into the knockout mix of pinched-distortion sleaze and cracked-crystal vocal harmonies. It's as if, after four years of drug- and STP-related crises, Weiland wants to cram as much life as he can into his next last chance.
But that urgency and energy count for a lot. One of the best things about 12 Bar Blues is its heady, willfully messy momentum. You can almost feel Weiland hugging the rails as he careens from pop-science sound games in "Cool Kiss" and "Jimmy Was a Stimulator" (cheeseball beat boxes, scuzzed-up synths) to the plain-spoken, plainly sung "Son" ("You make the world a better place to find") and the smart alterna-glam grooming of "Mockingbird Girl." Vocally, Weiland has backed away from the big-rock anguish of STP hits like "Plush"; he sings in high-pitched close-up over the plastic static of the guitars in "Desperation #5." And in "Barbarella," a clever spinoff from Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide," the band shuts down for a verse as Weiland plays the hapless rock-star fuck-up with believable self-loathing: "Grab a scale and guess the weight of all the pain I've given with my name/I'm a selfish piece of shit."
Even when Weiland seems to throw words and music together just to see what sticks – like the great nonsense couplet in "Barbarella," "You sing the pink love fuzz/And dance the musty queer" – he makes a potent kind of sense. Ricocheting from art noise to mad pop, free association to outright confession, 12 Bar Blues is a record about looking for reason, about negotiating a balance between rational obligation and excited, often destructive, impulse. "The Date" – a slow ballad that sounds as though Weiland dipped the tape in an acid bath during mixing – is just Weiland on vocals and all instruments, screaming at the end like a guy wearing all his mistakes on his shoulders and keen to shake' em off at the first sign of daylight.
12 Bar Blues isn't really a rock album, or even a pop album. Weiland, out on his own, has simply made an honest album – honest in its confusion, ambition and indulgence. It was worth the risk. (RS 783)
DAVID FRICKE
