Chicken stew
Written: Oct 26 '09 (Updated Oct 26 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rearranged tradition
Cons: Overextended
The Bottom Line: CHICKENFOOT's debut is more of the same that you expect
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| silktempest's Full Review: Chickenfoot [Digipak] by Chickenfoot |
When things are institutionalized, it is hard to speak of originality. Path-dependency is a corollary of social institutionalization. The reiteration of acts, the recurrence of meaning and the repetition of choice converge to render the world identical with itself. What initially was something unprecedented becomes something expected, then becomes second nature.
CHICKENFOOT's debut album is what we get after decades of Rock N'Roll institutionalization. Guitar solos are protocols. Husky vocals are mandatory. Humongous bass lines and loose drumming are bread and butter.
We get this band from four institutions in themselves - SAMMY HAGAR, CHAD SMITH, JOE SATRIANI, MICHAEL ANTHONY. Two VAN HALENS, a CHILI PEPPER and a guitar hero that formerly replaced RITCHIE BLACKMORE in DEEP PURPLE.
We can put Pitchfork and NME aside in what comes to purging records in their search for originality. Chickenfoot, the record, is the reiteration of Rock N'Roll possibilities than have become second nature, a mode of interpretation that has become a cultural bedrock for uncountable teenage musical incursions.
This band, according to their participants, resulted from spontaneous jamming, mutual empathy, some good Rock N'Roll fun onstage - and some spots in their agendas. It is half a latter-day teenage experience and a marketing great leap beyond - during PEPPERS' hiatus, as VAN HALEN tours with DAVE LEE ROTH and EDWARD's bassist son.
In a literal sense, CHICKENFOOT is what their participants make of it. The band's name was provisional to all but quickly was embraced by the participants. What they do is what you get.
What is really, really striking is that CHICKENFOOT is an attempt to broaden their participants' worldviews. A looser SATRIANI, a protagonist SMITH, an earnest HAGAR and a versatile ANTHONY? They arrived at these crossroads from Rock N'Roll consecrated routes. There is a fascinating, often frustrating, attrition between what the guys try to convey and the means they employ. The dynamics the participants engender simultaneously pushed forward and keeps things reluctantly in place. For the sake of Indie experimentalism, you can't underestimate the efforts. Even when they eventually sound like EXTREME.
Initially coming across as a reflective latter-day ROBERT PLANT number, Learning to Fall displays the contradiction in its multiple allure. SMITH and HAGAR sound awkwardly contrived, SATRIANI and ANTHONY professionally committed. For a while we will not remember these guys' bands. Eventually the song trespasses PEARL JAM territory, contradictorily with a SATRIANI bridge resembling Edward VAN HALEN before another ethereal soloing in which HAGAR morphs into Eddie Vedder. The song unfolds with unease, finding its way to sparse Classic Rock megalomania, modesty learning to fly giving way to grandiosity falling. It is a formative stage of a band too worried about external acceptance.
My Kinda Girl drags for 4 minutes between LIMP BIZKIT's Behind Blue Eyes unreflective cover's intro and WHITESNAKE's testosterone. The number is the closest they get to HAGAR's party booze Hard Rock - with a harmonica and ANTHONY's backing vocals fighting each other after the nice Hair Metal chorus (a single in the making). You will find unusual SATRIANI soloing for 30 seconds only - indeed, this is the most contrived soloing of his entire career. Muscular prowess from the vets.
Sexy Little Thing is an Eastern-flanged Blues number outpouring retro sonorities from every angle - with a vaguely ROLLING STONES riff finding a HUMBLE PIE rhythm to resemble AC/DC's Hard as a Rock before HAGAR testifies "I wanna roll" and "love love love/sexy little thing". Then a bluesy solo from SATCH remembering 1995 before acoustic guitars do not coping with HAGAR's lack of subtlety. If THE CULT needs a cover choice, here it is for your pleasure. It never strays too much from the comfort zone of Classic Rock formula. Say, they don't tackle political issues so well. Let's stick to girls.
A LED ZEPPELINian acoustic ballad? Future in the Past promises, but quickly vanishes in another elaborated and elongated Hard Rock balladry before it retreats to undistinguished AOR stuff. If future is something where one lives, there is such a future; if it implies change and breaking with past, no way. An Eastern guitar lick provides the bedrock for a never-ending flanging SLASHian solo, from which SMITH is the winner, with its relentless pound, and in which HAGAR nearly disappears. It bears the prolix grandiosity of a larger-than-life GUNS N'ROSES. After Chinese Democracy, maybe the world needed such a thing.
