Once again, it is the year of the dinosaur.<\/p>\n
No, no, I’m not referring to the “Jurassic Park” sequel hitting
\nthe theatres – I refer to Aerosmith, the band that refuses to die.
\nDespite in-fighting and full-scale drug abuse in the early ’80s,
\nthe band regrouped, cleaned up and, despite the naysayers, returned
\nto the top of the music world.<\/p>\n
I guess it’s only fitting that their latest studio effort is
\nnamed
\nNine Lives<\/i>, an album that isn’t yet part of the vast Pierce
\nMemorial Archives (unofficially 37 days until the move). Had it not
\nbeen for a member of the Daily Vault Research And Photocopy Team
\n(“We laugh at death”) loaning me the disc, I would have passed it
\nup for a while. While it shows the reasons this band has lasted so
\nlong, it also shows the band may be nearing the end of their
\ncreative rope.<\/p>\n
The first single, “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” is a
\ntrack you don’t want to like. But despite being as politically
\ncorrect as reading Playboy at a NOW meeting (take it from
\nexperience – don’t try it), Steven Tyler and crew are able to reel
\nyou in quickly, making this one of their best tracks in a long
\ntime.<\/p>\n
Aerosmith is able to keep pushing the envelope of hard rock on
\nsongs like “Taste Of India,” (another song I wasn’t fond of upon
\noriginal listen) “Crash” and “Fallen Angels.” You don’t stay on top
\nof the rock world putting out shit, and the band shows they’re out
\nto earn every cent of the deal they signed with their original
\nlabel.<\/p>\n
The creative juices start to dry up on songs like “Hole In My
\nSoul.” Sure, it’s a good track, but why does the opening riff sound
\nstrangely similar to an early song of theirs, “Dream On”? I know it
\nhas been almost 25 years you guys have been together, but come
\non<\/i>! Ripping off yourselves?<\/p>\n
And can we
\nplease<\/i> stop promoting the cock-rock style? Jesus, these guys
\nprobably get laid more in one night than I’ve gotten in my
\nlifetime, and they sing songs like “Pink”? They spew lines like,
\nfrom “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)”: “I feel like I have
\nbeen hit by a fuck.” How many more sexual images do you guys intend
\non putting in the liner notes and on the CD? (Where the hell did
\nthey get the main image on the CD – the
\nKama Sutra<\/i>?) Remember: he who lives by the dick dies by the
\ndick. Four words: Freddie Mercury, Eazy-E. ‘Nuff said.<\/p>\n
In many ways,
\nNine Lives<\/i> is a typical Aerosmith album. It opens with a
\nballs-out rocker (“Nine Lives”), and mixes solid rock numbers with
\nsoft-serve ballads that one either loves or hates. And it’s sad to
\nsay that many of their ballads sound exactly like one another. The
\nremainder of the album, then, would be filler.<\/p>\n
So is this a bad album? I didn’t say that. Cuts like “Crash,”
\n“Kiss Your Past Goodbye,” “Fallen Angels” and even the title track
\nshow that Tyler et al. have not lost their edge even after all this
\ntime. The only thing I really missed was hearing Joe Perry take a
\nturn as lead throat.<\/p>\n
Like many recent releases, this disc is an Enhanced-CD, meaning
\nyou can discover more treasures by sticking it in the CD-ROM drive
\nof your computer. However, I don’t think I could have explained to
\nmy boss why I was playing a multimedia game instead of doing some
\nserious number crunching, so I leave this for you to discover on
\nyour own.<\/p>\n
\nNine Lives<\/i> proves that everything old is indeed new again,
\nand Aerosmith still know how to entertain as if they were still in
\ntheir glory days. But if they’re not careful and don’t allow their
\nmusic to undergo some changes along with the times, they may be
\ndoomed to playing festival shows with Foghat and Boston before they
\nknow it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5636],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-35627","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-aerosmith","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35627"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35627"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}