Band:	Aerosmith
Album:	Music From Another Dimension
Style:	Hard rock, Blues rock
Release date:	November 2012

01. LUV XXX
02. Oh Yeah
03. Beautiful
04. Tell Me
05. Out Go The Lights
06. Legendary Child
07. What Could Have Been Love
08. Street Jesus
09. Can't Stop Lovin' You
10. Lover Alot
11. We All Fall Down
12. Freedom Fighter
13. Closer
14. Something
15. Another Last Goodbye
16. Up On The Mountain [bonus]
17. Oasis In The Night [bonus]
18. Sunny Side Of Love [bonus]
19. Shakey Ground [Japanese bonus]
20. I'm Not Talkin' [Japanese bonus]

Years in the making, an hour in the breaking.

I cannot describe the anticipation I had for the release of Music From Another Dimension, the first all-new release from one of my favourite bands in eleven years and the first with all-new material since I had become a fan of theirs. I listened to all the snippets and singles that I could get my hands on to get a taste of what was to come and stay tuned to the band through all the twists and turns that occurred during the making of this album; like a kid of Christmas eve I sat up and waited until midnight when the blue bar on the download started and I could finally hear new Aerosmith?.yeah, that served to be one of the last times I would do that.

Music From Another Dimension is a very schizophrenic affair, with the band taking the two extremes of their identity and throwing them together in one offering rather than finding a middle ground for them both to occupy. As a result you have bluesy garage rock meets polished radio-friendly country ballads that sit together like oil and water, all the while keeping one foot in their roots and one in the zeitgeist of the time; rather than pick, a lane the band decide it best to switch up constantly on their race to nowhere. Where Just Push Play sounded disconnected from the band's roots, at least it committed to what it wanted to be; here the band get cold feet and consequently burn down their roots as a means to keep themselves warm.

Much of the album feels like glorified jam tracks thrown onto the record; while this can give an album character and charm, here it just sounds incomplete or like you listening to the band playing around in the garage and, with few exceptions aside, never building upon these ideas and putting flesh on the bones. Tracks like "Lover A lot", "Something" and "Oh Yeah" are ideas with filler bolted around them to get a full track out of them; there is something like a riff or lick and/or a melody in there somewhere but it is never fully utilized and instead finds itself buried amongst bog-standard templates that diminish what are otherwise impactful ideas.

There are times, however, that these jam tracks are fleshed out and make for some of the best rock n roll the band have produced since Get A Grip, sitting down in the groove that is towed behind some great guitar work. Tracks like "Freedom Fighter", "Out Go The Lights" and "Street Jesus" sound like natural extensions of each individual's talents harnessed together to lead you through some top grade rock.

The other side of the album are the ballad/radio-ready tracks that seem to be inspired as much by country than by Aerosmith's blues roots. While this is not a bad thing, in fact it sounds fresh and an avenue for the band to explore without losing sights of their roots like they had on Just Push Play, the problem is in the execution of this idea. While the inclusion of the sound is implemented well, it feels like a sticking plaster over what are otherwise sparsely filled tracks. "Another Last Goodbye", "What Could Have Been Love" and "Closer" are nowhere near the same standard the band had accustomed fans to.

Again, like the rock side of the record, not all of the slower songs are bad, with tracks like "Can't Stop Lovin' You" and "We All Fall Down" showing the band could still knock a more emotive song out of the park when they put their minds to it. While neither hold a candle to most of the band's prior ballads, they are still good and in the instance of this album provide respite from what is otherwise sub par material.

The production on this album is both a blessing and a curse for the band; Douglas returns to complete what has to this point been a dream team but as is the theme with this record, the potential isn't realized. Douglas does very well at creating wide open spaces for the band to fill and emphasizing their bluesy and raw sounds, sounding stripped down but polished at the same time. Songs like "Beautfiul" sound big, while tracks like "Lover Alot" sound like four guys in a cramped space with a microphone in front of them. At the same time, the slower tracks get a country twang that sounds naturally emotive rather than processed; "Can't Stop Lovin' You" and "Tell Me" benefit greatly from this twist. The flip side to this is that this sparse style and open space puts a spotlight on the unfinished feel of most of these songs and pushes it to the fore rather than hiding or minimizing it; for as much as the production gives the record, it takes just as much out of it as well.

The best way to measure an album is by asking yourself what song would you like taken from it and put on a concert setlist or compilation album at the expense of a different song; Music From Another Dimension has a hit rate of 1 out of 15?. For any band that is dismal going but for a band of Aerosmith's stature it is an unbelievable drop. When you look at the album from afar and take it at face value, "Freedom Fighter" is the only track I wouldn't mind being picked over something else; there are other tracks here that are good but I'd not take them over other songs in the band's back catalogue. Even when you give the band slack that it is unfair to expect them to match their previous heights, they still come up far too short to bridge the gap in good faith. To expect another Pump is an unfair ask, but even when comparing it to some of the band's middling efforts like Done With Mirrors, it struggles at times.

The other dimension can keep this music, if this is what they call music then someone better get SpaceX to call off their efforts because we won't like what we're going to find.