The album features a rock sound characterised by guitar distortion and quiet interludes, just like in the line of Pixies, Radiohead's "Creep" and grunge bands such as Nirvana, disbanded earlier in 1994 due to Cobain suicide, indeed the purported similarities between the band's sound and Nirvana's was the subject of significant media attention while others considered the band was a copy other though the band was better than them. Lyrical themes on the album included adversity and criticism of masculine stereotypes, as well as relationships and terrorism.
The origins of the album were sown prior to Rossdale, previously of the band Midnight, first meeting future Bush bandmate Nigel Pulsford in 1991, when Rossdale wrote "Comedown", the first ever song he had written by himself, which would later reach Number 1 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay charts. The album was recorded in January 1994 at Westway Records in London, and produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. Rossdale initially wanted Steve Albini to work on Sixteen Stone. Albini would engineer the band's next album Razorblade Suitcase. Guitarist Nigel Pulsford told that the decision to have Langer and Winstanley work on the record was due to sensitivities around the band sounding too American; Pulsford said "it became apparent that we had a definite American bent to our sound which is why we choose them to produce our first album in the hope that they would make us sound more British.
The music, style and influence of Sixteen Stone has been characterized variously as grunge, hard rock, and post-grunge, and has been compared with the music of 1990s Seattle-based bands including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, In relation to the reputed similarities between Sixteen Stone and Nirvana, Gavin Rossdale told that he believed the influence was only obvious on the song "Little Things", commenting "you've got one chord progression and a kind of different rhythm in the chorus, which is the same effect you get with Nirvana" further commenting "if you listen to "Smells like Teen Spirit" and then listen to the Pixies "Debaser", it's the same thing". Other influences noted by critics included the musical similarities between "Everything Zen" and Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" (1989) and the resemblance borne between the riff on "Body" and that on the Soundgarden song "Rusty Cage" (1991).
The album received mostly positive feedback from music critics, calling their sound impressive, even though the band sounds too much like Seattle rock scene.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario