I was driving around listening to the modern-rock radio station, and there were three singers on in ten minutes with low-pitched chesty voices, and I was wondering “why does everybody sound like Eddie Vedder?”
A dozen years ago (can it really be?!?!), when Pearl Jam were following the trail that Nirvana blazed out of Pacific Northwest obscurity, nobody would have thought that Eddie's vocal sound would be the legacy in A.D. 2003, go figure.
Anyhow, it turned out that I was listening to Like a Stone, the latest from Audioslave, and I was surprised and delighted, when the guy who sounds like Eddie stopped singing, to hear an exuberant over-the-top keyboard break straight out of Keith Emerson, ca. 1971. The element of surprise is a key component of a truly great pop tune, and Like a Stone is one, and it's heartening to know they're still being written.
Note to the band: take ownership of your identity, boyos. That website may have your name in the URI, but it's got Sony Corporate Property written all over it, with, across the top fergosshakes, a box to jump to a list of other featured Sony Artists, starting with... wait for it... AC/DC. Sony's business model is toast, and you want to be positioning yourselves for What Comes Next, whatever that is.
