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File Under: New rock favorite staking a claim as a major
artistic force
Soundgarden: Down on the Upside (A&M)

The nineties have become a decade of consolidation in rock and roll. From Seattle's appropriation of vintage Midwestern pre-punk, to the nouveau funk wing and the latest power-pop movement, we've reached a point--and rock is hardly the first art form to get there--where the past is completely present. Average performers regurgitate their influences, while the best reconfigure them into fresh sonic templates. Soundgarden's latest release, Down on the Upside, explores this style blending to even greater effect than the quartet did on its 1994 smash, Superunknown. Upside cuts a broad swath through a couple of decades worth of rock conventions, including ferocious speed-punk ("Ty Cobb," "An Unkind"), stomping metal ("Rhinosaur," "Tighter & Tighter"), melodic torch paeans ("Zero Chance"), and trippy psychedelia ("Dusty," "Switch Opens").

84 This is hardly derivative music, though. Deploying the guitar interplay of Kim Thayil and singer Chris Cornell's double-tracked vocal with the adventurous dynamics of bassist Ben Shepherd and drummer Matt Cameron, Soundgarden pushes in its own direction. The ambient orchestration of "Applebite" might be the album's most obvious experimentation, but the more subtle touches--sped-up mandolin on "Ty Cobb," the deceptively bright bop of "Switch Opens"--articulate an equally distinct vision. Holding it all together are Cornell's doom-drenched lyrics, a catalog of dirgey melancholia captured in lines such as "Fear is strong and love's for everyone/ Who isn't me" and "Born without a friend/ And bound to die alone." There are times when he lapses into pro-forma angst, but when he rails against conformity and authority in "No Attention" and "Switch Opens," respectively, Cornell engages in some genuine social commentary.

Upside has some downsides--mostly notably its length. At sixteen songs, it is too long, and trimming a weaker number such as "Never the Machine Forever" or a minute or two from the ponderous end of "Tighter & Tighter" would have made for an even stronger album. But that only marginally detracts from Soundgarden's achievement of building exceptional new music from a wide array of forebears. --Gary Graff


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