CD Odyssey Disc 481: Soundgarden

Every year this is a weird weekend for me.  The football season isn’t quite over yet, but there is no football on TV as we wait an extra week for the Super Bowl.  No, the Pro Bowl does not count.  They should just turn it into a skills competition if no one is going to hit anyone out there.

This weekend the void created by a lack of football was more easily filled than usual, with my guitar finally arriving!  I haven’t had a single lesson yet, but I already love having it.  After I got it home I went online to learn how to read chord charts (hopefully correctly), and then spent the afternoon trying them out, with varying degrees of success.  Stringing a whole series of such finger acrobatics together seems undoable right now, but hopefully that’ll come after a lot of practice.

Anyway, on to a band that mastered such guitar basics long ago.

Disc 481 is…Superunknown

Artist: Soundgarden

Year of Release: 1994

What’s up with the Cover?  “The Scream” minus any artistic merit.  This cover looks like an out of focus demented elf having a tantrum.  Likely intended to be visceral it comes off looking lame.

How I Came To Know It:  I’d known Soundgarden for many years, so this was just me buying another one of their albums.  I delayed for a while because I found the radio single “Black Hole Sun” annoying, but eventually I dove in.

How It Stacks Up:  I have five Soundgarden albums.  For all of its minor faults, I’d still put “Superunknown” second out of those five, with only “Badmotorfinger” (reviewed back at Disc 283) beating it out.

Rating:  4 stars

While many alternative music lovers had been enjoying Soundgarden since the late eighties, it was “Superunknown” that introduced the band to the masses.  It made for a pretty good first impression.

It helps that “Superunknown” has far and away the best production value of any of their albums.  Earlier records sounded muddy and muted, but “Superunknown” is crisp and loud with good sound separation and arrangements that for the most part avoid going overboard.

All of this lets the band’s assets shine through.  Cornell is a rock-god when it comes to vocals, and few can match his range and intensity, Thayil’s guitar is a brilliant combination of riffs that are thick and heavy like a latter-day Tony Iommi, but with a little bit of funk cleverly mixed in. I understand a lot is said about how the band changed when bassist Hiro Yamamoto was replaced for the previous record, but I actually prefer Ben Shepherd, who delivers some great work on “Superunknown.”

Song-wise, there are some classics on this album.  “Spoonman” is one of my favourite rock songs of all time, and one that I’m determined to re-imagine acoustically as soon as I’ve got a sufficient handle on guitar playing (i.e. – a long time from now).  With that forward-leaning drum beat simulating spoon playing (later joined by actual spoon playing), and one of Thayil’s greatest riffs going, it doesn’t matter that this song may be about little more than how much fun it is to watch a master spoon player have at it.

My MP3 player only holds about 400 songs and because of the CD Odyssey turnover is high, but “Spoonman” just seems to stick around year after year because it is just so damned catchy.

“My Wave” appeals to me for the same reason.  The song is filled with energy and driving guitar, which has you climbing on the band’s wave, which is ironic because the lyrics advise you to keep off their wave.  They also tell the listener not to “piss on their gate” which had me wondering – who does that?  Anyway, back to the song which has a weird outro that makes it about 45 seconds too long.

This is a microcosm of a problem I have with the whole album, which is just a bit too long.  Not just fifteen songs, which is a lot, but over 70 minutes of music.  “Like Suicide” would be a good song at four minutes, but it is an annoying one when it goes on for seven.

The previously maligned “Black Hole Sun” is over five minutes, which for me was five minutes too long.  With the exception of a moderately catchy chorus, I could never figure out why this song was such a huge hit.  Likely it was nothing more than people wanting to like the band, and this song being a lot ‘lighter’ and radio friendly than most of their stuff.  I find it plodding and pointless, and I think taking it and two or three other lesser tracks off the record would push the album as a whole almost to perfection.

This is because even the deep cuts on “Superunknown” are awesome, like the apocalyptic “4^th of July” grinding out its misery as it compares some sort of man-made disaster to the fireworks on America’s birthday.  Yikes.  This song would pair nicely with Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” as part of a ‘songs that take the fun right out of the holidays’ set.  And for those of you wondering, ‘did this guy just compare Soundgarden to Martina McBride?’ the answer is damn straight, I did.  Get out there and broaden your musical horizons.

Back to Superunknown, which despite being too long, and mostly famous for one of its weaker songs, is still a very strong record overall.  As much as I personally prefer Badmotorfinger, if I were trying to get someone interested in Soundgarden, I would probably go with “Superunknown” as more accessible, and still excellent option.

Best tracks:  My Wave, Fell on Black Days, Superunknown, Spoonman, Fresh Tendrils, 4^th of July

Me with my new guitar.  It may be an acoustic, but I bought a stud covered guitar strap because I'm a little rock and roll as well.