Aerosmith: Music From Another Dimension!

A solid comeback effort from the Bostonian rockers.

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Aerosmith: Music
From Another Dimension!
Columbia
***

Back after a stormy period of injuries, communication breakdowns and rumoured splits, Aerosmith needed to pack a punch on this, their first new studio album in 11 years.

Boston’s legendary hard-rock veterans certainly cover the waterfront across these 15 eclectic tracks, drawing strongly on their 1970s heyday as ragged blues-rockers on Out Go the Lights and Legendary Child, but also recalling their later peak as savvy commercial hitmakers with the polished harmonies of Luv XXX and the singer Steven Tyler’s country-rock duet with Carrie Underwood, Can’t Stop Lovin’ You.

Inevitably, there are also plenty of epic, windswept power ballads here, including We All Fall Down, written by Diane Warren, who also wrote the band’s chart-topping 1998 smash I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing. Aerosmith’s 15th studio album is business as usual: raunchy innuendo, propulsive guitar riffs and hard-nosed financial sense.

Even so, sometimes they can still surprise, as when the guitarist Joe Perry takes the lead on Freedom Fighter, an angry garage-rock chugger in the Neil Young vein, featuring Johnny Depp on backing vocals. Despite a few cheesy moments, this is a solid comeback effort.