Stone Temple Pilots long ago secured a place in the annals of ‘90s alternative rock. The San Diego outfit rode their own blend of hard rock and alt-metal to millions in album sales, a long chain of indelible radio hits, and a slew of iconic videos and performances that have forever stamped the band’s image in the memories of fans. However, STP’s seemingly overnight success didn’t immediately translate into respect from critics, peers, and certain camps of listeners. At the same time that their smash debut, 1992’s Core, and its far more eclectic follow-up, 1994’s Purple, dominated the charts and brought STP global popularity, some circles trashed the band as outsiders ripping off grunge. They dismissed frontman Scott Weiland, regarded today as one of the era’s great vocalists, as an Eddie Vedder clone. It’s with that sparkling chip on their shoulders that Stone Temple Pilots embarked on their third studio album, 1996’s Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, a collection that would sever any ties to “grunge” and prove that the band was evolving far too fast to be any scene’s stationary punching bag.
After the success of Purple, Weiland and bandmates Dean DeLeo (guitar), brother Robert DeLeo (bass), and Eric Kretz (drums) actively sought out new ways to challenge themselves sonically. However, they first needed to regain their stability as a functioning band. Weiland’s drug abuse had intensified during the Purple sessions and sabotaged their first stab at making a third record. Stone Temple Pilots went on a brief hiatus in 1995, with Weiland working on other music between rehab stints and the rest of the band testing the waters without him as the short-lived Talk Show project. Once Weiland returned, the band brought back longtime producer Brendan O’Brien to co-pilot and rented out a ranch in Santa Barbara, in the hopes that the nontraditional setting would not only spark creativity but help keep the singer out of trouble. The band’s surviving members have looked back on the Tiny Music… sessions as a mix of rekindling a creative brotherhood and dreading the dire path Weiland was headed down. In hindsight, those conflicting vibes of joyfulness and impending doom can be felt in the finished songs—like a gorgeous, glamorous car crash.
Opening instrumental “Press Play” invites us to drift into the weird space that Tiny Music… inhabits: some of the best elevator jazz you’ve ever heard. Born out of an impromptu jam session, O’Brien plays Rhodes piano while the DeLeos swap instruments and Weiland joins Kretz on percussion. This brief snippet of a much longer jam imbues the album from its earliest moments with the feeling that we don’t quite know what the band has in store for us. Similarly, Robert DeLeo’s “Daisy,” the other instrumental on Tiny Music…, channels a psychedelic lounge sound that slinks along through the album’s corridors with little purpose other than it’s pretty, melodic, and unexpected. Both of these tracks hint at the type of creative freedom Stone Temple Pilots and O’Brien were willing to allow and embrace. Other stories recall how the house itself inspired and enhanced the sounds found throughout the record. Tall ceilings and tiles added reverb, bathroom acoustics reshaped guitar parts, and Kretz famously could be found dragging his drum kit everywhere from the attic to the front lawn. All of it contributed to a record that rarely fails to surprise and captivate even when it doesn’t always make sense.
After “Press Play” shows us to our seats, “Pop’s Love Suicide” plunges us into the glitzy and grimy underground of Tiny Music…, a spiraling, contemptible world of addiction and commodification fit to be railed against. The band opt for glam- and punk-indebted clashing and velocity over the epic scale of their earlier albums. “Pop’s Love Suicide” relies more on composite textures than individual heroics, nowhere more evident than the chaotic final chorus where three different Weiland vocals are woven together to create a delightfully grating wall of dissonant disobedience. Dean DeLeo still jokes today about the two-chord guitar trick Weiland tortured his bandmates with until they used the part as the main element of “Tumble in the Rough.” “So what,” shrugs Weiland, as he coils his phrasing around his bandmates like a mic cord wrapped around a forearm, the layered vocals here sometimes deployed as echoes and other times as call-and-response. It’s all one big middle finger that sounds like a band grateful just to be back together, even with an ill, pissed-off frontman.
Lead single “Big Bang Baby” ostensibly continues Weiland’s scathing polemic on stardom. The singer serpentines through verses in search-and-destroy mode while the song grinds and thumps along. “Sell your soul and sign an autograph,” goads the singer before reminding us in the track’s memorable falsetto refrain that “nothing’s for free.” Despite Weiland’s admission that most of the song’s lyrics are gibberish, the feeling that fame is one big, hollow, empty enterprise—a twisted, burning pile of limousine wreckage that he’s content to watch until it smolders—couldn’t be clearer. “Lady Picture Show” bursts out of the final hushed words of “Big Bang Baby” with all the decadence of an old Hollywood movie premiere and the sleaze of a coin-operated peep show discarded in a dumpster. Set to splashy drums and glittery guitar, Weiland tells the story of a dancer trapped in a dangerous relationship. As he laments that “she doesn’t know her name, she doesn’t know her face,” it’s hard not to wonder how much of Weiland, who later described himself as confused and numb during these sessions, could be seen in that exploited girl’s reflection.
