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Re: Chinese Democracy official reviews thread
has the blabbermouth review been posted yet? 6.5/10
After 17 years, six producers, enough musicians to start four new bands, an army of assistants, a bailout-sized budget and who knows how much actual recording time and hard drive space, "Chinese Democracy" has finally arrived. And of course the question is: what is worth it? Was it worth the wait, the time, the money, the hype, the mystery? The short answer is no. In fact, there's no way it could be worth all that.
That doesn't mean it isn't a pretty good album, with moments of greatness. But context is everything, and against the backdrop of all the behind-the-scenes drama and mythology built around this project, it was almost contractually bound to disappoint in some way. If it had come out 10 or 12 years ago, its lack of fundamental greatness and spark might have been noted and we all would have moved on to the next one. But arriving now like some mad scientist stepping out of a time machine, "Chinese Democracy" feels more like a curio and less like the epic rock album that Axl Rose probably intended it to be, all those years ago.
First of all, let's call it what it is: this is not a GUNS N' ROSES album. You can alter the lineups of some bands more than others, replace singers or guitarists or even large chunks of personnel, but you can rarely replace an entire band, especially one made up during its peak years of such distinctive personalities, and still expect people to pretend it's the same. GUNS N' ROSES as we knew it has been gone for more than 10 years, with the departures of Slash and Duff McKagan providing the final nail in that particular coffin. The ever-shifting lineup of musicians we've seen over the intervening years has nothing to do with the image, attitude and dangerous magic of the original GN'R, and everything to do with who was patient and well-paid enough to cool their heels while Axl painstakingly worked out his demons and ground out this album. Like its title suggests, "Chinese Democracy" is an album made by an illusory GUNS N' ROSES, an illusion that Axl has used to brand what is essentially a solo album. Only he knows whether he thinks GUNS was his brainchild all along, but for many of us who saw the original band, it was less about him alone, as forceful and magnetic as he was, and more about the spontaneous combustion generated by a collective that was at one point considered the true successors to THE ROLLING STONES and AEROSMITH.
The second thing is that "Chinese Democracy" doesn't sound like a unified album recorded by a unified band, because it isn't. It's a collection of songs laid down over a roughly 15-year period by a number of different players, recorded by different people. It's mind-boggling to think that on any given track here, the vocals, drums and guitars could have been recorded in different decades. As a result, while there are a number of strong tunes, none of them sound as fired up, as pissed off, as seductive as anything GUNS N' ROSES has previously recorded, with the possible exception of the title track, because these songs are most likely not organic creations but pieced-together puzzles.
Beyond that, the record is ballad- and orchestration-heavy, with a four-pack of softer tunes coming right in the middle of the whole thing and slowing it way down. The absolutely perfect production and lavish musical backdrops — keyboards, strings, horns — make this a lush listening experience but not a driving or intense one. By the time you gets to "Madagascar" you just wish someone would shoot the whole damn orchestra and bring the guitars back. And even some of the rockers, like "Riad N' The Bedouins" and the industrial-tinged "Shackler's Revenge", don't have the standout melodies to make them anything more than relentless but ultimately forgettable.
As mentioned earlier, there are flashes of greatness here. Axl sounds a little worse for wear but his voice is still essentially intact and capable of the gravity-defying howls and frightening growls that made him famous. When his melody making instincts work, they work well, as on the pop-tinged "Better". On the heavier side, "Scraped" and the ominous METALLICA-like power ballad "Sorry" have some monster riffs rumbling in the background. The playing — whoever is doing it (I did not have access to full album credits while writing this) — is always up to top-notch standards, while the production sounds as crisp as the early GN'R records.
But, again, this ain't GN'R. It's the work of one William Bailey, also known as W. Axl Rose, who set out with an idea and spent more time to perfect that vision than most bands even exist, while arguably sacrificing what made that vision special in the first place. Every artist knows that sooner or later, they have to let go of whatever they're creating — an album, a book, a sculpture — and send it into the world, warts and all. For Axl Rose, that time has come probably a good 10 years too late, and he's come up more than a little short.
- Don Kaye
Re: Chinese Democracy official reviews thread
and a 5 star review from anti-music
Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy
by Robert VerBruggen
.
It's not surprising that some critics haven't been too fond of Chinese Democracy: Guns N' Roses's long-awaited comeback is the kind of record you can't appreciate until it's grown on you awhile. It demands listening and re-listening, thinking and re-thinking.That's not to say that everyone who gives this album a real shot will love it, but it is to say that the first few play-throughs are deceiving. Chinese Democracy's core is shrouded in a cloak of small annoyances, and initially, those annoyances are all one hears.
