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Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop
1996 studio album by Stone Temple Pilots From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop is the third studio album by the American rock band Stone Temple Pilots, released on March 26, 1996, through Atlantic Records. After a brief hiatus throughout 1995, the band regrouped to record the album together at Westerly Ranch in Santa Ynez, California, where they also lived at the time.[4] Like all of the band's albums up to that point, production was handled by Brendan O'Brien.
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Tiny Music... initially received mixed reviews, similar to the band's earlier work, but has since received acclaim for radically reinventing the band's sound and image. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and all three of its singles—"Big Bang Baby", "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart", and "Lady Picture Show"—reached the top of the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.[5] The album has been certified 2× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The band promoted the album with a tour throughout 1996 and 1997, although it had to be cut short due to Weiland's ongoing battles with substance abuse.
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Background
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The period leading up to the recording of Stone Temple Pilots' third album, Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, was marked by serious internal challenges, largely stemming from the lead vocalist Scott Weiland's struggles with substance abuse. Although the band had managed to complete Purple (1994), it had been a difficult process due to Weiland's addiction, which had already begun to disrupt the group's stability.[6][7] By early 1995, the situation had worsened. During initial sessions for the album in February, the band was forced to discard two weeks' worth of recordings as Weiland's condition deteriorated.[7] On May 15, 1995, he was arrested for possession of heroin and cocaine. After being released on bond, Weiland sought out more drugs and eventually secluded himself at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, where he reportedly spent time using drugs with Courtney Love.[6][8]
During Weiland's absence, the remaining members of Stone Temple Pilots, the guitarist Dean DeLeo, the bassist Robert DeLeo, and the drummer Eric Kretz, began developing a new project. Believing the band had hit a low point, they decided to form Talk Show in the spring of 1995, recruiting the former Ten Inch Men vocalist Dave Coutts. While the members did not view Talk Show as a temporary side project, Stone Temple Pilots had not officially disbanded. At the same time, Weiland started his own group, the Magnificent Bastards, and contributed tracks to the Tank Girl (1995) soundtrack and the Working Class Hero: A Tribute to John Lennon (1995) compilation.[7] Weiland spent the rest of 1995 cycling through rehabilitation centers, leaving the band's future uncertain.[6]
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Recording
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In October 1995, Stone Temple Pilots reconvened in Santa Barbara, California, with longtime producer Brendan O'Brien to begin work on Tiny Music.[6] The DeLeo brothers first sorted through their collection of roughly 30 songs they wrote during Weiland's absence, deciding which would suit Stone Temple Pilots and which would be used for Talk Show. As Dean DeLeo later recalled, "Robert and I had about 30 songs, and we sat in the room one night and basically went down the list and marked next to every song: Scott, Scott, Dave, Scott, Dave, Dave, Scott... It's really weird, because in all reality it was like 'Big Bang Baby' could've been on [the] Talk Show record and 'Everybody Loves My Car' could've been on Tiny Music."[7]
Stone Temple Pilots chose to record Tiny Music at Westerly Ranch in Santa Ynez, California, a 20,000-square-foot estate that offered both isolation and flexibility.[a][13][14] Only a small crew, O'Brien, engineers, a few assistants, and a chef were present.[13] The band lived on-site, opting for a residential environment over a traditional studio in hopes of maintaining a consistent workflow and keeping Weiland focused.[15][12] "I think at that point, trying to keep the attention in a studio, and having to show up to a studio, was kind of a challenge," Robert DeLeo later reflected. The idea of recording in a house wasn't spontaneous according to him, it was something the band had long wanted to do, inspired by classic albums like Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), which were made in similar residential settings. Yet even in the seclusion of the mansion, concerns about Weiland's well-being persisted. "There were times when we did go upstairs, and you had to walk past Scott's bedroom first when you went up, and we just were checking in on him to see if he was alive. Literally," Robert DeLeo told Yahoo! Entertainment.[12]
Some of my favorite records ever made were recorded in houses. And it was a great experience to make the sounds up yourself rather than be in a studio and assume the sounds were going to be good because of the space you were at and the gear that was there.
