Chris Cornell: ‘Songbook’

CHRIS CORNELL
‘Songbook’
(Universal)
Released: 21st November 2011

Johnny Main

You would think that being part of the recently reformed Soundgarden would keep you busy – not so for Chris Cornell, who toured the US acoustically from March to May. This is the document of some of the many different tracks that he performed during that tour.

 

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At times, there’s not a lot of audience noise, which simply demonstrates just what a great voice Cornell has. The addition of just his acoustic guitar gives some of the tracks here a haunting quality and, for others, the chance to hear tracks without the layers of instrumentation, and offers a new insight into them at the same time.

The album contains two new tracks, ‘Cleaning My Gun’ and ‘The Keeper’ (written for the film ‘Machine Gun Preacher’, which gives a perspective of where he is now, compared to the other original tracks), and two non-Cornell related covers, ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Thank You’.

The rest of the album is made up of tracks from Cornell’s entire career, including the short-lived and sometimes underrated Temple Of The Dog. These tracks all demonstrate his versatility as a writer, arranger and musician.

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Amongst the tracks aired here, ‘Ground Zero’, ‘Fell On Black Days’ and the evergreen classic ‘Black Hole Sun’ sound as good, if not better than they did when they were first released. Cornell’s voice has rarely sounded better.

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Tracklist:

As Hope And Promise Fade
Scar On The Sky
Call Me A Dog (Temple Of The Dog cover)
Ground Zero
Can’t Change Me
I Am The Highway (Audioslave cover)
Thank You (Led Zeppelin cover)
Cleaning My Gun
Wide Awake (Audioslave cover)
Fell On Black Days (Soundgarden cover)
All Night Thing (Temple Of The Dog cover)
Doesn’t Remind Me (Audioslave cover)
Like A Stone (Audioslave cover)
Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden cover)
Imagine (John Lennon cover)
The Keeper

www.chriscornell.com

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