Soundgarden - "Down On The Upside" (1996)

I frequently refer to this as "Soundgarden's equivalent to The Beatles' white album", and then everyone backs away slowly like they just realised there's a psychopath in the room. But gimme a minute and I'll explain my case.

I'm not saying the members of Soundgarden had stopped communicating and recorded all of their parts separately and were rarely in the studio at the same time, and was the case with The Beatles back in 1968. But I think you can tell from listening to this album that it would be the band's last, that relationship were beginning to crack a little. That they weren't a joint force anymore.

While all members of Soundgarden had always provided material for the band (though singer Chris Cornell was always the main songwriter, at least my book), their material always sort of gelled at the end, making their albums sound cohesive to the point were it was sometimes hard to tell who wrote what. Well, not so with Down On The Upside.

On this album everyone's individual inspirations and influences shone through, more so than had even been the case in the past. Sure, bassist Ben Shepherd may have contributed the two most oddball tracks (Head Down and Half) on the predecessor, 1994's Superunknown, but the rest of the album was pretty uniform. Overall it was just like every Soundgarden album before it: the sound of one band against the world. Down On The Upside was four individuals against the world, everyone going in a different direction.

Shepherd's material on here is mostly dusty, garage-style rockers (one of them appropriately entitled Dusty), not unlike what he was doing in his side-project Hater at the time. Guitarist Kim Thayil's sole contribution Never The Machine Forever is an angular, shrieking piece of metal, the only song reminiscent of their raging output of the late 80s and early 90s. Cornell is writing in a classic rock tradition with strong leaning towards singer/songwriter-ism, and his songs on here aren't far from what he did on his debut solo album Euphoria Morning three years later. Drummer Matt Cameron's songs are far looser, like the psychedelic, drugged-up weirdo fest Applebite. Cornell would never have written that one, that's for sure.

In this sense the album is in my opinion very much like The Beatles - you can tell straight away who wrote what. Four separate voices that just happen to share an album. The one exception would be Shepherd's Zero Chance, which sounds like Cornell wrote it. But you always need that one exception, don't you?

Here Shepherd contributed more than ever - out of the album's sixteen tracks he wrote a whopping six. Like I said, on Superunknown he only wrote two. Compare that to the seven tracks Cornell wrote for Down On The Upside and you start to see the shift in power that clearly went on.

When I write about albums I usually include three songs that represent the overall feel of it. Well here there's no overall feel to speak of, so I had to pick four songs, one by each member.

Three singles were released from the album, Pretty Noose, Blow Up The Outside World and Burden In My Hand, all written by Cornell and all quite Beatles-esque. Everyone's heard them, they're all over every rock station, so I didn't include them. I instead focused on the gems that not many people have heard.

In fact, it seems like not many people care for this album at all. Many own it, it sold very well off the back of Superunkown's success, but few speak highly of it. I know it may not be as iconic as Louder Than Love, Badmotorfinger or Superunknown, but if you're willing to accept a less brutal and more loose, rockier Soundgarden, then well... there is no valid reason for you not to dig Down On The Upside. An album as brilliant as it is diverse.

(mp3) Soundgarden - Dusty
(mp3) Soundgarden - Applebite (recommended!)
(mp3) Soundgarden - Never the machine forever
(mp3) Soundgarden - Tighter & tighter (recommended!)

Buy Down On The Upside @ Amazon.com