Some of the guitar solos have no business being on a Guns N' Roses record, and Slash would have done better on just about every lead here. Rhe style jumps around a lot, which sometimes hurts the record's cohesion. The lyrics often don't make sense. The occasional mid-'90s industrial sounds should have been cut years ago (why do the intro and verses to "Shackler's Revenge" sound like Rob Zombie, for crying out loud?). The pianos/keyboards too often sound cheesy and fake. Axl Rose had plenty of time, and had spent a reported $13 million by early 2005, so it's easy to be frustrated at the slightest mistake on his part.
But once that cloak comes off and everything seeps in -- the dense arrangements, the piles and piles of guitars, the abrupt shifts in mood, the atypical song structures, the amazingly careful production/mixing/mastering -- it's clear that Chinese Democracy is pretty much everything it could have been. It's as logical a procession from the Use Your Illusion albums as is possible without the original guitarists, bassist, and drummer; it's a collection of awe-inspiring and ambitious songs; and it's an embodiment, however imperfect, of the artist Axl wants to be. The bottom line is that there's a whole lot of musical territory worth exploring on Chinese Democracy.
The title track, notable both for its status as the first single and for its drawing ire from the Chinese government, starts the record off on a fairly simple, hard-rocking note. It's more polished than, say, "It's So Easy," but it's heavier and more direct than even some of the Illusion tracks. Next up is the aforementioned "Shackler's Revenge" which, despite its dated-sounding industrial touches, builds to an arena-ready melodic chorus.
It's then that Rose reveals his true intentions, as the record heads down a road dotted with intricate, highly polished compositions. "Better" is like a trip through hard rock history, covering ground everywhere from Led Zeppelin to '80s shredders to nu metal without any of the transitions seeming abrupt. "Street of Dreams" is the perfect follow-up to "November Rain," with beautiful pianos, orchestral textures, tense vocal melodies, and distorted guitars fitting together perfectly. It's surprising "If the World" works as well as it does, given the odd mash-up of funk bass, understated percussion, guitars of all manners (flamenco, funk wah-wah, downtuned metal), the occasional piano, and Axl's all-out high-pitched wail.
"There Was a Time" is another ballad with a great melody and a heavy chorus, and on higher-quality audio equipment, it's fun to try to hear as many instruments as possible at once: strings, piano, multiple guitars, etc. "Catcher in the Rye" follows "Yesterdays" in that it's a folksier number with a heartland vibe. "Scraped" begins with an interesting a cappella arrangement before morphing into a funk-metal rocker. "Riad N' the Bedouins" captures something close to the original GN'R sound, with good helpings of blues riffs, punk attitude, and metal screaming. "Sorry" is another terrific ballad, "I.R.S." another rocker that changes stylistic gears repeatedly, in ways that seem perfectly natural.
The record loses just the slightest bit of steam as it winds down. "Madagascar" begins with a horn section and a great vocal melody, but devolves into a cluster of recorded speeches, including the very same Cool Hand Luke snippet that introduced "Civil War" ("What we've got here is failure to communicate …"). "This I Love" really ought to be a ballad on par with "Street of Dreams" and "Sorry," but the over-rhymed lyrics make it unintentionally funny: The lines in the first verse alone end in (repeats included) "why," "goodbye," "I," eyes," "wise," "try," "inside," "deny," "die," "mine," "inside," "why," "goodbye," "inside," "light," "bright," "night," "deny." "Try," "lie," and "my" start the next one. "Prostitute" is good, but until the heavy chorus kicks things up a notch, it sounds a bit like Axl was trying to get free advertising from a Gossip Girl episode.
In the end, we'll probably never be able to answer pointless questions like "What was he doing for all that time?" and "Was it worth the wait?" But there's one question we can answer, a very pointed one: "Is Chinese Democracy worth buying, listening to for a few weeks, and coming back to from time to time?" And the answer is, absolutely.
Robert VerBruggen is an associate editor at National Review
Re: Chinese Democracy official reviews thread
I'm a bit surprised that most of the reviews aren't harping on the old band. They could have easily went down that road but they refrained.
I think even smart writers understand that going down that road biases their opinion.
They had to hit it with an open opinion, and to that degree, that's why I think quite a bit have fairly positive.
- mickronson
- Rep: 118
Re: Chinese Democracy official reviews thread
a very long review..
Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy - Stingley's Review
By Mick Stingley, Contributor
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 @ 11:56 PM
The specter of Chinese Democracy has been lurking around for some fifteen years. If Axl Rose hadn't announced the title of the album so long ago, one wonders whether or not the excitement would be so ramped up at this point: this album might just have been "Forthcoming Untitled GNR Release;" yet something would have been missing. To have an album title as haunting and incongruous, as dangerous and epic as "Chinese Democracy" purports something majestic. Given the current state of world affairs, Mr. Rose could have dragged this on for years.
