Chris Cornell Reveals New Sound

By Broadside Correspondent Anthony Cusumano.

For the past two decades, Chris Cornell has been one of rock’s greatest and most dependable forces, racking up more than a dozen top 20 mainstream rock hits as the frontman for bands such as Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of the Dog.

Last year, however, Cornell announced a major departure from his familiar sound in the form of a collaboration, Scream, with hip-hop producer Timbaland. This was akin to treason in the eyes of grunge fans, who denounced the project before a single note was heard.

Originally set for an October release, the controversial album was pushed back several times, and has now finally arrived in stores with little fanfare. If Cornell’s goal was to remove this record from the public consciousness, it was one of the few things about Scream where he had the right idea.

It is commendable for an artist to try and break new ground to not to become stagnant, and in fairness, the album is not a betrayal to fans.

As Cornell told Entertainment Weekly, “The only way that would happen is if I sent some goon squad to everyone’s house to get their CD collections and take all the old songs away.”

But what is truly depressing about Scream is not Cornell’s desperate attempt at hipness, but that some of the tracks could potentially have been great in his conventional style. There are good songs to be found in “Time” and “Never Far Away” if listeners can uncover them from the mess of processed vocals and repetitive beats.

Not every track is a winner though, as evidenced by opener “Part of Me.” The odd Mighty Mouse-style prelude leads into eerie, mystic sound effects that then transform into a grating dance beat. But it is the chorus—“That bitch ain’t a part of me,” repeated ad nauseum—that really sets the tone for the album, which is, to put it mildly, embarrassing. Cornell is hardly a stranger to gratuitous cursing—take Soundgarden’s “Ty Cobb” or “Big Dumb Sex” for instance—but in the past, it was a tool he used for ironic shock value. Here, the only shocker is how low Cornell has sunk to earn a place in the modern music market.

On “Sweet Revenge,” Chris becomes the love child that Michael Jackson and Kanye West could (mercifully) never have, while the schmaltzy “Long Gone” is audio Velveeta—it is not even good enough to be considered cheesy. “Get Up” perhaps steers the furthest from the classic Cornell sound, a pulsating club-ready track completely devoid of emotion.

“Take Me Alive” is only notable for an appearance by Justin Timberlake, almost as though Chris needed to verify that Justin was not blindsided by Cornell’s swiping of Timberlake’s style over the course of the album. Meanwhile, back-to-back cuts “Other Side of Town” and “Climbing Up the Walls” feature nearly identical-sounding choruses, although interchangeability is hardly rare on this record.

There are some songs on Scream that work. “Watch Out” is catchy enough to make up for the sheer inanity of its lyrics, and despite a middle eight that somewhat disrupts the flow, the hypnotic “Ground Zero” demands repeat listens and features one of Cornell’s best vocal performances on the album. But Scream’s shining moment ironically arrives in an unlisted track: a bluesy, harmonica-driven lament about being “never more than two drinks away from crying.” Completely unlike anything else Cornell has ever done (let alone the rest of Scream), it is proof that experimentation can yield amazing results when done properly.

Save that glorious track, which stands on its own, the songs all segue into one another, which is nifty, but not altogether desirable in the iPod generation. Nearly every aspect of the album feels, at best, misguided; at worst, completely horrific. For those with a morbid curiosity to hear the album, it is worth noting that a bonus track is available on the Barnes & Noble edition of Scream, “Lost Cause.”

Unfortunately, that title sums up the album all too well.