A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step

Sandra: Bottle, can you please focus and review an album?

Bottle: Why? So you can feel free from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils?

Sandra: ......!

Bottle: Eyebrows, lady, jeez! Alright, what am i to do with all this silence? Gather 'round the package, kiddos, it's the sophomore effort from A Perfect Circle. Glad i did that recovering critic episode a while back, here's where we go after the recovery process.

Actually, the concept isn't specifically "recovery," it's being ready to recover. This is Maynard's attempt to get inside the various perspectives of "addiction" without first-hand experience. For further perspective, this is Tool's Lateralus period. You remember, having that talk with your Shadow, living the experience, sorting all the jigsaw puzzle pieces and assembling the framework, right?

This is also the new band writing for the first time. Mer De Noms was Maynard singing over Billy's already finished music. Billy wrote new music, Maynard wrote words but really wanted the music to be less "hard-rock," Danny Lohner mediated between the two (he is the actual Renholdër, by the way) then let James Iha take over touring duties (Smashing Pumpkins were smithereens by then).

Vanishing was titled that way because it was actually supposed to be on the first album, but Billy forgot that he saved it under the filename "test" and didn't find it until they were actually in the studio for this second album. I know i said he "played" on Chinese Democracy, but he was merely the ProTools operator for one of the earlier versions of the album that Axl scrapped. So confusing.

What's not confusing is how beautiful this album actually sounds. It's dedicated to Maynard's mom and dad (both deceased), and Billy and Andy Wallace recorded it. Maynard paid for it, like the executive he is.

My word, what an amazing album. If you try to compare it directly to their first, you'll almost certainly feel like this a weird, stripped back, almost minimal version of APC, but when you get over that hump it's one of the most innovative albums i can think of; it somehow flows seamlessly from beginning to end while being totally ADD and random at every possible moment. I don't have any idea why that is, but i seriously don't hear individual songs. Obviously, i hear the songs start and end, but there aren't any conceptual breaks or episodes, it's one continuous experience. The only other album i have that reaction to is Razorblade Suitcase (maybe there are others, that's just the one that popped up in my brain). This is 50 minutes long, so it's not like there isn't ample opportunity for me to get distracted or for them to do something disruptively non-sequitur. Instead, they nailed it. And the last words of the entire album are "i choose to live." Now, if that doesn't leave you feeling empowered and a little tingly, then i don't know what to tell you.