Sunday 29 March 2009

Review - Chris Cornell - Scream

Chris Cornell - Scream

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4 out of 10

'Influenced by Pink Floyd's The Wall ' it may be, but the only obvious connections between this crazy collaboration and Waters' conceptual crew are a song called Time and some ticking clocks during Enemy. There's certainly no cohesive concept, unless you think that idea begins and ends with songs which run into one another. Cornell makes a grandly obvious statement from the off, though, with album artwork replete with shots of him smashing guitars. OK, we get the message - except guitars are not entirely absent, just polished to death and smoothed out to nothing - much like the rest of the album.

Timbaland's production work is flawless and results in the musical equivalent of Damien Hirst's diamond-studded skull - expensive, shiny and very, very silly. Only those involved in the making of it will see anything else, I fear. This is a shame, since Cornell obviously isn't afraid to try some new settings for his classic rock voice. He croons through much of Scream in a quite robotic manner, however - in keeping with the android nature of much of the music. Fans of the man who may have got over the shock of the single Part of Me will hang their heads in shame at this collection of vocoder-overloaded, Michael Jackson-style yelps and 1980s blippy thunder. They may not get as far as the pseudo-Bollywood of Take Me Alive, let alone the We Will Rock You drums of Lost Cause. If you find yourself hankering after a Swarovski crystal-studded iPhone, however, you'll probably love it.

Listen: www.myspace.com/chriscornell

Tracklist:
1. Part Of Me
2. Time
3. Sweet Revenge
4. Get Up
5. Ground Zero
6. Never Far Away
7. Take Me Alive
8. Long Gone
9. Scream
10. Enemy
11. Other Side of Town
12. Climbing Up The Walls
13. Watch Out
14. Lost Cause

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