Curiosity can be more powerful than common sense at times. The pairing of Chris Cornell with Timbaland is such a mind-boggling match that curiosity wins. Even the faintest knowledge of those two should elicit the same reaction from everyone, regardless of what they think of either of them. That reaction is: what the fuck? It’s a combo that even the Grammy committee would likely think too bizarre to ever attempt on their yearly telecast. Is one or the other slumming in different territory? Has Cornell’s stock fallen so far that he’d jump genres and make such a blatantly transparent attempt to ensure that he shifts units? Does Timbaland envision himself so invincible as a producer that he feels like showing off and taking a fallen star to grand new heights? Or have they both lost their freakin' minds?
The album cover not-so-subtly shows Cornell giving up on the guitars that made him a star. The typeface blandly suggests the digital. So has Cornell sold out? That question depends on whether you already think he sold out years ago (or if you even believe that “selling out” qualifies anymore). I think the more appropriate question is whether he’s even trying anymore. His partner in crime certainly isn’t. As far as Timbaland’s uneven output has been, this certainly isn’t his A-game. It sounds phoned in for the most part: ultra-generic dance beats and ultra-obvious electronic tricks. There’s not a single unique stamp across the hour-plus endeavor. Artless, soulless and ultimately pretty dull, this isn’t as awful as it could have been, but it’s still pretty worthless.
For an album called Scream, it’s a true waste of Cornell’s vocal talents to have him almost never raise the tone of his voice beyond a standard-issue R&B/pop warble. Half the time, it’s not even really him. Computers copy and paste his singing towards flat back-ups floating alongside the sleek audio gurgles. The new Auto-Tune fad is used more than once, wasting Cornell’s powerful range that made him a force of nature in the 90s. Maybe screaming his way through Audioslave gunk ruined his ability to belt like a banshee, but drowning any shred of “live performance” in a cesspool of overdubs, fills and knobby synth stabs can’t possibly be the best way to go.
As for Timbaland, the man is so prolific and ubiquitous nowadays that his successes are beginning to seem more like accidents than strokes of genius. Having tried everything under the sun, he was bound to strike gold eventually, which makes all of his failures make more sense in the grand scheme. And to be fair, his efforts were aided by Ryan Tedder, Justin Timberlake and others, which, let’s face it, doesn’t help. But this is Timbaland’s thing and it’s so flippantly half-hearted, I’m reminded of the old SNL sketch that had Frank Sinatra knocking out duets so fast he doesn’t even bother to finish the tunes before moving on. Timbaland probably reserved the rest of his afternoon to counting bills.
The songs themselves can’t quite touch mediocrity but at least they mostly avoid scraping the bottom of utter tripe. The only occasions that they truly embarrass on an individual basis is when unnecessary effects are applied, like the intro fanfare of leadoff “Part of Me,” the Crunk-junk hey-heys of “Watch Out,” and the snippets of Middle Eastern and Irish melodies that never incorporate themselves as anything more than a flashy trick (ditto for a couple of appearances of thrashing electric guitars). Then there’s the late album plug-ins of spare, acoustic pseudo-balladry that suggest that Cornell would be better off going in this direction, but against the rest of Scream, it just sounds like a too-little-too-late crack at bringing gravitas to a slick but muddled dance journey. And they’re incomplete, too—less than a minute of outro noodling and a “secret track” that’s completely unremarkable.
The successes are fleeting and moderate at best. There's the skittering New Wave vibe of “Ground Zero,” a hollow but catchy chorus melody on “Time,” a few brief seconds here and there of Cornell letting his rawk flag fly. But ultimately “Ground Zero” feels too derivative of better inspirations, the words and pile-on of tricks deflate the silly glee of “Time” and every other time Cornell opens his mouth rings of flatness or out-of-his-element desperation. Despite the fact that many of these songs (especially early on) flow into each other quite efficiently, this sounds like music made by compromises and committees. Cornell apparently believes in this stuff but does anyone else?
Not too stunningly, this isn’t merely a case of bad musical choices but also of the lyrical variety. Cornell gets co-writing credit for every song on here, but I have a hard time believing that he would willingly come up with "winners" like, “Pain and suffering will come to those when I get even,” “You need a backbone to roll with the world/You got to get you one to run with the bulls,” and the repeated refrain of, “That bitch ain’t a part of me.” But Cornell boasts credit for most of the songwriting himself (mistake, maybe?) and insists that he was in charge. Going so far as comparing the album to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Queen’s A Night at the Opera suggests that the man might be dangerously insane.
Since it’s so utterly conservative and inoffensive, there are far worse options out there for the consumer to blow a fistful of cash on. But because it isn’t noteworthy in its awfulness, it can’t even rest on the laurels of an epic failure. Therefore, it won’t be remembered years from now as a laughable train wreck like we do of KISS going disco, Eddie Murphy trying his hand at party anthems or Our Lady Peace wanting a career like Creed’s. It just sits there, all shiny and devoid of nutritional value, destined to gather dust in the cheap music house bins for decades to come. So the curiosity won’t kill you, but it’ll never live up to your expectations no matter how high or low they are.
"Scream" is on sale March 10, 2009 from Interscope.
