posted 08/07/2005 (Sun) @ 03:25 pm
>>> Music Reviews
A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step (2003)
Alternative / Metal / Hard Rock
Musicians Anonymous
- The Package
- Weak And Powerless
- The Noose
- Blue
- Vanishing
- A Stranger
- The Outsider
- Crimes
- The Nurse Who Loved Me
- Pet
- Lullaby
- Gravity
Few people can divide a room more quickly than that little darling, Maynard James Keenan. What he lacks in likeability he makes up for in charisma, in that weird, semi-militant, Jung-spouting pseudo-celebrity manner that only Keenan or a Chuck Palahniuk character can manage. The irony of Keenanites debating the angelic qualities and deific power of his voice while Keenan howls “Fuck your god!” (or some reasonable facsimile) over the din of tidal wave metal riffage cannot be overlooked. But enough about Tool, and Maynard, for that matter: the real man to blame for Thirteenth Step is Billy Howerdel, the only other remaining member from A Perfect Circle’s original line-up.
Howerdel, whose personal history as a songwriting roadie went a long way towards building him a house of credibility before the release of A Perfect Circle’s first album, has fallen prey to the time-honored, signature sophomore slump, adhering to the cliché philosophy of “a lifetime for the first, two years for the follow-up,” consequences be damned. Admittedly, the entire project has been in turmoil with departures, arrivals, and pretty much everyone treating the “not a side project” with the relative indifference shown to “side projects.”
The record opens with the metaphorical rubbing of sleep from the eyes that is “The Package,” so distant in tone and mood from the kick in the balls that was “The Hollow” as to be even more jarring to the listener. Using atmosphere as a crutch before bringing down a lackluster riff about four minutes in, “The Package,” while a failure in execution, succeeds in at least one other area: as the first track, it sets the tone for the record. And, to clarify for all the Lateralus fans, that tone is called “boring.”
This is not to say that being brooding and atmospheric can’t be entertaining or good, or that decibels should be a universal measurement of quality (see APC’s first record, for example) — it’s just that no one chooses to listen to Slint’s Spiderland during a $200 seaweed wrap treatment (using seaweed harvested off the coast of Brittany in France). Thirteenth Step spends much more time brooding in the Enya sense than in that of Mogwai, or, say, A Perfect Circle. “Orestes” and “Magdalena” had definite moody shapes and colors. Contrasted with the meandering, dismelodious “Vanishing,” or “Crimes” and “Lullaby” (the signature related-to-a-Maynard-James-Keenan-project throwaway tracks that make a show of not even attempting musicality in favor of “atmospherics” or “art”), the lead-off single “Weak and Powerless” makes good on multiple meanings of “lead-off single” in its catchy verse-chorus-verse-ity. It’s a tale of woe so old and familiar, you’d think by now they’d have come up with a 12-step plan for those unable to cope.
“Blue” opens with a weirdly-toned and tuned electric guitar riff that broods along into a haunting chorus, making for one of A Perfect Circle’s best songs; other standouts include “The Outsider,” with its simple riff and unyielding heaviness topped off with Howerdel’s howling Les Paul into a Marshall stack lead lines, and, yes, “Weak and Powerless.”
“The Nurse Who Loved Me,” originally by Failure, makes a ProTools-spackled appearance on Thirteenth Step (as a “tribute” to the original; see MIDI files of early-to-mid-’90s pop-rock songs) with all the grace of a clean-shaven bearded lady. Anyone crazy enough to be at the circus the night before probably isn’t surprised, per se, but the bearded lady is just so damned BORING without her beard. While the song’s concept stays relatively intact, right down to the way the violins in APC’s version start to sound skewed and drug-addled toward the end, its soul is predictably missing. It’s hard to ruin a good melody (thanks Greg), but knocking the wind out of it is easy. “The Nurse” is a good example of what’s wrong with this record: reliance on a digitized sound that rapes the life out of the actual instruments being used, creating a sound akin to gothic elevator music.
Look at the killboard. Six aimless dirges, one elevator-music-esque rape of a melody, and five highly-listenable songs does not a consistent album make.
The year 2003 is, for the most part, the Year of the Health Spa for overtly successful and acceptably artistic heavy metal. The self-titled Deftones tripped over its own muddied 7-string guitars; Zwan developed stigmata so noticeable and frightening as to scare off droves of mortal men made uncomfortable by Corgan’s constant deific name-dropping and creepy allusions to fairy tales in interviews; and then Thirteenth Step landed on our doorstep full of promises but vexingly D.O.A., adding yet more support for the old battlegrunt of “rock is dead.” Well, it isn’t yet, but it is definitely suffering from Alzheimer’s, or at the very least some mild kalopsia. And frankly, I’m not loving it.
It’s still better than Emotive, though. Good lord.
Tags: a perfect circle, alt-metal, alternative, disappointments, hard rock, thirteenth step
