Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop
Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop is a wonderfully odd title for an album that makes so much of its music immediately approachable. Stone Temple Pilots fill these songs with bright hooks, then keep changing the colours around them. The result has a lightness that their heavy-rock reputation can obscure.
Big Bang Baby makes the change plain. The guitar riff is wiry rather than massive, and Scott Weiland's singing has a playful, pinched quality that gives the melody extra character. Lady Picture Show goes further into pop, with a tune that seems to keep finding another attractive turn. Dean DeLeo's layered guitars add detail without making the song feel crowded.
The rhythm section deserves much of the credit for how easily the album moves. Robert DeLeo's bass lines travel around the guitar parts instead of simply thickening them, and Eric Kretz keeps the transitions tidy. Trippin' On a Hole In a Paper Heart is especially effective: the instruments have enough activity to reward attention, but the chorus remains the thing you remember. The clever playing serves a very direct song.
Adhesive is the most revealing departure. The gentler arrangement and trumpet make space around Weiland's voice, allowing a more exposed mood to emerge without losing the band's melodic identity. And So I Know is another successful change of pace, working through a quieter, more relaxed setting. These songs suggest a group interested in the shape of an entire record rather than simply another collection of guitar singles.
A few of the more abrupt changes can feel mannered. Art School Girl gets plenty of effect from its sudden heavier bursts, though its repeated vocal idea wears thin faster than the best melodies here. The short instrumental passages also work better as links than as reasons to return on their own.
Those are small reservations about an unusually lively album. Tiny Music brings together hard rock, psychedelic detail and a strong instinct for pop without making the connections sound laboured. Its appeal is not that Stone Temple Pilots have become less heavy. It is that they have found so many more interesting ways to move.
