The announcement of Soundgarden's 2010 reunion was exciting on several counts; first, that meant Chris Cornell would stop his fucking around with Audioslave and Timbaland. But more importantly it would be the return of the only band that really sounds like Soundgarden. While Bush, Godsmack, and Creed spawned from the most easily cloned DNA of Soundgarden's peers, few bands attempted to possess either the chops of their SST days or the dexterous, expansive pop-metal that would come later.
And yet, instead of reissuing any of their mammoth LPs for a much-needed rediscovery, A&M chooses to strip mine the Soundgarden vaults for barely new compilations. Even more so than the poorly curated and bafflingly packaged hodgepodge of career retrospective Telephantasm, Live on I-5 comes off like an experiment to figure out the minimum amount of effort required to separate a Soundgarden fan from $9.99. Rather than capturing the band at the peak of its powers, I-5 documents the Down on the Upside tour that found Soundgarden worn out by that album's grueling recording sessions, punishing substance abuse, and most importantly, each other.
That the title references a stretch of highway along the Pacific instead of a single venue is in itself telling: though I-5 ends up a pretty faithful recreation of Soundgarden's setlist at the time, it's pieced together from a handful of West Coast dates, and you can tell by how the crowd noise pipes in at random intervals and volumes like a hovering apparition. As such, there's really no ebb and flow, no tension, no sense that this needed to be Soundgarden's first live document. At the very least, Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd, and Matt Cameron are highly skilled musicians doing efficient yeoman's work here-- there's an anachronistic pleasure in hearing Thayil's serpentine soloing wailing through the very unhip wah-wah pedal, and how they manage to pummel through the closing "Jesus Christ Pose" is nothing short of miraculous considering the torpor that precedes it. They give a very professional performance, nothing less, nothing more.
So what we're basically left with is a live album whose perverse main draw is the chance to hear a good portion of Soundgarden's most iconic tracks given the Lizard King treatment by someone whose vocal cords were clearly on the business end of way too many bottles of vodka. Let's not mince words-- Chris Cornell sounds terrible here, and he's pretty much all you can hear when he takes the mic. Granted, hearing him go all Tarzan on record provided some of Soundgarden's most visceral thrills, and oddly enough, he has no problem hitting the climactic high notes of "Spoonman" and "Rusty Cage". But nearly everything else just finds his vocals tattered and flailing in and out of tune like a flag in a torrential downpour, making you wonder just how bad things really got if these were truly the top-shelf recordings. Even the choice of covers here lack inspiration-- "Search and Destroy" and the even more ubiquitous "Helter Skelter" are given Blueshammer makeovers, no different from any number of bands doing the same thing at a sports bar near you.
Look, that rating up there is a reflection of the presentation, not of the underlying material: God knows any record with "Rusty Cage" on it deserves better. The problem is that this was, at best, a 1997 cash-grab that probably would've worked in that economic climate, and now you just get to debate whether it's a cynical move on Soundgarden's part or, more likely, something they had absolutely nothing to do with at all. If you want to get excited about their upcoming album, see them live now. Or listen to Louder Than Love, Badmotorfinger, or Superunknown-- they hold up just fine.
