I'm on my second listen and I think I like enough of these songs to say the album is a success. But ultimately the "how" of this album is important enough that it might very well overshadow the "what."
Aside from this ruining the premise of my serial-noir (which, you know, is fine with me) I recognize that this album is art of a sort that rarely exists in the mainstream anymore: obsessively conceived and produced in epic toil. Fifteen years, people. It's like he's some sort of a novelist!
The time signature on that is just lusciously alien in 2008, when instant gratification (and disposal) are the default means of consumption. Add to that the fact that Axl--perhaps in another anachronism--seems in middle age to be every bit as incapable of irony, self-deprecating or otherwise, as he was in his brash youth, and you have a work of such pure earnest that I can't help but think of it as heroic. That a good number of you will scoff at such overstatement is part of what makes it real. This isn't just about greatness but also grandeur.
Maybe that makes it sound better.
Well, the Chinese government sure doesn't like it, which is a point in its favor.
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