Coming off the again of Badmotorfinger and Superunknown, Soundgarden’s fifth album, Down On The Upside, has typically been unfairly neglected, although it debuted at No.2 on the Billboard chart and moved 200,000 copies in its first week of launch. With hindsight, nonetheless, regardless of the altering traits of the instances (the grunge motion had peaked by 1996), Down On The Upside stands as a strong providing from a band at a crossroads.
Hearken to Down On The Upside now.
Scrutinizing the lyrics of a few of its songs, followers have typically speculated that Down On The Upside was designed to be Soundgarden’s swansong – in spite of everything, they cut up following its launch, earlier than ultimately reuniting 16 years later to report 2012’s King Animal. As guitarist Kim Thayil revealed in a current interview with Blabbermouth, nonetheless, that wasn’t what the band had supposed.
“When we were making that album, [drummer] Matt Cameron and I had talked about there being a next Soundgarden album,” he mentioned. “The fact that there were songs [such as final track ‘Boot Camp’] thematically referencing conclusions on Down On The Upside – well, ultimately that’s a coincidence.” Certainly, Down On The Upside ably demonstrates that Chris Cornell and firm had been quickly evolving and clearly had loads nonetheless to supply.
Straying into new territory
Within the run-up to creating the report, Soundgarden had been adamant about one factor: reproducing Superunknown was not an choice. They’d already road-tested and stockpiled some new materials at European festivals throughout 1995, however they had been keen to interrupt free from the constraints of their signature onerous rock sound they usually additionally hoped to self-produce and seize their new album dwell within the studio.
Ultimately, the band compromised somewhat. They made good on dealing with the manufacturing chores, however they drafted in Superunknown’s assistant engineer, Adam Kasper, for recording classes held at two Seattle complexes, Unhealthy Animals and Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard’s Litho Studios, early in 1996.
Although much less polished than the peerless Superunknown, the report Soundgarden emerged with, on Could 21, 1996, was arguably probably the most various of their profession, and positively one among their most charming. Their aggressive trademark sound nonetheless made its presence felt on the coruscating “Never The Machine Forever” and the extraordinary lead single, “Pretty Noose,” however elsewhere the 4 musicians relished straying into new territory on the jangly, R.E.M.-esque “Switch Opens” and the hybridized “Ty Cobb,” the latter an astonishing mash-up of punk and Americana whereby mandolins went face to face with Cornell and Thayil’s thrashing guitars.
Nevertheless, Down At The Upside actually hit its stride when Soundgarden slowed issues down somewhat. Although ostensibly an ominous homicide ballad, “Burden In My Hand” switched deftly between pastoral, Led Zeppelin III-esque folk-rock and stadium-sized choruses, whereas the band performed with admirable restraint on the brooding “Blow Up The Outside World” and the melancholic “Boot Camp” (“There must be something else/There must be something good far away”), with the latter offering an atypically poignant postscript.
Down On The Upside, then, requires pressing reappraisal greater than another album in Soundgarden’s illustrious canon. Owing to their cut up after the grueling subsequent world tour, it turned the band’s epitaph by default for 16 years. However for a report that inadvertently presaged their demise, it nonetheless sounds fairly rattling life-affirming.
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