Maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that Stone Temple Pilots' fourth album is their worst. After all, it was the album that followed their best, 1996's Tiny Music...Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop. It was also recorded in the midst of lead vocalist Scott Weiland's drug problems, which had swallowed the singer in the years following Tiny Music (he was an addict before this, but his real problems with the law happened afterwards). And lastly, it was the album recorded after the DeLeo brothers and Eric Kretz got together with a new singer for a horrible one off project called Talk Show, a project that got one song on the radio, a song that annoyed the ever living p*ss out of me then, and probably still would now.

A lack of focus and poor attention to finishing songs is the biggest downfall of No. 4, though far from the only one. For an STP album, the rockers are decidedly average, outside of the first single, Down, and the third single, No Way Out.

Instead, the songs that really capture the listeners' imagination are the more experimental tracks, the ballads, the pop numbers, and the neo-psychedelic blips.

As mentioned before, the sludgy Down was the first single, and it did hardly anything to help move copies of this record. It's actually a decent song, though a song whose sound might fit best on the band's debut Core, and as such, some might consider it a step back for the band. This reviewer feels the song to be pretty damn good, in part because of Weiland's vocal performance, and in part due to the chunky riff churned out by Dean DeLeo,

Instead, it took almost a year for the band to garner a hit single from the record. Released as an afterthought for all intents and purposes, Sour Girl ended up becoming the band's biggest hit of their latter years. While I don't despise the song, I do think the lyrics suck and that it only remains listenable because of its musical body.

No Way Out followed Sour Girl to rock radio, and performed rather admirably, considering what it was following. The song was a raw mix of Core's aggression and the lean production values of Tiny Music, and it worked better than any other rocker on the disc. Heaven and Hot Rods felt like a sludgy bore, Sex and Violence was a wrong turn into punk, melded with elements of David Bowie, among others. The same could be said of MC5, which lacked the energy of the band of the same name. In fact, MC5 felt half-a*sed to me.

And so, as I said, it's the rootsier, poppier numbers that draw me into this record. Church On Tuesday has some great guitar melody supplied by DeLeo, while also showcasing Weiland's under-rated vocal and emotional range.

The best song on the record though, by far, is Glide. Another excellent showcase for Weiland's vocal abilities, some might see this as a re-write of Still Remains from the band's Purple record, but for me, it's a brilliant song on its own. Weiland's lyrics have always been kind of cryptic and well, odd, but I've always loved some of the lines in Glide (sample: "Just give me half a chance from throwing it all away, run to the place that hides the pain you have inside") and find the song to be amongst the band's very best work.

The acoustic I Got You is an enjoyable enough number, even if it feels unfinished, or underdeveloped, or both. The other acoustically driven song, the closing Atlanta, has a throwback feel to it, from Weiland's almost crooning vocals to the production. It's not a bad song, but it isn't something that reaches out and grabs you either.

No.4 is without a doubt the worst album of the band's career. Ultimately, the follow up, Shangri La Dee Da, would be their last record, but at least that record felt more complete than this one, and the quality of the songs contained on it was pretty consistent. On this record however, you jump from one good song to two bad ones, and that seems to be the biggest achilles heel of this record.

The band released a greatest hits retrospective last year entitled Thank You, which many feel was the "on hiatus" band's swan song. Weiland is now on tour with his new outfit, Velvet Revolver, while the DeLeo brothers are producing records for various artists. I'm not sure what Kretz is doing, but I'm sure he's a well paid session man if nothing else.

2.5 stars.

Recommended: No