I'll start this review with a full disclosure - I used to like Creed. I was never a hardcore fan or anything, but I found a lot of enjoyable songs on all three of their albums, and I still enjoy those songs, for the most part. They were definitely a way more popular band than they ever deserved to be, given how derivative and repetitive their sound could get (with the exception of the all-over-the-place Weathered, this could make their albums feel a bit repetitive), but when it came down to it, a good number of those songs made me feel something genuine. Perhaps I was excited because they appeared to be the first "reverse crossover" band that I got into - a group existing entirely in the mainstream whose lyrical content and positive outlook caused their popularity to spill over into the Christian music world, where most of my musical exploration had been contained up until that point. But now, looking back in an age where spiritual references in rock music are dime-a-dozen and tons of bands have tried to imitate these guys, there's still something about Creed's best songs that lives on for me, long after the band's image became a bit of a joke in my mind. For a band that I enjoyed a reasonable amount both on record and in concert, I was neither shocked or disappointed when they broke up. And I wasn't really bursting with excitement to hear what the members of the band would produce afterward, either.

Of course, it was lead singer Scott Stapp that drew most of the critical derision when Creed was big. The guy just struck a lot of people as being pretentious. There's a fine line between lyrics that hint at lessons learned from a Christian upbringing, and lyrics that reveal a bit of a martyr complex on the part of the singer. There's also a fine line between charisma and ego, and somewhere between that first time I glimpsed the band performing on David Letterman, with Stapp's infectious smile and likeable demeanor as the band played a spirited rendition of "Higher", and the point where he claimed the group's third album was their "Joshua Tree", and devoted way too much energy to silencing his critics on said album, I started to realize that he could be a bit too self-important on his worst days. Fans who were Christians accused him of being ashamed of his faith when he said Creed was not a "Christian band" (to be fair, he was always asked about the band, not his own personal beliefs), and rumors of drug/alcohol addiction and wayward behavior with groupies didn't help much. (Turns out some of that had to do with prescription medications that he went a bit overboard on, and the groupie thing... OK, well, some of that got caught on tape, but that doesn't make the guy not a Christian.) Erratic behavior that caused some really horrid concert performances during the Weathered era, as well as some petty feuds with fellow musicians, brought down the general public's view of the guy, so by the time the band started to get stretched to its breaking point, I'm not sure who still had much respect for the guy other than some of the fans who had no knowledge of his personal life and just happily hummed along to AC-format-friendly tunes like "With Arms Wide Open" and "Don't Stop Dancing". I guess there were always the hardcore holdouts, but my reaction was mostly just, Whatever. I figured he'd be fine as long as he kept his mouth shut and just did what he knew best in the recording studio. Then the breakup came, and I thought, dude, no way this guy stands a chance apart from his band.

The common belief was that Mark Tremonti was this excellent guitarist held back by Stapp's ego, and when he reformed the remaining members of Creed with singer Myles Kennedy and called it Alter Bridge, this was partially proven true - however, good technical riffs are not fully sufficient to make a good rock album, and with a comparatively less grating voice still droning out mind-numbing cliches about life and love in the form of largely medium-paced metallic grunge anthems, it didn't take me long to tune out. Still, I expected that to fare better than Stapp's solo debut - an early song from the guy called "Relearn Love", on an album of songs inspired by The Passion of the Christ, proved that the guy's scratchy bellowing was an ill fit for styles of music that ranged beyond Creed's patented neo-grunge. Because of this, it's somewhat fortunate that Stapp goes with what he knows for his solo debut album, The Great Divide. He's put together a backing band that maintains the spirit of Creed (though with nothing as heroic as Tremonti's best riffs) while ranging toward upbeat material a little more often than Creed did, and if one were to judge this album on instrumental ear candy alone, it would at least break even. Unfortunately, Stapp's voice has worsened over the past few years, and he seems blissfully aware of this as he yelps out song after song, to the point where you're praying for a mushy ballad just so that he'll lay off. Sad to say, but this one of those cases where a singer's solo album would be pretty good, if not for the singer.

OK, so let's say that you either don't notice or don't care that Stapp's voice has become more razor-blade-ish since we last heard him on Weathered. Let's also assume that you're excited to finally hear Stapp publicly affirming his Christian faith. (That part was actually true for me.) Do you stand a chance of liking this album? Eh... it's still iffy. Cliches abound - some of them apparently the result of Stapp studying Christian music and grabbing from the examples he saw, recycling common lyrical bits about voices in one's soul, and being broken, and soaring on wings of eagles, and being broken, and hopes and dreams, and being broken, and beating people up who p!ss him off. Oh wait, that last part's different! But somehow I don't think you're very excited about that, are you?

