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Plaino di Pagnacco, 7 a.m. on August 3, 2013. Not only did I have to wake up at an ungodly hour to go to Lignano to spend a day at the beach and listen to David Guetta (sigh), but I also have to bring friends along: I will be the one, then, to ferry my ass to one of the worst events of my musical life - and perhaps not only. Half of the company wants to attend the concert, but you know how it goes, one way or another, those who don't understand a damn thing about music always win. But I won't let you get away with it, bastards. If you want to poison me, I must take an antidote first. Yes, first.
7:15 a.m... "Listen - I say with a humble and subdued air - would you guys like to listen to some music?" "Okay, okay," they mumble amidst yawns. "Alright, I'm turning it on now, I don't even know what I've got on..." In reality, I know very well that I've got "Louder Than Love" by Soundgarden on, and as I press the power button, I smirk maliciously; from the first Cameron-inspired percussive embroidery of "Ugly Truth," I understood that this would be a memorable trip.
Robert Christgau gave this album a C+. Robert Christgau didn't understand a damn thing. This album is simply a bombshell, as it should have been. Forget the pale simulacrum of Cornell in "Part of Me," forget the wrinkles and the white hair and go back 25 years, when Chris delighted in inserting "fuck" repeatedly to mock glam and earn the "parental advisory" as a medal of honor. "You stay down, but I won't be quiet...I'll hammer on until you fight...LOUD LOVE!": this was Soundgarden!
Following the ineffable concentration of perverse rawness known as "Ultramega OK" (released with SST by a certain Greg Ginn), "Louder Than Love" was the first album the Seattle group released for a major label, A&M Records, marking a decisive transition between the debut and the episodes that would follow, starting with the granite-like "Badmotorfinger". There's still a bit of rawness, but the path has been taken, the edges partially smoothed, and, above all, Cornell starts to extend his hands over the band: a process that will lead it, slowly but surely, to the melodic shores of "Down on the Upside". But those will be different times.
Our guys still draw heavily from the Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but trying to reduce them to a bastard fusion of these two giants has always been reductive. Hence the spiraling and magmatic psychedelia of "Ugly Truth," the riffs of almost doom-like malignancy of the climax "Gun," the bizarre tempos of the brash "Get on the Snake," the caresses of wizard Kim Thayil in "Loud Love" and "Uncovered," the punkish up-tempo of the ruthless "Full on Kevin's Mom." A kaleidoscope of multiple influences, the offspring of both the '70s and '80s, where one cannot help but mention the compositions of the departing bassist Hiro Yamamoto, the dark soul of the group. The Japanese-American, indeed, is not only the creator of the bluesy "Power Trip," with Cornell obsessed and repressed like few other times, but also of the "dark Seattle" chapter, constituted by the pair "I Awake"-"No Wrong No Right": the darkest, most twisted and desperate page of the Sound Garden. Even in this album, to conclude, there are no shortages of mockeries, which in the previous chapter were known as "665" and "667": "Big Dumb Sex," as the title itself indicates, is a demolition of Glam metal with tasteful "Fuck you's," and the Reprise of "Full on" is paradoxical in its attempt to be a cathartic and restorative finale, considering what the lyrics of the song were referring to. How to sum it all up? Simple: a masterpiece, as well as the record where Mr. Cornell whips out his best performance with Soundgarden, similarly to what will happen in "Badmotorfinger" for Kim. Kim, who, however, even here draws from his Eta Beta skirt stoner, Sabbath-inspired, hard rock, blues, or psychedelic riffs at will, accompanied by the usual, terrifying Matt Cameron.
And it's not just the album that is noteworthy, but also the booklet, which contains thanks, among others, to bands like Mudhoney (and that alone would say it all), Screaming Trees and Mother Love Bone: a sign, in its way, that in 1989 Seattle was a red supergiant ready to shine like a supernova.
Ah, I didn't like Guetta: they say it's "dance" but it didn't make me want to dance for a single second. But I'd already had my moment: imagine the satisfaction of seeing friends stare at each other's stunned eyes while you pump "Get on the Snake" into their sickly eardrums?
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