W. Axl Rose

In 2002 W. Axl Rose ended my hopes that there would ever be another Guns and Roses album by debuting a new lineup and saying his new album, then only a decade or so in the making would be out soon. Then they went on tour. Then they came off tour and broke-up.

Then the album didn't come out.

There were two things that I didn't think I would see in my lifetime, a Black President of the US, and GNR's Chinese Democracy.

Two in one year.

In my mind the election of Barack Obama has brought Chinese Democracy to all of us, and W. Axl Rose has managed to do something that only Brian Wilson has done before...bring the world what is probably a heavily over-produced and incredibly hyped album years and years in the making.

Axl's pitch for Obama to appoint him Secretary of Crazyland (a post held under the Bush Administration by Prince) is a pretty slick and listenable mishmash of every possible thing that you know from GNR, without all the other 'members' to hold Axl back.

In that way it is less like a GNR album and more like an Axl Rose album. This works pretty well, much like, say, a Mick Jagger album sounds a lot like a Stones album.

There are songs here like Old GNR, a couple of Rob Zombie style tracks, and at least one that would sound at home in a Broadway show. Also there is the one track that sounds like Axl doing Bohemian Rhapsody.

I think there was probably quite a bit of pitch correction and vocal tuning done on many of the tracks, but that probably just comes from the fact that there were probably about 1,000,000 hours of sound recorded for these 14 songs.

This ain't no Britney comeback where she just went in and said about 20 words into the mike and Scott Storch's minions (Pooh Bear) make twenty tracks from that.

There is one track that had me thinking that Axl should have hired Timbaland to drop in some phat beats One Republic style, though. That would have guaranteed some radio play.

All in all, much better than I expected, but not really a GNR album. I don't think it's going to unseat AFD on the influence and popularity lists, but it's also not going to just plunk and disappear like Billy Corrigan's solo album (but I don't think Billy spent 15 years working on those songs).

Chuck Klosterman's review