What I'm trying to say is, this one might please the conservative Christian watchdogs on the surface, and I certainly can't fault him for trying to point to what he and I both believe to be true. But the way he does it is often embarrassing, especially when his ego gets thrown into the mix. One minute he's admitting to having done things wrong and approaching humility, and the next he's griping about how he doesn't want to be judged and he's getting revved up for a fistfight. Hey, everyone makes mistakes, and often celebrities fall flat on their faces in public - I'm not about to say that the guy's not worthy of respect just for doing what any musician who proclaims the Christian faith will eventually do in front of their audience. It's just that he almost seems to get off on drawing attention to the way he gets crucified for it. I have to think, gee, maybe if you weren't such a loudmouth, people might cut you some slack. Anyway, it's that sense of self-importance, along with his insistence on singing in an obnoxiously loud and hoarse voice far too much of the time (when he's not intoning some embarrassing dramatic spoken passage or some crap like that), that causes this album to tank. There's almost nothing worth salvaging here, which is really sad, given that I used to be able to overlook Stapp's faults and find a lot to love about so many of Creed's songs.

Reach Out
No victims, these choices were all mine
Looking within, these scars will heal with time
There's no excuse for weakness, selfishness or compromise...
The first track on the album actually sounds really good... until Stapp opens his mouth. The quickly circling guitar riffs leap out from the speakers like hot flames, and the backing band establishes a scorching 6/8 rhythm that almost approaches the intensity of "Bullets". Stapp ruins this almost immediately by growling "Welcome friends" at us, his voice and the fluffy lyrics he spits out totally being at odds, since he's basically singing a song about past mistakes and resolving "I reach out, can't give in, learn to listen to that voice within my soul". (You'll need a lyric sheet to make sense of it - as sung on record, it sounds a lot more like "I reach ORRRWWWWW!!! Can't give EEEEERRRRWWWW!!!", and so forth.) His voice gets more hoarse, making fingernails on a chalkboard seem like a darn good alternative, until he finally starts to sound like a raving madman during the bridge. I can see the merit in letting raw emotion win out over the desire for a pristine vocal performance, but in Stapp's case, it's not quirky, it's not energetic, it's not motivating... it's just plain sad.

Fight Song
Sometimes it starts with a silent curse
Sometimes it doesn't waste time
You still think I look upon this with hatred in my mind
I won't lie, it took some time...
This one doesn't start off too bad - it has a slamming, mid-tempo rhythm to it that makes it feel a lot like "What If". The fact that it's about fighting further serves that parallel, though this one might be a little less violent by comparison. I admire the attempt to denounce hatred and enmity - what Scott's trying to fight against here is the need to avenge petty offenses against him. At least for the duration of this song, he's at least aware of what the true enemy is. It's too bad that he bogs the song down with so many hackneyed survival cliches - "I'm still healing, no I'm not reeling, yes I'm feeling, this is my fight song" goes the oh-so-brilliant chorus. He also comes up with the most annoying two note melody for the pre-chorus that makes me want to tear my hair out whenever it comes up, but aside from that, the vocal performance isn't as shoddy and I can sort of tolerate this one. It's a call for a truce disguised as a tough-guy anthem - I can at least admire the attempt, despite the fact that the execution failed miserably.

Hard Way
Just when I thought I had it all
Caught a sucker punch and lost it all
Just never thought it would have come from you...
Well, we had to get to the tortured, down-tempo sludge sooner or later. This one, with its distant, quiet, vaguely mystical guitar intro, does its best to retread Creed's "Wrong Way" minus the tricky rhythm, plus a little bit of harmonica blurting that actually fits Stapp's road-weary, just-stumbled-into-a-roadhouse image. He's playing the role of dejected prophet, asking us to draw near so that he can tell a story of having it all and then losing it all... which is kind of silly, because last I checked, the guy wasn't broke. Still, I can respect how he's recognized the danger inherent in the glitzy rock & roll lifestyle... though honestly, we've heard that a million times from other rock acts. This song hammers its point home through repetition of an irritating chorus that makes the moral of his story sound much like a diatribe from a harsh parent - "I found out the hard way, and your day's coming soon". Sheesh. If I wanted the pessimistic lecture, I'd go back in time to my childhood and have a chat with the old man.

