There are some hairy perils that come with being a living rock mega star. Dead icons have it easy, having left behind pristine, untainted legacies perpetually revered by all for generations on end. (Heck, it smells like new revenue every year for Kurt Cobain.) But when you’re a breathing, sentient rock god, you must live in a constant state of trepidation; eyes always peeled for any cracks in the hull that could sink your towering mast in a heartbeat.
Chris Cornell knows the feeling. After receiving a public flogging for his calamitous 2007 solo album Carry On, the ex-Audioslave/Soundgarden front man saw all his hard-earned alt-rock accolades flash before his very eyes. In a fit of panic, it seems, he took heed to the wise words of Rivers Cuomo and enlisted the resuscitative services of chart-topping career-surgeon Timbaland. The end results remain to be seen, as Cornell’s collaboration with the super producer (entitled Scream) is scheduled for a February 2009 release. But several leaked club anthems and a pitiful cameo in a Verizon Wireless ad have suggested the grunge shrieker may be suffering a midlife crisis.
Nevertheless, the capacity crowd at the Kool Haus on Friday night indicated Cornell’s market-value hasn’t yet dwindled in Toronto. Accompanied by a five-piece band, the goateed vocalist was met with a rousing response as he sauntered on stage in a leather trench coat and scarf. He then proceeded to frighten and confuse the audience with the brand new “Part of Me,” a bubbling workout song sounding like a cross between “SexyBack” and “I’m A Slave 4 U,” during which he moaned lines like “But I swear, never meant a thing/ She was just a fling.”
Perhaps to remedy the trauma caused by the vulgar image of Cornell shaking his hips, the band then launched into “No Such Thing,” a riff-heavy number from Carry On that hit closer to home with head bang-prone fans. Following this, some turbulence was once again encountered with the James-Bond-theme-cum-Bon-Jovi-style-power-ballad “You Know My Name.”
But crowd members breathed a collective sigh of relief once Cornell indulged them with high octane Audioslave moshers “What You Are” and “Gasoline,” during which guitarist Yogi Lonich did his best to replicate Tom Morello’s tremolo-laden verses. The building then went completely ape-shit for “Outshined,” Soundgarden’s sludgy fist-pumping hit off of 1991’s Badmotorfinger. Despite being criticized as of late for sounding as if a smart bomb had detonated in his larynx, Cornell’s pipes were in pristine condition this evening as he nailed piercingly high notes during the song’s pre-chorus. He continued to effortlessly traverse all ranges of his multi-octave voice during “No Attention,” from Soundgarden's 1996 swan song Down on the Upside. Beckoning Mat Joly of opening band Mobile to the stage, he and the singer performed a lighter-waving rendition of “Hunger Strike,” a song from Cornell’s pre-commercial success side project Temple of the Dog.
Cornell obediently played up to the audience’s nostalgic fondness for his older material, ceding his fans their money’s worth and even taking crowd requests during an acoustic segment for terrestrial-radio sleepers “Black Hole Sun” and “Like a Stone.” This was a noble act of kindness towards a T-Dot rabble that was recently begrudged their high expectations by other '90s rock figureheads. Possibly aware of how ear-bleedingly acidic his latest material is, Cornell only subjected his fans to short shock treatments of it, rather than clamping the sponge helmet to their heads and ruthlessly pulling the lever.
Not to say, of course, that his Scream performances weren’t painful. The electro-pop shuffle of “Watch Out” brought to mind Rihanna’s “S.O.S.,” with Cornell frantically puffing about a woman with poor driving habits (“She goin’ 90 in a residential zoooone”). And his upcoming album’s title track, with its synth-addled slow-motion sway, sounded like a dead ringer for the Timbaland-helmed R&B hit “Apologize” by abysmal boy band OneRepublic. Needless to say, the latter two numbers left the crowd cadaverous.
But the empathetic grunge hero was quick to resurrect the evening’s morale with Down on the Upside’s lushly apocalyptic “Blow Up The Outside World,” which he introduced as a song he wrote in Toronto while he was “a little fucked up.” Then, in what may have been the evening’s high point, Cornell and his compatriots ripped into the beautiful garage math madness of Soundgarden's “Rusty Cage,” played two notches faster during the verses and ten miles slower during the 19/8 outro. During this number Cornell resembled his old self — the wild-eyed warrior from the days of yore — thrashing his long, curly locks with wild abandon, unleashing his decibel-shattering screams, climbing the drummer’s kit and assuming a Jesus Christ Pose. This incited a deafening audience roar but, alas, the shirt remained on.
To kick off a four-song encore – which included 1999 Euphoria Morning-era B-side “Sunshower” and Temple of the Dog’s “Reach Down” — Cornell and his band performed a thunderous cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” The singer was in top form for this one, flawlessly simulating Robert Plant’s high-register wail. Could this have been Cornell’s S.O.S. to the now Plant-less classic rock kings? The once-again orphaned front man has made it no secret he wouldn’t mind finding a new home as a fill-in vocalist on the stainless steel blimp’s upcoming tour and has consistently been hammering out Zeppelin covers at his most recent shows. Only time will tell, but if all goes wrong, Cornell at least knows he can always stay afloat grasping on the heartstrings of sentimental individuals with an affinity for lumber jackets, duct-taped Birckenstocks and ratty tees.