New music review: 9 leaked Guns ‘N’ Roses Chinese Democracy tracks

June 20th, 2008 | Music, Writing

So as anyone who remotely cares probably already knows, nine purported tracks from Guns ‘N’ Roses’ long-promised Chinese Democracy leaked all over the online world the other day. This isn’t the first time this has happened during the album’s long gestation period by any means — I know “Better” more intimately than most anything they did during the real band’s actual existence outside of Appetite For Destruction by now — but it’s the first time a substantial enough chunk of mostly finished-sounding tracks has appeared to make the album’s imminent completion seem plausible. After listening, I’m not entirely convinced these are in fact finalized versions, though with minor tweaks here and there they’d mostly certainly be releasable. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than that Axl definitely lost the plot long ago: this music shares none of the primal rawk grit that made Appetite For Destruction the “last great rock album” of its time — you know, until the next one, which I guess was probably Nevermind if one goes by popular thinking. These songs have obviously been through several layers of Pro Tools tweaking and the production detritus that has accumulated around them is often enough to obscure their merits by offering an endless parade of irritating distractions: here a skittering drum and bass loop, there an obviously sequenced section, here another drum loop, there odd sound effects, here a clumsily pitch-corrected vocal, there another damn drum loop. Nothing against drum loops and loop-based music, but Guns ‘N’ Roses is ostensibly a rock band, and here the clumsy obviousness of the loops’ integration just highlights the fact that there’s no “there” there. The greatest failing of this music is the most obvious: there is no band sound or feel whatsoever. It’s fully the Axl show and while it’s not all bad by any means, when you break it down it doesn’t really sound much like Guns ‘N’ Roses, even at their least coherent. Some of these songs vacillate between pretty decent and head-cockingly odd; others are really pretty dire. In the end, these tracks convince the listener of the possible existence of Chinese Democracy — but not Guns ‘N’ Roses.