Stone Temple Pilots
- Stone Temple Pilots
- Atlantic/Warner
"There ain't no magic pen to get back what you lost," sings Scott Weiland on Between the Lines, the fuzzy, groovy Tom Petty-meets-Nirvana lead single of Stone Temple Pilots' eponymous sixth album. (It could be, but probably is not, a reference to STP's signed contractual obligation to Atlantic Records.) With its "even when we used to take drugs" chorus, the song is in the past tense, as is much of a quasi-comeback album that neither defiles nor builds upon the band's legend. All nineties guitar flash and crunch, with nods to Beatles-age melodic psychedelia, the disc's tension is between musical colours that are upbeat and Weiland's more morose vocal tones. "Take a risk and listen to the radio," he suggests on the wistful, romantic Bowie-ode First Kiss on Mars. It's a gorgeous tune about magical places - places of a different era.
Brad Wheeler