laissex-faire late-era AC/DC, but 2000’s Stiff Upper Lip is where they really lapsed into this state of semi-retirement.
For what it’s worth, this album does a good job in sustaining the organic vibe from its predecessor courtesy of elder brother George Young’s return to produce. The musicians’ ages are undeniably starting to show with the instrumentation leaning more on their blues elements, resulting in more laid back rhythms and the vocals picking up even more of a throaty gravel. It’s the sort of approach that could work with more commitment to the adjustments, especially since the guitars do keep a thick presence, but the lessened energy gets harder to ignore when the band still insists on playing at a power level that they aren’t fully capable of delivering.
It also doesn’t help that this might be the first AC/DC album ever to not have any particularly notable songs. A track like “Meltdown” manages to be fairly catchy with its bright shuffle but isn’t exactly greatest hits material. “House of Jazz” and “Safe In New York City” have solid ideas, the latter attempts to channel “Shake a Leg,” though aren’t flashy enough to cross over while “Hold Me Back” and “Can’t Stand Still” give me Fly on the Wall flashbacks.
One can imagine a song like “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll” playing out better with a heavier performance, but the album’s back half comes off lethargic and directionless. You know something’s wrong when a song like “Come and Get It” is more memorable for its weird old man trade-off voice in the chorus than the actual riff.
At the end of the day, AC/DC started sounding like tired old men with Stiff Upper Lip. It’s certainly not a disaster of an album since the musicianship is as rock-solid and filled with personality as ever, but don’t seem to have allowed their more restrained approach to better reflect in the songwriting. It’s a mix of tracks that either could’ve been better had they been played decades ago or just feel like tacked-on exercises. Previous albums in the Johnson era were conflicted enough to feel compelling in their ways, but this is the first to feel truly unexceptional.