Justify
Yeah, I've been that man who lives deceit
Surrounds himself with worldly things
So let me tell you a story, let me feed it to you...
This song feels a lot like the last one, except this time we know that what Stapp's saying must be a lot deeper, because now he's speaking portions of the verses! (He seems to save his worst lines for the spoken bits of his songs - case in point, the lame bridge from "Wash Away Those Years" that got repeated as a spoken bit during "Freedom Fighter", or the "thorns in my side" intro to "Bullets".) This one channels a little bit of "Beautiful" when it talks about a wayward girl who caught his eye in the second verse... and then it unloads a tired Superman metaphor on us. Blaaaaah. This is basically one of those songs where Stapp makes the excuse of getting himself all riled up and ready for a drunken bar fight - he bellows "I do not have to justify the way I live my life!" over and over again in the song's chorus. He's attacking those who stand and judge his actions from a distance - and like I said earlier, it's fair to point out that those people are no better than him, but he gets the point across in such a heavy-handed way that it honestly seems like he enjoys thinking of himself as a martyr. The corniest part of the song, of course, is saved for the bridge, where I have to laugh as we get yet another spoken word section, where he declares, "Let me change the timbre of the section, add a little booze to ice." That's not deep, Scott, it's just the use of random metaphors to make you sound poetic. Oh well, at least there's some decent bass here.

Let Me Go
Tell me friend is this forgiving
Tell me friend are you believing
Tell me friend if it's worth the fight...
This song has a lighter mood to it, starting off a bit dark and lonely with a lone electric guitar echoing off into the night. An acoustic guitar joins it soon and establishes another 6/8 rhythm. The song picks up a brighter tone than "Reach Out" had - this one might just have a shot at pop crossover, though I can't say whether that's a good thing in this case. There ain't much to this song in the way of lyrics - Stapp repeats his plea for a deceptive, hurtful friend to let him go again and again. Maybe that's a good thing, since fewer unique lines of lyrics means fewer chances for Stapp to foul the whole thing up by saying something really stupid. I'm almost to the point of liking this one - there's a decent high-pitched guitar crescendo in the middle eight, and the rhythm and melody are memorable, not too harsh on the ears, but not totally wimpy either. It's filler, but it beats some of the filler from Weathered.

Surround Me
They say no man's an island but I tend to disagree
I guess they've never seen my island, and where it lies at sea...
Oh, man. You have got to be kidding me with this one. I've ragged on a lot of bands for ripping off melodies and riffs from Creed, but here, Stapp shamelessly steals a tune from U2. Don't worry, dude, it's not like anyone will recognize the verse melody from "Pride (In the Name of Love)", so long as you slow it down a bit, right? Um... sorry. Try again. I guess the rest of the song doesn't sound like U2, opening as a soft, sensitive-guy ballad and building into your typical power-chord driven fare as most Creed songs did. We have the acoustic/electric blend again, which ain't such a bad thing, and Scott does sound a lot more genuine in this prayerful mode - he actually manages to keep his voice at a tolerable decibel level for the first half of the song, and even when he gets more excitable as the song builds in intensity, it's on par with his performance on your average Creed song. So the only problem left at that point is the repetition of the chorus. It's a nice enough plea for rescue - "Please stop me, don't let me run, surround me" - but it gets really redundant after about eight iterations.

The Great Divide
You have loved me when I was weak
You have given unselfishly
Kept me from falling, falling
Everywhere but my knees...
Whoa, Scott really likes the acoustic guitar all of a sudden. He likes 6/8 rhythms, too. I can't complain - the lilting acoustic intro is one of the most non-Creed-ish things in the record, and it immediately gets my attention. Against all odds, this approach works for Stapp, showing him partially succeeding in doing something different, even if the soaring chorus of "You set me free to live my life, You became my reason to survive the great divide" is a bit melodically predictable if you've heard past Creed hits. It's one of the most openly religious songs on the record, an unambiguous song of thankfulness to God that has an almost infectious sense of optimism to it. The overall mood of the record has picked up quite a bit in the back half - everything from the mildly heavy electric riffs to the nimble acoustic picking spells out happiness with no heavy pretext behind it, and on a Scott Stapp solo album, that's a downright refreshing feeling, and I don't mind it so much, though I do wish that this project's darker songs hadn't been so embarrassingly bad. Given time, I could see myself coming to regard this song as being on par with some of Creed's best numbers. I'll just have to listen to it outside of the context of the album, so as not to be jaded and worn out by the time it comes up.