So what exactly is "Chinese Democracy?" What does it mean and what was the artist's intent? A swipe at China? The hope for a communist country's attempt to wash itself from its sins and allow human rights and a free market economy to take shape in a society where Maoist philosophy and state-legislated business-models, behavior, and "morality" is the norm? Is it a flint-eyed knock on the question of real and true freedom? A nod to Falun Gong? Was Axl merely looking to ape Hanoi Rocks with his Asian-fusion rock metaphor cuisine? Or did it just sound so fucking rad? ("Saigon Kick" sounds pretty rad...) Was the notorious rock recluse merely ranting about overly long delivery times from ordering in pork-fried rice and crab rangoon? Given that this is, now and forever, the very first Guns N’ Roses studio album without its original/classic lineup (Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler - later replaced by Matt Sorum), it's fair to wonder about the title's origin... but what's in a name?
In the beginning, there was Live, Like A Suicide!, Appetite For Destruction, GNR Lies, Use Your Illusion (I & II), and The Spaghetti Incident? Cool titles, each with its own majestic impact; and now forever written in history as epic tomes of rock and roll. The band that once followed in the footsteps of The Rolling Stones, The New York Dolls, Aerosmith and Hanoi Rocks was a band which scuffed its heels in the grime of Sunset Strip 80s glam only to crush stones and leave Walk-of-Fame cement impressions upon the world.
Ultimately, Chinese Democracy sounds fucking rad, but something greater is at stake.
The Guns N’ Roses which released "Appetite" and "Use Your Illusion" is long gone and what remains is Axl Rose. Slash, Duff and Izzy (and Steven and Matt) are long gone, onto other things, and (unless LiveNation steps in with a big fat bag of cash), the seminal LA band of yesterday will never return. Stacking Chinese Democracy against the history of the band, while salient and important to many, is a losing battle. What remains is a fourteen-song offering, years in the making, which marks the single most important transition in the history of the band. Time, and the world, popular music and the way in which it is delivered has changed, and changed many times over. Here is Guns N’ Roses, now. This isn't a great rock record: this is a good rock record for here and now. Axl Rose has delivered a soundtrack for The New Post-Modern Cold War.
As David Bowie moved from his Thin White Duke character into his Berlin phase (the trilogy, Heroes, Low and Lodger); as U2 transitioned from The Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum into Achtung, Baby!... as Ministry moved from With Sympathy into Twitch, and later into Psalm 69, Axl Rose has moved forward, unforgiving and uncompromisingly so.
Chinese Democracy is the evolution of the artist/character W. Axl Rose and nothing more: nothing less.
The album, which should be considered as an entity given it's much-hyped legacy, opens with whispering and sirens and the furtive plucking of guitar strings. As the sirens fade and the voices become more prominent, in comes the riff. It is a big riff, heard against blowing winds which welcomes a screech and then the punch of Axl's voice and a fat guitar. As Axl runs down his place in the world ("watch my disenchanted face") and some notions about China, the listener is given the new GNR: angry, personal, informed, concerned and frustrated. Guitars wash over the song with ripping, perhaps overly-processed leads and still there is an excellent song at hand.
Unlike say, Metallica and AC/DC, who released long-awaited albums this year which somewhat harkened the sound of past glories; Mr. Rose seems largely unconcerned with reliving his past. This point is made clear by the changes in song-by-song style approach: moving from the bombast of the title cut comes "Shackler's Revenge." Clearly, likely inspired by the changes in aggressive pop-rock styles from glam to industrial to nu, this song catapults the listener from noise to noise - sequencers to samples to guitar to chorus - to achieve a different kind of pomp and bluster Guns N’ Roses is known for. The song is strong and attacks, hard; it is a Guns N’ Roses song...it just relies less upon tradition than the band has been known for.
Still, GNR was always a bit schmaltzy. From day one, songs like "Paradise City" to "November Rain" featured a tortured singer against a wall of sound, singing of love and such... there were always ballads in the GNR quiver, to go soaring through the air with the piercing arrows of its' better-known harder-rocking material. With the first three songs on Chinese Democracy, Rose waves the flags of rock; and despite the strange falsetto and machine-dependent opening, "Better" (which seems poised to be the real big "hit"), Axl keeps the mid-tempo song charged with his raging voice. A simple song at heart, Axl seems (lyrically) to still be searching for something greater...
And while Axl demonstrates in this three-song arc his strengths (voice, still in tact; lyrics, still a bit angry; riffs, still strong): it is immediately after this that the album returns to the schmaltz of the balladeering which marked the pomposity of the "Use Your Illusion" records. And just after the album starts rocking, it begins to sway in the other direction. From rock into ballads...more Elton John than Elton John and more Michael Kamen than the late arranger could imagine.
