Music Review: Stone Temple Pilots - Stone Temple Pilots

In the nine years that have passed since last we heard from recently reunited arena alt-rock giants Stone Temple Pilots, all four original members have kept themselves busy. Singer Scott Weiland had a successful run as singer for supergroup Velvet Revolver (featuring members of Guns N’ Roses) for two albums and released his second solo record (in 2008), while the DeLeo brothers (guitarist Dean and bassist Robert) had a milder sense of achievement with supergroup Army of Anyone, featuring Richard Patrick of Filter as lead singer and Ray Luzier (lately of Korn) behind the kit.

Drummer Eric Kretz mainly worked behind the scenes at his L.A.-based Bomb Shelter Studios, mixing and engineering tracks for a varied list of acts, including Fu Manchu, Damian Marley, Slayer, and Death Cab For Cutie, and also San Francisco rock band Spiral Arms, whom he also reportedly played with.

After reuniting for select shows in 2008, the band, with Weiland focused and drug-free, wrote, recorded and produced its sixth album, simply self-titled (Stone Temple Pilots) last year, finished it up in early 2010, and released it May 25 on Atlantic Records.

Number one rock single “Between The Lines” is the heaviest track on the new disc (drop-d tuning), but it doesn’t have the overdriven sound of (1992) debut album Core and instead has a ‘60s pop/rock vibe to it. You can also spot in the bridge a little resemblance to Nirvana’s “Stay Away” in the vocals. And it all makes for an excellent choice for an album opener and lead single.

True maximum hard rock riffage can be found on “Hazy Daze,” which finds Weiland contrasting the pleasantness of this album highlight with unhappy lyrics, largely about his father.

“Huckleberry Crumble” channels the band’s inner Aerosmith, “Same Old Song And Dance” in particular, while “First Kiss On Mars” sees Weiland sound amazingly and exactly like his hero David Bowie.

This article was first published in full late last week at Blogcritics Magazine. Find the review at this link.

Charlie Doherty’s Favorite 209 Songs from 2000-2009: Part I: 2000-2004

Published originally on January 26, 2010 in Blogcritics Magazine

As one would imagine, this was a bit of a hefty project, coming up with a ridiculous amount of music from 10 years gone by and putting it on a digestible list. I don’t know if I actually accomplished that goal, but after dividing it into two parts (2000-2004 and 2005-2009), it does look impressive, if I don’t say so myself.

2000-2004 Overview

In the first half of this decade, I dug everything from nu metal (Disturbed, System Of A Down, Slipknot) retro synth-pop (The Killers) and electronica (Royksopp) to the garage rock revival, led by a bunch of “the” bands (i.e. The White Stripes, The Strokes).

Veterans like U2, Springsteen, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Filter, Joe Satriani and supergroups of sorts like Broken Social Scene, Audioslave, A Perfect Circle, Velvet Revolver and Zwan were also exciting to follow well into the new millennium - and BSS still is. But it was indie rockers like Death Cab For Cutie, Pinback and “m” bands like Matt Pond PA, Minus The Bear and Modest Mouse that I started listening to and seeing live more and more as the years went by.

There’s music for all moods and seasons in here, whether it’s feel-good hip-hop from Outkast, a metal masterpiece like “Stick Figure” by West Virginian group Byzantine, or more mellow music like M83, Blur’s Cocteau-Twins-esque “Battery In Your Leg,” and Sigur Ros. So yes, as if you couldn’t tell, I like a variety of music, to say the least. The amount of it is insane, I know.

It’s nearly impossible to do a meaningful ranking of all these songs, so here now, in alphabetical order are the 120 songs I remember listening to time and time again that came out during the first five years of the 2000s. Part II, the other 89 favorites from 2005-2009 will be published soon.

If any of these first 120 songs were your favorites too, feel free to comment below.

