Chris Cornell - Arms Around Your Love

Some ten years post-Soundgarden, eight years after a superb debut solo album and about five minutes after a shaky jaunt around the block with Audioslave, Chris Cornell has finally caved with this foray into MOR-hell. A pleasant enough melody accompanies a down key, mid-tempo but ineffectual jam, allowing a relatively subdued version of that voice to take centre stage and croon away about the jealousy of the jilted, gunning for U2-ballad territory in the process. As a direct result, Spoonman this is not, and there's not a hell of a lot on offer to suck you into his world of weary like Superunknown or even Down On the Upside did. Sorry, but with a body of work like Cornell's to live up to, the comparisons to the past are forever inevitable. Then again, in the context of his upcoming second record this might just pass… I'm clutching at straws here. Do yourself a favour Chris, give Kim and that a bell. [Johnny Langlands]