"Street Of Dreams" seems destined for "American Idol" as Axl reaches for the skies, if not the rafters of your local arena. As the piano and neo-Slash leads give way, Axl belts it out like he always has in this vein...one can almost imagine him wearing tinted glasses and a brocade jacket as he cries "I don't know just what I should do/everywhere I go I see you...What I thought was beautiful don't live inside of you... anymore..."
For all of the new sounds and changes in line-ups, Guns N’ Roses is still very much an Axl Rose vehicle. Which isn't always a great thing: too many ballads soften the impact during the long middle section of Chinese Democracy. While there are truly excellent moments, there are pitfalls; though such is the pitfall of unrealistic expectations. The Who and The Rolling Stones suffered and stumbled throughout their respective careers, and Axl Rose isn't immune to the pitfalls of unmitigated excess and time. "If The World" is as forgettable as its hopeful premise and artist-as-activist poetry. If "There Was A Time" has any weight, it merely resonates as a homily to the previous song. So too, does "Catcher In The Rye."
After three songs buried in heavy production, a rocker would be welcome and Rose offers "Scraped." This one song seems almost out of place as it could easily fit somewhere between "Think About You" and "You're Crazy" on AFD and it is a welcome addition this far in. A taut rocker, "Scraped" wins out if only because it's not trying to be anything more than a straight rocker amidst a thick blanket of heavily-produced ballads...
And here the album turns back upon itself. "Riad N' The Bedouins" rings with the sound of electric guitars and (sort of) pointed lyrics about the Middle East, which, given the colorful chorus, evokes a plain rock song befitting the GNR legacy. It certainly is catchy and that should be enough for anyone who waited fifteen years for GNR to rock again.
Yet the album turns again. "Sorry" is lush with soft guitars and lyrics about defiance...whether of love or war, it hardly seems to matter. "I'm sorry for you...not sorry for me!" Axl sings and this song seems as if it should be the coda to the album; perhaps he is singing to his record company and/or fans, though it hardly matters. Slow and "bluesy" (eg, the lead guitar), the song begins the denouement of the excitement of the run-up to finally having Chinese Democracy to listen to.
"I.R.S." steps up the energy somewhat with stronger guitars and Axl's energetic voice. Still angry after all these songs...promises to exact vengeance on...someone. But what's clear is that there's still some rocking left on the disc before the finish line, as he sings, "There's not anymore that I can do..."
"Madagascar" sounds at first like it might have been produced by Puff Daddy; though there is nothing like rap to this song. It just hovers slightly above, with its plaintive synths and strings. As Axl wanders around from low voice to wail, singing that he "won't be told anymore." Towards the last third of the song come vocal clips of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Strother Martin (the guy from "Cool Hand Luke" sampled at the beginning of "Civil War") and others to further Axl's vision/tale... "that we have the strength to choose."
This curiosity, however bloated, is nowhere out of line with previous GNR efforts. "Civil War," and other things in this vein from "Use Your Illusion." As such, "This I Love" feels like the same familiar territory Axl has walked before... another ballad, piano and longing all in check. "Prostitute" concludes the album, somewhat hopefully, somewhat desperately... with more balladeering and bombast.
At this point, the urge to repeat certain songs takes over: the title, "Shackler's Revenge," and "Better" stand out and stand tall on the album. After this comes "Street of Dreams," "Scraped" and "Riad N' The Bedoiuns." After that... well, there are many ballads to choose from.
Yet taken as a whole, Chinese Democracy is a mood-piece for our times. Sad, lonely, aching, desperate and angry; frustrated and equally baffled and concerned with the state of the world; the album reaches for a glimpse into one man's mind coping with love, life, loss and conflict in a media haze of white noise and feedback, of explosions half a world away and right next door. Chinese Democracy is not a sequel, but rather a prologue to a new story. it runs long and it seems overwhelming at times; but so is the state of the world. Like watching a twenty-four hour cable news show for an hour and a half... there are highlights and plenty of lows, but it is strangely addictive.
For all of the talk and hype and message-board meandering, Axl Rose has brought the brand forward (if not the "band"). GNR remains as epic as it ever was and even if the old fans forsake the name and the man behind it, a new era has begun and it starts here. Fanatics can still hope for that unlikely reunion; but with Chinese Democracy it seems that Axl Rose is back. And he better stick around: "Street Of Dreams" is gonna be huge...
* * * 1/2
Re: Chinese Democracy official reviews thread
I can't upload videos from VHS, so luckily someone else done this...
Newsnights Review:
Also note that when advertised on TV, this is the review they (Guns) put at the top.
