Concert Review: Chris Cornell live at Stubb’s

My editor at the American-Statesman asked me if I’d cover Chris Cornell’s show at Stubb’s and considering the economy, I couldn’t say no. Despite getting made fun of for years, I’ve been a Soundgarden fan since 1988. His post-Soundgarden band was a more difficult sell for me. I love Rage Against the Machine, but I found much their post-Zach de la Rocha collaboration with Cornell in Audioslave  to be rock radio crapola. Music for the masses. Hoi polloi elevator music.

The album will make you want to scream, "Why did I pay for this!"

I was hoping Cornell’s adventurous third solo record would turn out well since he collaborated with hip-hop producer Timberland. Turns out Cornell has lost the plot; that album reminded me of that album where Garth Brooks played pop music as a guy named Chris Gaines. Don’t remember that happening? Exactly. You shouldn’t remember as these type of unsuccessful experiments in sound aren’t worthy of being remembered by the pop culture cannon.

My review of Cornell’s show is pasted below. You’ll see a comment from one of his die-hard fans where she took offense to my description of Cornell’s rhythm section. All I can say is, sister, just cause Cornell hand-picked his musicians, it doesn’t make what they’re playing good.

The original version of the review ran in the Austin American-Statesman here.

By V.M. Black | Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 12:24 PM

During Monday evening’s sold-out show at Stubb’s, Chris Cornell rocked, despite the fact that “Scream” – the new album he’s touring behind – is a divisively experimental hot mess.

“Scream” was produced and co-written with hip-hop mega-producer Timbaland (Justin Timberlake, Madonna) and finds Cornell singing over Timbaland’s beats and electro bells and whistles. Fortunately for Cornell’s longtime fans, when he played his new hip-hop-meets-pop songs, he turned up the rock quotient and dialed down the hip-hop beats and backing loops, making the experimental portion of his new songs almost unrecognizable. If you were one of the longtime Soundgarden/Audioslave fans that found “Scream” to be heresy to Cornell’s oeuvre, then the live show should have put your mind at ease quickly.

Show highlights included Cornell’s silvery falsetto on the melancholy, Led Zepplin-bitten “Seasons,” the inescapable groove of Audioslave’s “Cochise” and when the audience sang the entire second chorus of the Audioslave radio hit “Like A Stone.”

And although the live versions of the “Scream” tracks were umpteen times better than the Timbaland recorded versions, the overall performance was still maddening in many ways.

Unlike Audioslave (or Soundgarden for that matter), Cornell’s backing band is not a super-group; they were not up to the task of complementing Cornell’s own good taste in dynamics. His bassist and drummer over-played throughout all the songs. As band leader, Cornell should have put the clampdown on all that noodling during the initial tour rehearsals.

During a pretty faithful version of the Soundgarden hit “Burden In My Hand,” bassist Corey McCormick was playing like a music school grad that can’t help but justify his existence by showing off his chops. Likewise drummer Jason Sutter overused his double-beater kick drum pedal during “Cochise” to the point of distraction.

Despite this, the audience was definitely satiated, at least until Austin’s sound curfew left Cornell with no time for an encore shortly after 10:30 p.m.

“Everybody is still here after 15 minutes (waiting for an encore),” longtime Cornell fan Jamie Wang said. “I’m kinda speechless that he didn’t come back out. Usually (an artist) will come back out and at least acknowledge the audience … it was a good show nonetheless.”

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