Soundgarden

Item: A-Sides
Author: Steven S. Baldwin

A-Sides

(1997)

Reviewed by Steven S. Baldwin

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Label A&M RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth1999

alternative metal grunge hard rock

Another survivor of the early Nineties fascination with all things Seattle, Soundgarden was one of those other so-called grunge bands that came to the fore earlier this decade in the wake of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, L.A.'s Stone Temple Pilots, and their various imitators. Having been around since 1984, Soundgarden were more than merely the grand-daddies of grunge, but truly innovative fore-runners combining classic rock and heavy metal with post-punk energy as a fitting reaction to insipid eighties glam rock. Unquestionably, Soundgarden were no mere Poison or Cinderella wannabes, but took their cues instead from seventies staples like The Stooges, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Ronnie James Dio, and ended up sounding largely like an earnest amalgamation of them all. Despite their borrowed beats, heavy rotation of their dark videos on MTV helped garner Soundgarden their fifteen-plus minutes in the sun before their mutual break-up in 1997, and A-Sides is a parting-shot collection of their most revered radio hits.

Long-time fans will balk at the overemphasis on Soundgarden's last two and most commercially successful albums, but truth be told, the band did grow less derivative and more interesting, creative, and accessible the longer they were around. Who could forget, for example, Superunknown's "Spoonman" with its heretofore unheard of and inspired spoon-solo? Sadly, that spirited song also shows another regretful facet of Soundgarden's legacy: their aversion for God and the Christian faith. Most likely meant as a celebration of music, Soundgarden nonsensically invokes the personification of rhythm, or the Spoonman, as a purported means of salvation:

Feel the rhythm with your hands
Steal the rhythm while you can
Speak the rhythm on your own
Speak the rhythm all alone, Spoonman
Spoonman, come together with your hands
Save me, I'm together with your plan,
Save me.

Over the course of their six studio albums, Soundgarden have had a lot to say about "God." In fact, Chris Cornell is among the growing movement of Americans who might call themselves "recovered Catholics," who reject God along with the rules and rituals the Catholic Church has often enforced without fully, lovingly and meaningfully communicating their real value. With that background, Cornell uses a lot of Christianized imagery in his work, but the message is always the same: God and the Church are only for the weak and misguided. Curiously, to them this is a fact for which they repeatedly feel a need to remind themselves, and was never more clear than in their song "Holy Water," which is not included in this collection:

Holy water on the brain
And I'm losing sleep
Holy bible on the night stand
Next to me
As I'm raped by another
Monkey circus freak
Trying to take my
Indigence away from me...
It's the big lies
That are more likely to be believed.

On the flip side, a song with a title like "Jesus Christ Pose" seems ripe for more God-bashing, but in fact merely translates images of Jesus' suffering into a doomed relationship. Regardless, Soundgarden's overall central idea is not merely a mix of spiritual frustration and sexual bravado, as it is an agitated statement from an angry group of people who have been disappointed time and again by the Church's failure to offer unconditional and universal love. Given the absence of pure spirituality in the lives of these musicians, it is no wonder they plead apocalyptically "black hole sun, won't you come, and wash away the rain" or lament their inability to "blow up the outside world."

Soundgarden, having nothing to root them in this world or the next, just suffer from interminable unhappiness. If, as a listener of music, you want to hear the sound of unbridled disappointment and aggression or idle boasts of superior sexual bravado swathed in silly euphemisms about Chris Cornell's "snake," then Soundgarden may actually be of sustained interest to you. Another perfectly pithy example of Soundgarden's fixation with despondency and indignation is even immortalized in their ode to baseball legend, "Ty Cobb":

Another motherf@#er goes down the drain
Hard headed f@#k you all
Just add it up to the hot rod death toll.
Sick in the head, sick in the mouth
And I can't hear a word you say
Not a bit, and I don't give a s&t*
I got the glass, I got the steel
I got the love to hate
All I need is your head on a stake.

With disappointingly churlish lyrics like these, many Christian listeners will be turned off and away from Soundgarden, despite some of their more musically ambitious and clever moments in the sun. In the end, Soundgarden became just an early Nineties flavor-of-the-month band with angst and aggression aplenty. Their departure has merely cleared the way for another wave of misguided souls that slipped through the Church's hands, resulting in enraged bands flinging arrows of contention at the God who, despite being the focus of their anger, still loves them all completely.

2.5 tocks