AC/DC with a 1990s sheen? It is really disquieting. Runnin' Out is a ramshackle Hard Rock number with guts exposed - HAGAR sings afterthought, ANTHONY provided backing vocals, SATRIANI confined in dire straits of efficiency, SMITH never minded the proceedings. It is more structured than Learning to Fall, but it sounds only half as enthusiastic. Once in a lifetime they sound like a ragged cover band, Angus Young with Women and Children First backings.
Turnin' Left reminds me of...EXTREME!!! Yes. Nuno Bettencourt and Gary Cherone (especially Gary) always wanted to be VAN HAGAR and here, history takes a definitely odd turn, with HAGAR and SATRIANI (!) reproducing the sonority of forgotten tracks such as Get the Funk Out and Cynical. But one still has to cope with the chorus, which ups the ante for EXTREME comparisons. They reach a higher plateau - Balance-era VAN HAGAR. Maybe...CHICKENFOOT used some unreleased songs. 5 minutes and going, going, going with the Mammoth proceedings.
Oh, Yeah is an unassuming choice for a single. With a chorus like bad BON JOVI and lyrics worth of WHITESNAKE lip-services to Blues ("I'm a healer", "I put a spell on you", "I'm gonna be your hoochie koochie man"), CHICKENFOOT open their Rock N'Roll scars wide. For a while SATRIANI sounds like JIMMY PAGE and HAGAR fulfills his ROBERT PLANT fixations - but it does not sound like LED ZEPPELIN by the way, following HUMBLE PIE and MONTROSE. With a functional lilting riffing and no jarring tempo changes, it is the anticlimactic answer to AUDIOSLAVE's Cochise or anything ZEP - the humble beginnings of a band comprised of great players. It borders on parody, but you know where these guys' hearts are - right here, right now. Solid soloing (with texture and a faux Moog organ apparently present), elements fall down in their right places; unfortunately the song is just overextended and the first half makes not much justice to the second.
Down the Drain was the song that most claimed my attention because, according to bandmembers, it was spontaneously recorded, during sound passages, their producer Andy Johns recorded the interplay whereas the players just played, with no pressure, plot, guidelines. It is heavier than the average and it shows SATRIANI as their jamming wonder. It sounds like an outtake from Flying in a Blue Dream with HAGAR vocals and VAN HALEN aspirations. It is not from the gutter and quite never goes down the drain - even when HAGAR unleashes - but it shows their faith in Rock N'Roll, regardless the ridicule.
Get It Up may be the silliest title in this debut, and the least Hard Rocking tune in the batch - oddly reminiscent of FAITH NO MORE circa 1993. Things get sillier - or more bizarre - with HAGAR shouting "arriba arriba". Any message gets by the wayside with the distinctive sonority. Funk O'Metal (SMITH shines) and SATRIANI astonishingly somersaulting. Silly lyrics about taking the world by storm, changing the world, whatever, are delivered under layers of vocoder and choruses become redundant. For a while contemporary audiences may claim their share of the traditional pie. I find it slightly frustrating, because only when they go nuts they reach this level of transformation.
Another single, Soap on a Rope (hum?) arrives with the unpromising "got money - got beer - fast cars and everything" lyric. Then HAGAR gets a woman, you imagine. "Tell me what I'm looking for". Then a WARRANT chorus. Hum. Hard to swallow back in 2009. If only for the solid, sputtering SATRIANI main riff, it sounds closer to classic Heavy Metal than to Hair Metal poseurism. SATCH even quotes BLACK SABBATH's Iron Man (four times!). That is, before another genetic 1980s shredding solo. Another lukewarm single. These guys do not want fame and fortune - because they have it. Another thunderous assault from HAGAR provides the coda - never as if he had something to say rather than to, hum, do.
The first single, the last song I'm tackle in this debut, is the surprising Avenida Revolucion - "Revolution Avenue" - in which CHICKENFOOT deals with the ambiguity of Tijuana-US borders, drug dealing and First-Third world quarrels. The socially conscious incursion includes disquieting riffs (SATCH's best here) and HAGAR the least embarrassing and over-the-top one can imagine. Even never able to hide the smell of tequila completely, what is noticeable here is the resort of 9 out of 10 veteran acts - desperately trying to sound contemporary. Anyway, "crossing the borderline/into the fire" is a more than decent chorus. Backed by a great ANTHONY harmonizing, the chic Funk and socially conscious lyrics meld quite well - with a small drum solo for your pleasure. If there is a hit in this debut, this is the place to be, they finally hit the stride. See ya.
File under: The changing of the old guard
Tracklist:
* * * * Avenida Revolucion
* * * Soap on a Rope
* * * * Sexy Little Thing
* * * Oh, Yeah
* * * Runnin' Out
* * * * Get It Up
* * * 1/2 Down the Drain
* * * * My Kinda Girl
* * * 1/2 Learning to Fall
* * * 1/2 Turnin' Left
* * * 1/2 Future in the Past
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Driving
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silktempest
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