The Unexpected And Amazingly Not Unwelcome Return Of Soundgarden

  In this awards season [yea! NOT!] the nominee and winner of the "Sneered At, Eye Rolling and Tongue Clicking Inducing, 'Why-Do-They-Want-To-Do-That' Invoking Attempt At A Reunion / Comeback" goes to.... Soundgarden. Soundgarden is unable or unwilling to show up in my computer room / music den, so I will award 20 pounds of kitty litter to my snarky cat Mojo instead. Use it in good health my fuzzy friend!

  While I thought ending Soundgarden on the odd but still under rated Down On the Upside left something unfinished. DOtU is no Superuknown, which was no Badmotorfinger, which was no Louder Than Love... you get the idea. Soundgarden always seemed like an always moving target. Some people don't dig that. Some people like the rawness of Ultramega OK or Louder, a lot of people bought Badmotorfinger and Superunknown. And I think a lot of people were puzzled by Down And stayed away from it.

  So now they pop up a decade and a half (+ / -) later with a new album. I admit, I really, really really thought "Why?" And having learned the lessons about impulse buying a new album by a favorite band [I am looking squarely at you with daggers in my eyes Aerosmith Get A Grip] I skipped this when it arrived. [Of course never listening to radio - modern or otherwise - where would I be exposed to it anyway?] I skipped it in my recommended list on Amazon right up to the point it was $ 3.99. Half the price of a used CD? OK. Download accomplished. But it still took me a week and a half / two weeks to remember to burn a CD for the work trek. Yeah, I checked the samples of the songs before I bought the thing, but still expectations are a bitch. I'm just hoping that I am not massively underwhelmed [Hello, Robbie Robertson, most boring album of 2011!].

   I was not disappointed. In fact, I was surprised bordering on amazed. King Animal picks up right where the band left off. Yes, everyone is saying that. Lester Bangs is probably screaming it from his grave. What ever happened in the 'lost years' [Cornell's solo albums, Audioslave, Matt Cameron joining Pearl Jam, Kim Thayil and Ben Sheppard disappearing into the ether] must have recharged the magic for these guys. And that's the thing - I think Soundgarden is a band that is the sum of its parts. Those four people get in a room and it sounds like this. Little heavier, little lighter at times, more swirly here, more straight ahead riffing here... but all the pieces fit.

  First song, Been Away Too Long  - guitars, band locks in on a new riff, then Cornell arrives - the voice is raspy and tinny like he has been gargling with ground glass and had pea gravel mixed in with his Grape Nuts. Have all the years of going for those high notes on Jesus Christ Pose, New Damage, Never the Machine Forever and Superunknown - has is come to this? 25 years of shredding his vocal chords, and I think 'Too bad, he's had it. Couldn't they have got some studio trick to fix it?' But then how rock and roll would that be? Zero. This is brave - "Hey I'm here older, greyer and wiser and I'm I'm giving it all I've got!" But the music swirling around him is locked in - like heat seeking missile locked in. Thayil, Sheppard and Cameron are riding that riff for all it's worth and more. They even kick the riff up a notch on the next track, Non-State Actor. Cornell's voice still fits into this, even if he's still a little hoarse. How Soundgarden is the swirling feedback from 2:42 to 3:04, sliding into a deceptively simple and amazingly tasteful guitar solo?

  The third song, By Crooked Steps is where we hit the pay dirt. Cornell's voice is back in familiar range and Thayil adds amazing flourishing riffs and licks over a super insistent throbbing pulsing riff that wouldn't have been out of place on Superunknown. If you're listening closely, you will  here some fantastically tasty work on bass by Ben Sheppard. in fact, I have a great new appreciation for Sheppard and I think I will have to check more of his work using my ancient but honorable Radio Shack Nova 40 headphones. A Thousand Days Before begins with some noodling on sitars and droning, then the riff kicks in, just a slow steady riding rhythm, the Arabic cousin to Searching With My Good Eye Closed.  Bones of Birds hits that sweet spot, the slow burn akin to Switch Opens or Head Down.

  I'm not going to go track by track over this thing. I will only say this if you were / are a Soundgarden fan - I mean a fan who really appreciated the music, not a poser who bought Superunknown just for Black Hole Sun and hated the rest of it - then this is a record you want to hear. I'm nto saying it'll make you feel 21 [or 25 or 29] again, but it's like getting a phone call from an old friend who you haven't talked to in AGES.