Alt-rock had many faces, and the most well-known (although certainly not most numerous) might be that of the Seattle grunge-rock scene and their like-minded peers across the country. The grunge rockers took the loud guitar bombast of heavy metal, its crunching guitar hooks and jagged riffs, and filtered it through the fast and clean lens of punk rock. Thus, grunge shed much of metal’s cheesy theatricality. Gone was much of the virtuoso guitar; instead, solos trended more in the direction of Neil Young’s simple guitar lines than toward your typical, macho axe-wielder’s show-off wanking. Metal’s fantasy and futuristic lyrical tropes were replaced, in favor of real-world self-reflection. The hair remained long (all the better to thrash around the stage with), but the glam-metal makeup and fashion posing was replaced by thrift store jeans and torn flannel. (This, of course, became its own form of poser cliché, but at first it was an economic and artistic choice.)
Soundgarden was one of the main voices in the Seattle scene, singer Chris Cornell’s piercing wail one of the iconic voices of the time. The band could crank it fast and hard the way, say, Led Zeppelin could with “Rock and Roll” or slow, dangerous, and plodding, like “When the Levee Breaks.” Am I suggesting that Soundgarden might have ever listened to Zeppelin? Perhaps. Plenty of Black Sabbath, too, for that matter. But they made the music their own. They are an essential listen.
Playlists 1 & 2
Soundgarden’s two best albums could each use a little pruning, for reasons of quality and consistency—and also simply because Soundgarden’s music is so pummeling and intense, Cornell’s voice so strident, that it’s hard to listen to more than 44 minutes at a time. Playlists One and Two present Badmotorfinger (1991) and Superunknown (1994) in single-LP-length condensations.
Playlist 3
Playlist Three fills in some gaps with an LP-length selection from their early work and the rest of their output through the ‘90s.
Cover Art:
- Louder Than Love: Source, Discogs.com, Fair use.
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