Chris Cornell - No One Sings Like You Anymore

Bottle battles the bargain bin 'bums he bought. 

Never thought i'd see it, a whole shelf of perfectly new records on clearance at under $7 a piece. Most of them even i couldn't actually buy for a laugh: random Christmas albums, songs from The Proud Family, Lady Gaga, you get the idea. I did find 4 that have every possibility of being tolerable, but i honestly probably wouldn't ever pay full price for any of them. 4 albums i only bought because they were corporate clearance level cheap. Geronimo. 

We could start anywhere, but since Rage Against The Machine just reunited after over a decade it seems unavoidable that we'll fly this spaceship straight up the nose of Chris Cornell's posthumously released (and bracingly unsubtle) No One Sings Like You Anymore, Vol. 1. On paper i'm probably supposed to hate it, but i have a feeling i won't. To be clear, this is Johnny Cash's American Recordings, only Chris is the one singing songs no one would expect Chris Cornell to sing. The difference of course is that Chris Cornell could strip the rust off a Camaro at 30 paces. He leaves you feeling less like you heard a song and more like you've been sandblasted clean of all the grime you accumulated during the day. I guess that means i'm predisposed to enjoy whatever he's singing, so what we're really hearing is a set list of random covers that does something. He very much assembled this album this way before he died, so let's see if i get it. 

Oh. Wow. Yeah. Ok, so you know how Les Paul + Chet Atkins and Glen Campbell + Tennessee Ernie Ford were literally their own concepts? Well, this is Chris Cornell with an Ableton live setup, an acoustic guitar, and a microphone in your favorite coffee house pulling rabbit after rabbit out of his top hat full of cover songs he happens to know. This is intimate. I feel bad for saying it out loud, but Cash's American Recordings was a gimmick. Not a bad gimmick at all, but his imminent death was an intentional a part of that project. I think everyone can hear that. That's not what i hear here at all. Here, i hear Blackstar, an amazing idea into which death unwelcomely inserted itself. Not so much morbid, but maybe a reminder that the doing is more important than any particular accomplishment. 

You're gonna give me a look, but this is actually a Soul album. Not like the official genre Soul, but the essence of Soul. There's a lot of sadness, a lot of love, and even hiding under a layer of grunge, it's pretty phenomenal. Turns out i like this one a lot.