–Robert DeLeo on Tiny Music[15]
Compared to the relatively fast, contained process of recording Purple, the approach for Tiny Music was looser and more exploratory.[15] The setting, while tense at times, opened up new creative possibilities.[15][11] The band transformed the house into a makeshift studio, outfitting nearly every room with microphones, instruments, and recording equipment. Rather than relying on standard studio effects, the group used the residence's natural acoustics to shape the album's sound. Kretz explained that the band's desire to expand their sound had been growing since their work on Purple, which had marked a shift toward more studio experimentation. That mindset carried over into Tiny Music, where the home-recording environment encouraged even greater creative risk-taking.[11] For example, the house's foyer with its tiled surfaces and 20-foot ceilings created a reverb-heavy atmosphere that was used on tracks like "Lady Picture Show".[13] Some of the percussion was also recorded in a large bathroom to capture its ambient qualities,[11] while some drum tracks were even recorded outdoors, including "Big Bang Baby", which Kretz played on the front lawn.[13]
Robert DeLeo noted that the home setting gave the band more freedom to explore musical directions without second-guessing. He had been deeply immersed in bossa nova at the time, and the openness of the environment encouraged him to bring that influence into the sessions. However, the creative atmosphere did not entirely eliminate the strain within the group. Weiland's history of addiction loomed over the sessions, and the band remained aware of the instability that had previously disrupted their plans. Reflecting on the period, Robert DeLeo noted that while they had hoped to tour Purple extensively, they were only able to promote it for six months. That disappointment, paired with internal and external pressure to reestablish momentum, fueled much of the writing for the new record.[15]
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Music and lyrics
The album saw the band deviate from the grunge sound present on their first two records and incorporate a wider variety of different influences, including psychedelia, shoegaze, jangle pop and glam rock.[16] Lead vocalist Scott Weiland opted for a higher and raspier tone for much of the album's material, as opposed to the deeper vocals present on Core and Purple. It also features a wider array of instrumentation, including organ, vibraphone, and trumpet. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated in his review of the album that "Tiny Music illustrates that the band aren't content with resting on their laurels" and "STP have added a new array of sounds that lend depth to their immediately accessible hooks." Erlewine also wrote that the album "showcases the band at their most tuneful and creative."[17]
Songs
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Tiny Music opens with "Press Play", an instrumental featuring a Rhodes piano and runs for 81 seconds.[15][18] "Pop's Love Suicide" and "Tumble in the Rough" move with a "newfound speed and ease", though Sadie Sartini Garner of Pitchfork noted their "casual arrangements and flat melodies" give them a slight feel.[9] "Tumble in the Rough" was the first Stone Temple Pilots track credited solely to Weiland for both music and lyrics.[13] According to Ultimate Classic Rock's Saby Reyes-Kulkarni, the song leans toward punk rock with a layered sound influenced by the 1960s, prioritizing texture, tone, and mood over directness.[15] "Big Bang Baby" explores themes of fame's emptiness, with references to Weiland's own death multiple times in the lyrics.[19] According to Garner, the song incorporates a direct melodic nod to the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and namechecks David Bowie's Station to Station, framing it as a commentary on stardom. The line "Sell your soul and sign an autograph" precedes a shift into the refrain "Nothing's for free," a moment where the irony becomes clear.[9] "Lady Picture Show" combines melodic elements of early '70s rock with a structure reminiscent of Beatles-style pop.[13][9] Garner compares it to "You Never Give Me Your Money", noting its emotional restraint and the detached, observational tone of Weiland's vocal delivery, which lends the song a subtle melancholy.[9] Weiland's lyrics, as he explained in his autobiography Not Dead and Not for Sale, were inspired by the story of a dancer who experiences a traumatic assault and later struggles to reconcile love with lingering pain.[13]
"And So I Know" showcases Robert DeLeo's interest in jazz and bossa nova, creating a laid-back, swaying atmosphere. Bryan Rolli in Consequence highlighted the song's lithe quality, while NME labeled it "blatant easy listening", pointing to its gentle guitar-jazz style as a contrast to the typical emotional approach of many male-fronted rock bands of the era.[6][15] "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart" incorporates a riff reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's "Dancing Days" and builds to a large-scale chorus where Weiland declares he's "not dead and not for sale". The track also features a prominent guitar solo from Dean DeLeo, described by Rolli as "scorching".[6] "Art School Girl" blends British post-punk with jazz elements, according to Reyes-Kulkarni, and stands out for its irony and humor.[6][15] Rolli described the track as a satirical take on underground art culture, with Weiland adopting a mock-serious tone before the chorus erupts into noisy garage punk.[6] "Adhesive" combines elements of shoegaze and indie rock, with a slow, ambient arrangement that features trumpet solos reminiscent of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain (1960).[6][15] Weiland's lyrics take a dark, introspective turn, reflecting on mortality and commercialism as he sings about selling more records if he were dead.[15] The track's spacious production and trumpet lines by Dave Ferguson contribute to its expansive atmosphere.[6] "Ride the Cliché" subtly incorporates progressive elements, blending them with classic rock influences.[15]
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Album artwork
The album cover was designed by John Eder to resemble a 70s-style LP cover and based on an idea from Weiland, features a woman in a swimsuit standing in a pool with a crocodile in it.[20][21] The cover model was Maya Siklai (formerly Goodman), a family friend of art director John Heiden.[22] Said John Eder, "The little altar in the background was a last minute addition Scott wanted to put in, and it actually existed in his house, where I went to shoot it."
