The supreme irony of this wonderfully packaged retelling of the old American Football League's existence throughout the 1960's is just how of much of a debt current day professional football - and even the filmmakers themselves - owe to the grizzled subject matter on-screen. A mesmerizing five-hour odyssey.
The last album in the original run of STP. The band had matured (relatively) by now, so there is some real depth and life experience behind this material. That is what makes "Days of the Week" work amazingly well - the music has a lightweight feel which is balanced out by Weiland's dark lyrics about trying to navigate his day-to-day while high - and he never seems to get past Thursday. But then again, it's a struggle to get much of anything else out of the 'Pilots, other than how much of a drag their lives are, and how depressingly lovely it sounds on the average. Or, how crazy lovely, and so on, and so forth. It's a case of the more things change - or develop - the more they stay the same. As it relates to this version of Shangri-La, not bad, not great, not horrible, just fairly nice-sounding overall - in a grit-your-teeth kind of way. And always - one classic single for you to hum around the next few months or years.
Fun cover, not a great album, but slightly better than the first two. "Lady Picture Show" sounded like Badfinger gone grunge. "Big Bang Baby" was simply hilarious.
