Ac/Dc
Stiff Upper Lip

THE REVIEW

We are in the early 2000s and the (no longer so young) AC/DC are not willing to hang up their guitars just yet, so they try to provide a worthy successor to the previous album "Ballbreaker" and come out with "Stiff Upper Lip," a work containing 12 tracks where half of them seem to be cookie-cutter made, a rather ugly cookie-cutter one might say, but let's take it one step at a time.

The album, at least on the cover, gives good hope: there is indeed a huge statue of Angus Young holding his trusty Gibson SG towering in the center of a metropolis with skyscrapers in the background, but never judge a book (or even less an album) by its cover! In fact, as you hopefully insert the CD into the player, you are left disappointed: the songs sound uninspired, almost as if the entire band had been chained to a table and forced to write the first three riffs that came to mind! The whole album suffers from excessive cloyingness and repetitiveness, in other words, by putting "Stiff Upper Lip" into your PC, mp3, CD player, or microwave (perhaps the most suitable place), you'll end up bored stiff like a condominium; that said, let's finally get to the heart of the matter:

The Tracks

The album immediately opens with the title track "Stiff Upper Lip", one of the few tracks on the album that does its job well: an apt opening riff by Angus followed by Brian Johnson's voice, the song presents itself as a pure Hard Rock piece but very reminiscent of Blues, as the "Accidiccian" tradition teaches, thus the guitar phrases are good and coherent with the compelling piece they accompany; the second track is "Meltdown", a mediocre and overly banal track that serves only as filler (in short, if they hadn't included it, it would have been the same, or perhaps even better); another track, another filler: I'm talking about "House of Jazz", a piece without bite and far too repetitive; moving on to "Hold Me Back", a track that begins with a fawning guitar riff that degenerates into 4 notes repeated until your scrotal sack separates, ultimately "Hold Me Back" is a dulcet and sugary piece that will undoubtedly raise your blood sugar level, avoid it like the plague!; continuing the race, we arrive at "Safe In New York City", a piece that quietly begins and then culminates in a Young solo, as usual, the watchword is repetitiveness, as dear Brian endlessly repeats the song's title, but ultimately the track barely manages to scrape a pass; the album continues with "Can't Stand Still", which was supposed to be the single but was ultimately replaced by "Satellite Blues", in the track, the band's Blues attitude takes the lead and finally one witnesses a good song, although not remotely reaching the levels of "High Voltage," which makes a good presence; it continues with "Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll", where one finally sees an excellent song, that almost clashes with the ugliness of many other songs present in "Stiff Upper Lip," "Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll" is the only track on the album that closely resembles the early albums of our favorite Australians and is worth listening to; the album continues with the equally good "Satellite Blues", a fun and fresh song that then slightly sinks into repetitiveness but still remains a track of fine quality; and so we come to the ninth track: "Damned", a piece that starts slowly and then flows into an engaging song, certainly not precisely a masterpiece but it is quite listenable (and very well); another turn, another track, and we arrive at "Come And Get It", sure, a funny piece because of the chorus in which Angus also participates vocally (an uncommon event since hearing Young hum is as rare as listening to Maggie Simpson entertain all of Springfield with a speech), but certainly not fundamental within the album; it continues with "All Screwed Up", a track neither here nor there where there is also here (stop it already!), a chorus endlessly chewed by the singer, summing up, it's a piece that adds and subtracts nothing from the album; the album concludes with "Give it Up", a piece with a good catchy chorus but nothing exceptional.

Rating

To wrap up this review, I decided to give a 3 (not a full one) to "Stiff Upper Lip," and I decided to give this rating because frankly, I always expect the best from AC/DC, but in this album, that did not happen, and the "best" turned into "repetitiveness," a word I have abused to describe this album; so if you see "Stiff Upper Lip" displayed in a record store (or at your trusted hardware store), I simply advise you to look elsewhere, maybe at other albums that really deserve the purchase, as in this "Stiff Upper Lip" the songs that deserve are about half or at most cut it in two pieces.