FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
AEROSMITH
Nine Lives
Columbia· First album back on Columbia with a $30-million deal to boot.
· Don't expect anything that you haven't heard before.
Formula is often the hallmark of major entertainment. If it worked once, or even twice, it's got to work again. The same could be said of Aerosmith's latest release, Nine Lives.
Since scoring major success with their 1987 release Permanent Vacation, the Aerosmith formula of a couple of ballsy rockers mixed with a couple of radio-friendly ballads, and some quasi-experimental instrumentation - which began with 1989's Pump - adds up to Nine Lives.
This is not to say that I expected to find something new and unique. I expect Columbia records didn't either, after laying out a more than generous contract for a band that at best has only two or three albums in them before kids realize that the guy singing about pink being his favorite color, is old enough to be their grandfather. Aerosmith, and in particular Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, have made their careers with double meaning and innuendo-laced lyrics backed up with blues-based rock.
Maybe its the heavy-handedness of the lyrics that gets me down the most about this album. Once not long ago, Tyler's rapid fire, cliché-ridden, dirty-if-you-thought-about-it lyrics used to entertain, but now they seem tired and trite.
On the music side, Perry's guitar shows all the qualities that have inspired a thousand imitators. The solid backing of Whitford, Kramer and Hamilton is workmanlike and precise, maybe too precise. Buried under layers of horns and production, one wishes for a little of the looseness which brought energy to other Aerosmith songs that are now considered classics.
Formula may work well but it goes only so far. Like the cliché about going to the well one too many times, Nine Lives comes up just a little bit dry.
Rating 3/5
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