Philadelphia Inquirer Review

A cynical return to the excesses of the ?80s

This Revolver?s arrogant aim is not quite true.

By Tom Moon

Inquirer Music Critic

The award for most disingenuous proclamation by a rock star this year goes to Scott Weiland, the former lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and current attention magnet for the smash-up supergroup Velvet Revolver.
On "Big Machine," this denizen of revolving-door drug rehab complains, with almost touching earnestness, how "all that first-class jet set brings me down."
Weiland is, of course, a rock star well acquainted with the first-class jet set. He lived in its protective cocoon for years, and elsewhere on the erratic Contraband (RCA **1/2 out of 4), which comes out Tuesday, he seems anxious - desperate, even - to get back to it.

At one point, he pleads with his caregivers: "Set me free, 'cause I think you need my song." Now, Scott, which one would that be? The not-quite-cautionary tale about the girl with her nose packed with cocaine, or the one about the saucy doings in the back of someone's car?

Oh, the palatial suite might give him momentary existential pause, but the 37-year-old Weiland, whom the media often describe as troubled, would rather be there than sucking Jell-O in some Jacuzzi-less lockdown. He knows that the best way to keep room service coming is to ride the myth, and in joining forces with the long-dormant Guns N' Roses rhythm section, he does exactly that. Over and over. Through riff after recycled Aerosmith riff, pose after damaged-goods rock-star pose.

Beyond Weiland's errant Everyman declaration, Contraband trafficks in the debauchery and cock-of-the-walk arrogance that STP and GnR found enormously lucrative. Less a band than a union of convenience, Velvet Revolver represents a willful return to the rock excesses of another time.

Brandishing their unimpeachable rock pedigree (New! From the Makers of Appetite for Destruction and "Sex Type Thing"!), these vets present the Revenge of the Gaudy '80s, a redemption tale in which dissipation is paraded around like a badge of honor.

Here, guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum - the rhythm section that's waited for the temperamental Axl Rose to return - encounter another head case who's been repeatedly rescued from his worst impulses. And together they discover how much they miss being important rock stars. They decide the quickest route back to VIPdom is simply to re-create the chugging backbeats and ice-pick-intense guitar lines that dazzled so many before.

If you liked this controlled recklessness back when lots of bands were doing it, goes the reasoning, you'll love it in the current attitude-free rock climate. At least these guys have danger on their resumes. In the media, they loom like fire-breathing dragons terrorizing the comparatively mannerly utterances of the Nickelbacks.

In that sense, Contraband is a work of deep cynicism, a persuasive Exhibit A in the argument that rock is a thoroughly gnawed carcass long stripped of digestible meat. As with the efforts of other pasted-together latter-day supergroups - Audioslave being the most odious - no unified spark propels things.

Maybe on some level VR is about "the music," but because so much of Contraband is careful rehash, it's difficult to pick up any idealistic signals.
Where rock bands once tucked moments of transcendence within the spectacular disarray, this one yearns only for the kind of "win" that can be quantified. It wants to kill at the box office and then hop onto that express elevator to the penthouse to resume the hollow post-show rituals that were so unceremoniously interrupted a decade ago. And it'll apparently do just about anything - dispense cartoonish excess, offer simulations of revelry, approximate audacity - to get back there.

The sad part is, the members of Velvet Revolver use those illusions craftily enough to make this elaborate throwback work - almost.

The music is exactly what you'd expect from such a merger: Weiland's eager-to-ascend melodies backed by relentlessly bludgeoning rhythm.

The first six songs of Contraband are spring-loaded, subtlety-free rawk that veers away from repetition long enough to offer fleeting moments of sweetness. The remaining seven drift through a series of too-predictable song types (the doleful power ballad "Fall to Pieces," the buzzing two-bar guitar assault of "Superhuman").

Sometimes, as on the disarmingly beautiful "Illegal 1," Weiland's haunted whine comes gift-wrapped in planks of reliably rowdy rhythm guitar from Slash. Just as often, though, the singer appears locked in too-blustery overdrive, and all spark comes from the guitars, which splatter and squeal with the project's only trace of adolescent delight.

That's the real problem with Contraband: There's little joy in it.
These musicians spend so much time refining the stock rock postures they're sure will land them back in that rarified realm, they overlook what got them there in the first place - the spirit of irreverence.

Weiland spends the better part of one song chanting about how he doesn't care about anything, but that's another jet-set lie. His problem is he cares too much. He cares so much, he's peddling lurid and outmoded types of rock transgression, hoping that one whiff of the magic powder might transport him, and everyone listening, back to a time when what he sang actually mattered.