REVIEWED: Chinese Democracy
Written by: Hugh Platt
Is there any dance move, stage gesture or physical act of defiance, more rock’n’roll, than the pelvic thrust? You can keep your devil horn throwing, your crowd surfing, your stage diving, your head banging, your mosh pit’ing – the pelvic thrust sums up everything about rock’n’roll. The ill-restrained sexual desire. The disregard for what others may think. The fact that if anyone other than a rockstar attempts it anywhere but on a stage in front of an audience, it looks totally fucking stupid.
If records were dance moves, then Chinese Democracy would be a pelvic thrust. If anyone other than Axl Rose had made this album, it would sound totally fucking stupid. Despite holding the lion’s share of ex-GnR members, there’s no way Velvet Revolver could’ve made this album. It’s over-wrought, over-the-top, over-budget and completely, unequivocally, a Guns record.
There’s no point in even trying to review this objectively. Notwithstanding that this is possibly the most mystery-shrouded record release in the last twenty years, notwithstanding the fact that this review will make fuck-all difference in altering your decision whether to buy it or not, and notwithstanding the fact that this review is a result of a single playback in a record company boardroom, it’s impossible to listen to Axl Rose’s new baby without the dull ache of regret in the pit of your guts. For all the acres of talent used in it’s creation – the liner notes for this record go into exasperating detail – and the years spent making it, the crushing realisation hits you that this is just a capable album, not an exceptional one.
You’ll have already heard the title-track by now – opening the album, it feels more portentous than it did as a stand-alone track. Those Elton John urges he squirted out indiscriminately with ‘November Rain’ – well, they’re back with ‘Street Of Dreams’, only nowhere near as grandoise. The rumoured dalliances with industrial metal chug? See ‘Shackler’s Revenge’. “Don’t ever try to tell me how much you care for me / Don’t ever try to tell me how much you’re meant for me,” Axl sneers at us. Oh, if only you knew, Axl, if only you knew.
‘Better’, which is being lined up as a potential second single, has a pumping chorus, but its refrains of “Now I know you better / You know I know better” never quite get under your skin the way you desperately, fervently hope they will. As a fan you want this record to succeed, but as a fan you can’t really deny that it fails.
‘I.R.S’, played live at Rock AM Ring, 2006:
There’s one, huge, elephant-in-the-room problem with Chinese Democracy – bangers. Or rather, the lack thereof - the title-track is the fieriest bombast the album can manage. Oh, there are acres of solos, from the Bill & Ted excess of the guitar wanking in ‘Street Of Dreams’, to the big, stabby mentalism of the one that ‘Riad N’ The Bedouins’ indulges, but none of them have the soul-fucking, spine-ripping, raw gonzo genius of classic Guns. A few tracks like ‘Scrapped’ might come close to the cocksure riff attitude of old, but they can’t hide the fact that there’s not one true anthem of the ages here. No ‘Paradise City’. No ‘You Should Be Mine’. And certainly no ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
If anything, Chinese Democracy goes to show that without Slash, Duff and Izzy to keep a stern rock’n’roll eye on him, there’s no-one to curtail Axl’s wanton musical excesses. The hired help just smile and do what they’re told, whereas the classic Guns would take their frontman’s wild ideas and give them that juiced-up wild-eye’d rock finish, and make them into the solid-gold genius that those early GnR records had in abundance.
When legends die young, they become cannonised as they’ll never tarnish their legacy with ever-decreasing returns. When Chinese Democracy was the joke of the industry – the album that would never come – then the legacy of GnR was unimpeachable. Now? Guns N’ Roses were one legend we wish had stayed dead.
‘Chinese Democracy’ is out on November 24.
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