Stone Temple Pilots Get Another Chance

Published Nov. 2, 1999, in The Monitor

Stone Temple Pilots
No. 4
Atlantic

Review by Matthew Webber

On “Glide,” Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland asks us to “give me half a chance from throwing it all away.” As a long-term STP fan, I wonder how many more chances Weiland needs to get his life back on track. I mean, haven’t we given him enough chances already? True STP fans, and it’s a club that steadily loses members, have stuck with Weiland for quite some time now, through rehab, a solo project, and, most recently, jail. It had been four long years since STP’s last album. It’s been about that long since the last STP tour. Has already Weiland “thrown it all away”, his career, his band, his freedom, his sobriety? After this, will any fans be left?

Recorded during an interim in Weiland’s rehab and jail stints, No. 4 could very well be the last STP album ever, since Weiland might self-destruct before becoming the mega-rock star he has always dreamed of being. And he tried so hard to live that dream, and his bandmates were happy to back him up, and if he had just stayed out of jail… The world may never realize how good this band could have been.

Because No. 4 is the rock album the band has always wanted to make.

The band plays with an urgency they haven’t had since Core. You can hear the importance that they place on every drumbeat, on every pounding bass line, on every dynamic chord shift or faux-Led Zeppelin riffage. Gone, for the most part, is the art pop experimentation of Purple and Tiny Music. In, is rock and roll unfiltered. It’s powerful, raw, and -- though by no means perfect -- unpretentious. It’s an album made for stadiums, for the speakers of your car.

With this, the band’s fourth album, STP have finally arrived. Damn the critics; fuck MTV. They don’t need to emulate Pearl Jam or Nirvana. This is the sound of STP. They tried out grunge, they played with pop, and in the span of four albums they have finally found their niche.

Or maybe they found it long ago, back in the days before “Plush” was released, and honed it and refined it and made it their own. Yes, that’s the version I’d like to believe, and maybe, with this album, others will discover it.

Weiland has claimed that “STP may not be the greatest rock and roll band but we’re the only one” and you have to admire him and his band for trying. “Down,” “No Way Out,” and “Sex & Violence” rock. “Atlanta” is maybe the album’s strongest song, a classic, slow-burning STP album-closer.

And Weiland’s voice! The band’s best instrument. Comparisons to Eddie Vedder at this point are moot. On tracks like “Pruno” and “Sour Girl” Weiland voice transcends the mix. He’s plaintive, persuasive, raspy, majestic. Sometimes his voice sounds just plain beautiful. Weiland takes his place, alongside Vedder, in the pantheon of the great rock voices of the decade.

If only the man could pull his shit together. Maybe the band could matter again. Does anybody, other than me, still care?