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Release and reception
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Contemporary reviews
Rolling Stone favored the album, regarding it as the group's best effort to date. They expressed surprise, however, at "the clattering, upbeat character of the music" given Weiland's much-publicized run-ins with drugs and the law. The magazine also featured STP on its cover of issue No. 753 in February 1997.[29]
David Browne of Entertainment Weekly, however, was less favorable of the album, writing that "none of it... has a distinct personality."[24]
Band photographer John Eder recounts of the mixed reception, "I remember [Tiny Music] getting totally trashed critically, for example in Entertainment Weekly, with the critic even singling out and making fun of the bands' physical appearances – like, their actual body types – in the little snapshot fold-out thing that came in the CD."
Retrospective reviews
Following Weiland's death, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins posited, "It was STP's 3rd album that had got me hooked, a wizardly mix of glam and post-punk, and I confessed to Scott, as well as the band many times, how wrong I'd been in assessing their native brilliance. And like Bowie can and does, it was Scott's phrasing that pushed his music into a unique, and hard to pin down, aesthetic sonicsphere. Lastly, I'd like to share a thought which though clumsy, I hope would please Scott In Hominum. And that is if you asked me who I truly believed were the great voices of our generation, I'd say it were he, Layne, and Kurt."[30]
In 2016, The A.V. Club noted that Tiny Music "was an almost shocking leap forward in creative ambition" and that "[STP] got weirder and better than anyone gives them credit for."[31]
In 2021, Pitchfork published a positive review of the 25th anniversary reissue of Tiny Music, with the writer Sadie Sartini Garner observing that it is "primarily an album of expansion" and acknowledged their original 1996 review (in which the writer Ryan Schreiber wished that Weiland would "tie [himself] off and fall directly into space forever")[32] as "genuinely deplorable." Garner also praised the band's 1997 Panama City Beach concert included in the reissue, stating that it "captures Stone Temple Pilots' power as a live band."[9]
Commercial performance
In the United States, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 albums chart on the issue dated April 13, 1996,[33] with 162,500 copies sold.[34] This was a significant decline when compared to the bands previous efforts and can in part be attributed to the decline of grunge in the mid-90's. Because of the tour cancellation, Tiny Music did not receive as much exposure as initially intended. The album was certified 2× platinum but was not as commercially successful as STP's first two albums.
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Track listing
All lyrics are written by Scott Weiland.
Note: "Press Play" has a length of 4:27 on LP reissues.
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Personnel
Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.[35]
Stone Temple Pilots
- Scott Weiland – lead vocals, percussion on "Press Play"
- Dean DeLeo – guitar, bass on "Press Play" and "Big Bang Baby"
- Robert DeLeo – bass, guitar on "Press Play", "And So I Know" and "Daisy"; vibraphone and electric harpsichord on "And So I Know"; percussion on "And So I Know"
- Eric Kretz – drums, percussion on "Pop's Love Suicide", "Lady Picture Show", "And So I Know", and "Art School Girl"
Additional personnel
- Brendan O'Brien – producer, mixing, piano on "Press Play" and "Big Bang Baby"; percussion on "Pop's Love Suicide", "Lady Picture Show", "Art School Girl" and "Seven Caged Tigers"; organ and clavinet on "Art School Girl"
- Dave Ferguson – trumpet on "Adhesive"
- Nick DiDia – recording engineer
- Caram Costanzo – 2nd engineer
- Chris Goss – vocal engineer
- Tracy Chisholm – vocal engineer
- Stephen Marcussen – mastering
- Ron Boustead – digital editing
- John Eder – photography
- John Heiden – art direction
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Charts
Singles
Certifications
Notes
References
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