Stone Temple Pilots – “Tiny Music…Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop” MoFi

Description

If great art, as many believe, is inherently polarizing, then the StoneTemple Pilots Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop easilyranks as the California-based bands finest album. Simultaneouslycelebrated and castigated upon release, the groups third full-length finds vocalist Scott Weiland and company expanding theirgrunge palette with a smart blend of glam rock, psychedelia,jangle pop, and other related styles. Having benefited from long-view reassessments that shed the biases of initial criticisms, thedouble-platinum effort is now largely and rightly seen as a creativemasterwork. Part winking send-up, part tribute to the glitter rockage, and part middle finger towards the hip crowd that didnt knowwhat they were missing, this mid-90s classic repeatedly invites youto burrow into a smorgasbord of big hooks and glossy choruses.

Sourced from the original analog tapes and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, Mobile Fidelitys numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP set presents Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop in audiophile sound for the first time. Benefitting from exceptional groove definition, quiet surfaces, and black backgrounds, it plays with levels of separation, imaging, and dynamics that raise the profile on what the quartet accomplished on an album recorded at a California ranch that turned into an exploratory canvas for the groups ambitions. You can hear the multitude of details and tonalities with previously unattained clarity, presence, and scope, as well as the impact and punch every rock record deserves. Another tremendous asset: The depth, grain, and pitch of Weilands voice. Get ready to drop the needle and listen to it play.