Velvet Revolver
Libertad
***
The frustrating thing about Velvet Revolver is not that they’re bad—this much professionalism concentrated in one band could probably never turn out badly—but that they really ought to be so much better. The musicians who make up the supergroup—three former Guns N’ Roses members (guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, drummer Matt Sorum) and former Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, plus guitarist Dave Kushner—have been collectively responsible for dozens of great arena-friendly riffs and choruses in the past. And yet both the band’s 2004 debut, Contraband, and their new follow-up, Libertad, sound mostly like competent, journeyman rock, far from bad but almost as equally far from great.
As might be expected from a band that now has a few years of touring under its belt, Libertad sounds more like the work of a cohesive unit than Contraband did, and in its best moments (the glammy, T. Rex-ish “Mary Mary”; the gloomy, psychedelic “The Last Fight”) it synthesizes a distinctive sound that’s more than just the stitching-together of elements from the principals’ former outfits. Unfortunately, most of the songs are energetic but interchangeable rockers, sounding like STP tunes with Slash guitar solos grafted onto them.
Not too many bands in 2007 have the audacity to throw both cowbell and a talk-box guitar solo into a song, as VR do on “Get Out the Door,” and that commitment to old-school rock values is admirable. It’s the more adventurous, seemingly tossed-off material, though, like countrified hidden track “Don’t Drop That Dime” (which sounds like an Izzy Stradlin solo outtake), that hints at a band just on the cusp of realizing its true potential.