Though impressive, that alone isn’t necessarily surprising given what they’ve teased in the past, but the utter seamlessness of the results suggests a band that had been aching to grow for a long time. With Perdida, their second offering with vocalist Jeff Gutt stepping into the frontman role that Weiland made so essential to the band’s identity, Stone Temple Pilots showcase a smooth fluency working within a variety of styles.
Weiland’s 1998 debut solo album 12 Bar Blues would stray even further afield of STP’s sound, but from that point onwards the band reeled itself back in from the precipice, leaving “And So I Know” as a tantalizing promise of what could have been, a doorway looking out onto more exotic vistas the band never stepped through with both feet-until now. Indeed, it’s hard to reconcile STP’s grunge-by-numbers image with the group of musicians who could not only execute a song like that, but also pull it off without a drop of irony. If the first two STP albums contained only faint traces, the pair’s left-field influences became more pronounced in the textures that underscore the band’s more experimental third album, 1996’s Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop.įor a glimpse of just how far out the band could take things if it wanted, we need look no further than the Tiny Music deep cut “And So I Know,” a dream-like bossa-nova ballad that shimmers with jazz chords and flamenco-style guitar. Their next album would provide enough evidence for us to reasonably speculate whether DeLeo and Weiland would have found themselves equally at home working in other, more challenging genres like jazz, art rock and post-punk. It was still far from obvious, though, that Weiland and bassist/guitarist Robert DeLeo both harbored far-reaching tastes that extended well beyond the band’s purview. With Purple, the first signs of quirkiness began to define its sound at its outer edges, along with an increasingly apparent knack for amalgamating elements of classic rock and psychedelia. Even though the main two-note riff on 1994’s “Vasoline,” the second single from the band’s sophomore effort Purple, gives the impression that STP were aiming down to Beavis & Butt-head’s level, the B-flat major 13 sharp 11 jazz chord that permeates the ambience of the song tells a different story.
The reception from critics wasn’t much better, although that didn’t prevent the band from becoming MTV and commercial radio staples-or from achieving iconic status-over the next two years. “Yeah,” answered Butt-Head in his usual deadpan, “Eddie Vedder dyed his hair red.” Legendary MTV cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head offered the following response to the video for “Plush,” Core’s breakout hit: Unfortunately, Weiland’s chameleonic tendencies obscured the breathtaking versatility and crystalline power of his voice, as well as his Bowie-like tendency to change guises almost from the inside out. Outwardly, guitarist Dean DeLeo’s chunky riffwork on Core followed the de-tuned Seattle blueprint while late vocalist Scott Weiland appeared to mimic a who’s-who of then-popular singers including, at various points on the album, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose and (most infamously) Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. We could say Stone Temple Pilots have come a long way, but that’s not entirely accurate. By the same token, the band had gotten so comfortable working within its own established sound that it can openly reference familiar touches from old hits without dulling the freshness of the new material. With its seamless blend of country, British and Mariachi folk, orchestral pop and the soft rock that dominated the AM radio dial in the ’70s, Perdida (which means “lost” in Spanish) finally delivers on the stylistic breadth that STP have hinted at over the years but never quite fully explored.
Stone temple pilots dancing days full#
After all, the Southern California quartet conquered the mainstream in the ’90s, at least initially, by pandering to the prevailing alt-rock tastes of the day with guitar stompers like “Plush” and “Vasoline.” So if you envision STP as a bunch of calculating trend chasers who jumped on the grunge bandwagon with their 1992 debut album Core, that’s because the band did an uncanny job of disguising its most unique attributes.Īlmost 30 years later, those attributes are on full display with the band’s new acoustic album Perdida. Stone Temple Pilots are no exception to this rule, but they ended up in that boat more or less by their own doing. It’s a cruel fact of life that even the most accomplished creative figures get reduced to thumbnail-sized descriptions that don’t capture the full range of their careers.
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