Sunday, July 8, 2012

Alive in the Superunknown - Thoughts on Soundgarden's Masterpiece

RFF is currently stuck in a 90's grunge state of mind, and with Soundgarden recently reformed and preparing an album of new material, it's worth taking a look back at their high water mark and remembering what made them the band they became.

As the original grunge bands began to cede to rock and roll attrition, the imitators began to cash in. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and especially Pearl Jam all had bands crawling out of the woodwork to try to bleed off fans looking for more of the grunge sound. But for all the interest in drawing out the fame that the Seattle music explosion created, there were very few who attempted to ape Soundgarden's style, largely because Soundgarden is the most difficult of Seattle's big four to imitate. Their specific brand of music pulled deeply from metal. There is a definite Sabbath feel, as there was with most of the original grunge bands, but Chris Cornell's wailing vocals seemed to come more from the Robert Plant school of singing, and Cornell seems to be one of the last (unironic) singers to be pressed from that particular mold.

Soundgarden's peculiar take on metal would add to the inimitable nature of their style as well. Their masterpiece, Superunknown, is perhaps the best example of this. Bizarre tunings and off-kilter time signatures abound on the record. Guitar magazine interviews from the time tell us that rather than the standard EADGBe guitar tuning, they used alternate tunings like CGDGBE ("Mailman" and "Limo Wreck"), EEBBBB ("My Wave" and "The Day I Tried To Live"), CGCGGC ("Head Down"), and CBGDGD ("Like Suicide"). Time signatures that were previously only the territory of the proggiest of prog bands were used: "My Wave" uses 5/4, "Fell On Black Days" uses 6/4 time, "Limo Wreck" uses 15/8, "The Day I Tried To Live" and "Spoonman" alternate between 7/4 and 4/4 sections, and "Black Hole Sun" makes use of both 4/4 and 9/8. The fact that these odd parameters were used for songs that were radio hits is nothing short of astounding, but Soundgarden's talent was such that they could form songs so natural and catchy from such twisted musical architecture. Not to mention that they did it all largely by accident, as the band maintains was the case. No wonder then that there were very few acts that ever wanted to try to imitate them. Sure, anyone could have tried to phone it in, but the result would never have anything near the same feel as the originals, and the effort of any serious attempt would have outweighed the profit.

Superunknown is an album that's easy to love, but hard to understand. Easy to remember, but hard to copy. The lyrics are either oblique or deceptively straightforward. There is anger and frustration in there, but there is a sense of confusion throughout. There is misery, but the lyrics come at it at strange angels compared to the upfront sort that Alice in Chains traded in to great success. Surreality is the norm on Superunknown, from the dream imagery of "Black Hole Sun" to "4th of July," supposedly a transcript of an LSD trip. The themes on the album are hard won, brought back from areas not normally accessed by the mind. Give Superunknown a spin and let it pull you back to 1994. It's worth the trip.