Had a song like “And So I Know” appeared midway through Core or Purple, listeners would’ve likely dismissed it as a mere curiosity or maybe a palate cleanse between lumbering, heavier compositions. Instead, it feels right at home wafting through the lighter, more-melodic confines of Tiny Music…, offering Robert DeLeo an excuse to tap into his bossa nova influences. He brings in unlikely instruments like vibraphone and harpsichord as the band learn new ways to embrace the margins of space, the track diffusing into the air rather than punching a hole in a wall or blowing the roof clean off. “Hold on ‘til the end / Like it’s the last hello,” smokily croons Weiland in the style of his future solo work, a revelation that emotion doesn’t come from always turning up to 11. Similarly, a could-be huge chorus on “Adhesive” instead floats, if not drowns, in a melodic ocean of piped-in vocal harmonies, a vagabond trumpet, and every audible strike of Kretz’s kit. Weiland insists that “words don’t matter anymore” as he sings openly about his demons and what becomes of rockstars going down this path. However, the pain and confusion of lines like “the deepest wound is hidden” couldn’t be any louder if he was screaming into his trademark megaphone.
Megahit “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” might be the lone track on Tiny Music… that sounds like it could’ve fit into the band’s earlier output. The aggressive, psychedelic anthem leans on Dean DeLeo’s intense guitar work, including a cornered bluesy solo and a nod to Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days,” which the band had recently covered in tribute. Weiland has cited a bad acid trip as the influence for his lyrics, but the song is far more noteworthy for being one of the few times on Tiny Music… that the frontman not only lashes out at those who might exploit him but also picks himself up. “I’m not myself,” admits the singer. “But I’m not dead, and I’m not for sale.” It’s a powerful act of defiance, as a struggling Weiland warns not to write him off just yet. The quirky, shifting “Art School Girl” finds the singer more playful as he humorously tells the tale of a Southern girl who migrates to NYC, despite the song’s protagonist having warned her “five or four times” about the move. In future interviews, Weiland talked about the desire to become more of a storyteller and rely less as a songwriter on whatever emotions he might be feeling at the time. For all its silliness and mock tone, “Art School Girl” demonstrates Weiland humbly beginning to move in that direction.
The aforementioned instrumental “Daisy” splits a pair of rockers that draws the curtain on Tiny Music… The prog-tinged “Ride the Cliché” stumbles into a bouncing, stuttering groove that can feel almost euphoric as Weiland addresses patterns of behavior that have left him churning through predetermined cycles of struggle. His voice rises and falls like a beautiful, cresting wave before the chorus pleads contrarily to “hold me closer / Let me go away.” Similarly, closer “Seven Caged Tigers,” a professed favorite of Weiland’s, musically belies the singer’s frustration with bright guitars and a hummable chorus. “So, the answer gets harder and harder / And the truth’s getting farther and farther,” he suspects as the record drifts out. Part of the tragedy around Weiland’s life was that his songs suggest he knew all too well what he was up against; sadly, understanding never translated into personal salvation. Tiny Music… closes its doors with all the same pain and confusion the band brought with them going in.
Despite Scott Weiland’s heroin addiction sending him back to rehab and cutting the Tiny Music… tour short, the album followed in Core and Purple’s footsteps toward the top of the charts. Plenty of critics initially panned the album; however, time has been far kinder in appraising the title. Most recent takes on Tiny Music… have cited the record as a shining example of Stone Temple Pilots’ distinctive songcraft and ambitious range as a band, and it’s grown into a darkhorse favorite among the group’s diehard fanbase. The always-opinionated Billy Corgan, originally skeptical of the band, even came out years later to champion Tiny Music… as a “wizardly mix of glam and post-punk” and ranked Weiland on par with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley as “voices of their generation.” Sadly, Weiland’s drug-related struggles would continue to torment him and impact relationships with his bandmates right up until his tragic death in 2015. Revisiting Tiny Music… three decades later conjures up a bittersweet reminder of just how talented and unique Stone Temple Pilots were when they were punching back at their deriders rather than battling against themselves.
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