Part I: 2000-2004

2 Skinnee J’s “Big Beat Evangelist”
311 “Amber”
A Perfect Circle “3 Libras”
A Perfect Circle “The Hollow”
A Perfect Circle “Vanishing”
Adams, Ryan “Nuclear”
Afroman “Because I Got High”
Ashcroft, Richard “New York”
At The Drive-In “Pattern Against User”
At The Drive-In “Invalid Litter Dept.”
Audioslave “Show Me How To Live”
Audioslave “Gasoline”
Beck “Lost Cause”
Black Eyed Peas “Let’s Get Retarded”
Blink 182 “Stay Together For The Kids”
Blur “Battery In Your Leg”
Broken Social Scene “Cause = Time”
Broken Social Scene “Guilty Cubicles”
Byzantine “Stick Figure”
Coldplay “Yellow”
Cypress Hill “Rock Superstar”
Daft Punk “One More Time”
Death Cab For Cutie “Lowell, MA”
Death Cab For Cutie “405”
Death Cab For Cutie “The New Year”
Death Cab For Cutie “A Lack Of Color”
Deftones "Change (In The House of Flies)"
Dianogah "Wrapping The Lamb, Sir"
Disturbed “Stupify”
Dropkick Murphys “The Gauntlet”
Elefant “Misfit”
Eminem “Lose Yourself”
Evanescence “Going Under”
Filter “God Damn Me”
Filter “The Only Way (Is The Wrong Way)”
Flaming Lips “Do You Realize??”
Foo Fighters “All My Life”
Foo Fighters “Times Like These”
Fountains of Wayne “Stacy’s Mom”
Fountains of Wayne “Hey Julie”
Furtado, Nelly “Turn Off The Light”
Godsmack “Sick Of Life”
Gorillaz “Clint Eastwood”
Green Day “American Idiot”
Harvey, PJ “This Mess We’re In (f/Thom Yorke)”
Hot Rod Circuit “Radio Song”
Howe, Greg “A Delicacy”
Idlewild “Idea Track”
In Flames “Pinball Map”
Incubus “Wish You Were Here”
Interpol “Obstacle 1”
Interpol “PDA”
Jimmy Eat World “Sweetness”
The Killers “Mr. Brightside”
The Killers “Smile Like You Mean It”
Lamb of God “Now You’ve Got Something To Die For”
Lekman, Jens “Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song To The Blind Girl”
Lekman, Jens “The Opposite Of Hallelujah”
Linkin Park “Somewhere I Belong”
Linkin Park “One Step Closer”
Linkin Park “Lying From You”
Ludacris “Saturday (Ooh! Oooh!)”
M83 “Run Into Flowers”
Mars Volta "Eriatarka"
Matt Pond PA “Measure 3”
Matt Pond PA “Summer (Butcher Two)”
Mayer, John “Clarity”
Mayer, John “No Such Thing”
Minus The Bear “Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse”
Modest Mouse “Float On”
Modest Mouse “Paper Thin Walls”
Muse “Hysteria”
Muse “Time Is Running Out”
My Morning Jacket “One Big Holiday”
My Morning Jacket “Mahgeetah”
New Order “Turn My Way (w/Billy Corgan)”
Opeth “Windowpane”
Opeth “The Leper Affinity”
Outkast “Hey Ya!”
Outkast “Ms. Jackson”
Pearl Jam “Thumbing My Way”
Pinback “Concrete Seconds”
Postal Service “Such Great Heights”
Pretty Girls Make Graves “Speakers Push The Air”
Queens Of The Stone Age “No One Knows”
Radiohead “Motion Picture Soundtrack”
Radiohead “Wolf At The Door”
Red Hot Chili Peppers “Can’t Stop”
Rehab “Sittin’ At A Bar”
R.E.M. “Bad Day”
The Roots “The Seed 2.0”
Royksopp “Poor Leno”
Satriani, Joe “Until We Say Goodbye”
Satriani, Joe “Up In Flames”
Sigur Ros “The Nothing Song (Njosnavelin)” from Vanilla Sky
Slipknot “The Heretic Anthem”
Smashing Pumpkins “Try, Try, Try”
Soulfly “Jumpdafuckup (f/Corey Taylor)”
Snoop Dog “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
Sparta “Air”
Sparta “While Oceana Sleeps”
Springsteen, Bruce “The Rising”
Springsteen, Bruce “Waiting On A Sunny Day”
The Strokes “Hard To Explain”
Sunny Day Real Estate “The Ocean”
System Of A Down “Chop Suey”
Tool “Parabola”
Travis “Side”
U2 “New York”
U2 “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”
U2 “Yahweh”
Velvet Revolver “Slither”
Weezer “Hashpipe”
Weezer “Island In The Sun”
The White Stripes “Seven Nation Army”
Wilco “Heavy Metal Drummer”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Pin”
Yorn, Pete “Life On A Chain”
Zwan “Come With Me”
Zwan “Settle Down”