Sublime
Will you follow me, a shoulder's sometimes nice
I will be there for you when a safety net feels right...
OK, now the happy stuff is starting to wear thin. We've had four fairly aggressive rock songs, followed by four hybrid pop/rock numbers that have really backed off, and this is one of those moments like "Hide" on Weathered where the song just slides by without leaving much of an impression. Oh wait... nope, there's the growled rock chorus. Sort of. The most distracting thing about this otherwise middlin' track (moreso than its Mary Sue-ish lyrics about Heaven) is Stapp's apparent inability to pronounce the word "sublime". Seriously, it sounds like he's asking someone, "Can you and me just be slime?" There are cheesy background vocals echoing that word, not that they help to distinguish its pronounciation. And then we get a cheesy reference to the lullaby that goes "Hush little darling, don't you cry" during the bridge, and oh man, is this a terrible song. Hey Scott, here's an idea - why don't you take your mouth full of razor-sharp marbles and go record a song called "You Look Mahvelous"? That might actually be entertaining.

You Will Soar
If I had just two words to say
To explain my life away
I could say ups and downs
Because I always kept my defense down...
Have you had enough of the happy-go-lucky Christian rock cliches yet? Hang on there, we're not quite done. Another mild-mannered song with a 6/8 rhythm comes up - some noticeable bass, but aside from that, it's too easygoing of a rhythm that tries to force itself to rock on its Hallmark card chorus - "Keep hoping and dreaming and you will soar". The happiness is just becoming its own form of pretentiousness now - I appreciate the exhortation to have a little faith and hope and love, yada yada yada, but you know, these vague flying metaphors are shared by pretty much every belief system that has anything to do with positive thinking, so either be more specific, or be more interestingly obtuse with your lyrics. Just don't give us this bland Touched by an Angel crap.

Broken
One more question, I know time is dear
Is what the world speaks of love really real
The answers not of this world but very clear
Look above to find love and you've found eternal life...
I think Scott saved his worst song for last. We've already heard him moaning and groaning about how used and abused he's been by life in general, so at this point, a declaration that he knows "what it feels like to be broken and used, scared and confused" is really just unnecessary. To his credit, he does something different by opening with nothing but piano, and some surprisingly clean vocals. That's promising, but he loses me at the second line: "What if I told you that fear isn't real?" Great, we get another vague "Don't be afraid!" song, complete with Yoda-isms like "What if I told you that your doubt you could live without?" And then he has the audacity to ask, "Why can't everyone tell the truth, and learn to love again?" Yeah, so maybe Rodney King's remark, "Can't we all just get along?" entered the pop culture vernacular fifteen years ago, but that doesn't mean that everyone spouting off said comment really did much to help us figure out how to get along, so how about now in 2006, you give us an actual helpful suggestion for a step towards solving our various relational problems, rather than just smacking us upside the head with anvilicious platitudes? Again, he probably just listened to a bunch of commercialized Christian rock and took his cues from that. In case you weren't sure whether you were supposed to feel all emotional and spiritual when listening to this song, he throws in some whimpering strings and a Gospel choir. Can you imagine that, folks - Scott Stapp with a freakin' Gospel choir? Trust me, it's an oil-and-water proposition at best, and the crescendo of these elements that leads up to the album's end is basically one massive delusion of grandeur. Yeah, Scott, I knew that you were broken, but that doesn't mean you have to be a broken record.

Honestly, I do admire that Scott Stapp is trying to be honest before his audience. He's had a very public fall from grace in some ways, so at least his lyrical musings (horribly written as they may be) go beyond the usual goodie-two-shoes image that I'm used to from Christian rockers. Honestly, if he'd learn that having the power doesn't always mean you should use it (in terms of his voice), and then find a way to harness that power that didn't sound so blatantly similar to his old band's glory days, and if he'd find someone decent to collaborate on the songwriting, he might be able to improve, should he decide to ever unleash a second album on the world. But I can't help feeling that the damage is already done, and to most of the world of rock music, he's a has-been at this point. I support him in his upfront confession of his faith, and I do hope that fellow Christians are able to accept him as a person in this phase of his life. But that doesn't mean he gets a free pass for making substandard music (I won't give one to established Christian musicians, so I can't make exceptions here). So, better luck next time, dude.

ALBUM WORTH:
Reach Out -$.50
Fight Song $0
Hard Way -$.50
Justify -$.50
Let Me Go $.50
Surround Me $.50
Great Divide $1
Sublime -$.50
You Will Soar -$.50
Broken -$1
TOTAL: -$2

Yep, that's a negative amount. Truly sad, huh?

Website: http://www.scottstapp.com

Recommended: No