Dirty up the production a little bit and you might have something approaching one of their 1970s tunes, but like most of this album, and much of the work in the band’s modern era, all of the rawness is polished out of it. That turns into a full-on “Rats in the Cellar” style rocker – or probably as close as they can get to it these days.
The next really good number we run into is “Street Jesus,” which opens with a tasty blues rock groove with Tyler matching Perry’s guitar riff vocally. But, of course, Steven Tyler can’t resist that big, glammy, squeaky clean chorus that starts about a minute and a half in and pulls the listener out of that zone. There are some cool female backing vocals, and it’s sounding like maybe there might be something to this record after all. The first real sign of life we get is fifth track “Out Go the Lights,” which opens with a slinky, bluesy groove that’s most definitely in the band’s classic wheelhouse with some of that swagger and the expected sleazy lyrics. To me, it sounds like a reject from the Get a Grip sessions, and I consider that the band’s worst record, period – even worse than the Joe Perry-less Rock in a Hard Place or the electronic mess that was Just Push Play. It’s shiny, glitzy, super-slick and lacks any of the soul, blues or balls of their 1970s work. Let’s start with the song that, for some reason, they chose to introduce the album with – “Legendary Child.” It’s like an amalgamation of everything the band’s done wrong since its reunion in the 1980s. At times there are flashes of it, but more often than not, it sounds like the same overproduced commercial claptrap they’ve been trotting out for a long, long time. Jack Douglas, producer of the band’s best records, was back on board. I was hoping for the revitalized Aerosmith. Truth is, though, Music from Another Dimension kinda sucks. I got in fights with people who had the audacity to say Aerosmith sucks.
In high school, I was routinely late for school if Aerosmith were on MTV or the radio because I wouldn’t leave until the song was over. At one point, I probably had a different Aerosmith T-shirt for every day of the week. My 11th commandment, once upon a time, was “thou shalt have no rock band over Aerosmith.” I’ve waited on a store to open to buy a new Aerosmith record. You see, I’m an Aerosmith fanboy in the worst way. I think it speaks volumes that after hearing a few advance tracks, I had this record in hand for three days before I ever listened to it.
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