Music Review: Chris Cornell, “Scream”
Rating: 23
With “Scream,” former Soundgarden/Audioslave yowler Chris Cornell bets the house on snake eyes: a Timbaland-produced series of electro-hip-hop calamities that reduce one of the best singers in hard rock to just a processed ghost in Tim’s machine. Long in need of worthy material, Cornell instead bleats out listless, midtempo dance floor pounders (half of which were crafted by OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and should be sung by someone younger and dumber) and lets Timbaland AutoTune his voice into submission. It is so wrong, it should be unconstitutional.
Cornell gets on the wrong foot and twists his ankle with “Part of Me,” oozing insincerity over a vaguely bad breakup as he repeats “That b-—-h ain’t a part of me” like he was Ludacris. Granted, this is the Dionysian dervish who once sang “Big Dumb Sex,” but he was being ironic back then. Two decades later, Cornell sings of how “you need a backbone, to roll with the world” on “Get Up,” an icy electro track with vague lyrics of empowerment that could pass for a “TGIF” sit-com theme. It’s as if the “Black Hole Sun” washed away his brain.
On rare occasions, Timbaland’s shoe-horning of Cornell’s screaming life into “Scream” bears fruit — “Ground Zero” creates an effective grunt-and-bellow beat reminiscent of Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two,” and the raga ballad “Take Me Alive” gives Cornell’s vocals a sympathetically mystical setting. But this misadventure proves that not every experimental recipe results in Robert Plant and Alison Krauss — “Scream” is equivalent to taking the finest cut of Kobe beef and boiling it.
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