Quarterlifeparty

Stream it here

One thing you have to understand before you listen to Chinese Democracy is that If you don’t listen to it in some sort of rock time vacuum, then you aren’t going to enjoy it. This is music that doesn’t really fit anywhere in today’s musical landscape. I’m not sure whether it’s above it, below it, or just an anomaly.  The massive hype and ridiculously long production time makes this album seem on one hand like a big letdown, and then on the other hand enjoyable for its grandiose nature. Everything from the build-up to the production is over-the-top. This is more of an event than an album at this point.

So with this out of the way, I have to say that I liked Chinese Democracy. I was a little affected by Chuck Klosterman’s excellent review of the album on the AV club.  I like the point about it being “The Last Album”. The couple times I had briefly put it on  before reading the review caused many cringes. But the review made me look at it in another way, give it another listen, and enjoy it for what it is (or maybe I am just rationalizing).

I used to be a pretty big Guns fan back in the days of Appetite and Use Your Illusion. Skip to 2002 when Axl toured with Buckethead (and crew) . I dished out the money to go see them in D.C only for the show to get disappointingly cancelled because of the riots in Phili the day before. The leaks I had heard during the 6 years of Axl Rose’s “hermitting” have been pretty awful, and there are definitely some awful moments on this album when you put them in today’s musical context. But throughout the awfulness there is one redeeming factor about this album…. Buckethead. He takes the guitar shredding of Slash and catapults it into outer space. I have listened to my share of Buckethead over the years, usually he plays pretty experiemental music by himself or with a drummer (or classical guitar music on Coma), and it’s interesting to hear him with such a genre specific band. There is some very detailed musicianship going on here.  The spanish guitar that begins and ends “If The World” and the solos on pretty much every other song are something to marvel at.

As for Axl, he’s hit or miss in my book. The production overall sounds amazing. I am so used to listening to Indie Rock where most of the production is fairly normal or purposefully bad to make a band sound more “Real” that it’s a little jarring listening to this “Thriller”-esue production quality. Axl’s vocals sound amazing and still no one can shriek in key like he does.   Although the shrill of his voice sometimes offsets the music in a negative way, it’s even often times laughable. And maybe this is because that shriek has become so much of a cliche now that it’s hard to listen to it like I did on Appetite for Destruction.

If I can put myself back in 1990′s time when Metallica was releasing the Black Album and Guns N Roses had sold a trillion copies of Use Your Illusion, then this all makes sense. Listening to a new album that has nostalgia is a little strange.  It’s impossible for me to put this anywhere on the map. Ranking it with other Guns N Roses albums I would say it is pretty equal with them.  One thing I didn’t expect is for  Chinese Democracy to still sound so much like the old Guns N Roses. I figured Axl was going to break out some more electronic sampling and try out rapping. I thought Buckethead would completely change the sound of the band. I thought it would be an even more of an updated sound than it is, but it’s not in a drastic way and it might be in all the right ways.  It’s a 90′s album, but then again if music is cyclical and the 90′s are coming back in as a trend to copy, then maybe it’s ahead of it’s time.

Best Songs:
If The World
I.R.S

Worst Songs
Probably all of them

Tags: , guns n roses