Well, Significant Other, the band's follow-up to Billboard 200 dark horse Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$, does feature slow tempos that don't necessarily develop into boot-stomping, head-banging crescendos. And there's an occasional multivocal harmony. And even what sounds suspiciously like a strings section on one track. To temper such moments, however, the metallic crunch of full-throttle Bizkit is louder than ever, singer Fred Durst snarls throughout like a maladjusted pit bull and unconvincingly over-the-top cred dispenser Matt Pinfield is enlisted to deliver a hidden-track sermon on why Significant Other is really authentic or passionate or soulful. Or something.
It's stuff like the Pinfield cameo that encourages critics to dismiss Limp Bizkit as little more than a band that engages in well-planned, well-executed campaigns to market itself as a hardcore, street-level band that doesn't engage in well-planned, well-executed marketing campaigns. It also doesn't help the band's critical reputation that it works in a genre whose overblown, bring-it-on bombasticism tends to encourage easy dismissal.
But, really, what is the metal/rap/electronica hybrid that Limp Bizkit and their colleagues ply but an attempt to counter the fragmentation that has supposedly led to rock's demise? As such, you'd think it'd get more credit -- and certainly the genre seems momentous enough to produce its own Nevermind, if not quite its own Never Mind the Bollocks. And Limp Bizkit seem just as likely as anyone to produce that album. After all, Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$, while uneven, exhibited a more organic fusion of rap and metal than did Korn's Follow the Leader, and its best tracks displayed a funky, bluesy, riff-heavy sound that was completely its own.
Significant Other builds on Limp Bizkit's promise -- it's definitely a more ambitious and more accomplished album than the band's debut. "I'm Broke" (RealAudio excerpt), for example, starts out with a lock-step metal grind and Durst's rapping in a raspy, staccato style that recalls the pre-Whitey Ford Everlast, then shifts to a slower, moodier break with swirling electronic effects, then ultimately switches back and forth between these tempos until it climaxes in an accelerated, pumped-up reprise of the first part. While the lyrics aren't Durst's best, the song's straight-ahead, mosh-pit momentum is hard to resist.
Other songs show an even greater sense of scope and structure. "Rearranged" starts with a jazzy bassline and DJ Lethal's laid-back scratching and develops into something almost akin to a power ballad. "Nobody Like You" mixes crunching guitars, some sinuous, Middle Eastern-sounding organs in the background and uncharacteristically rich harmonies from Scott Weiland and Durst, along with the always riveting yowls and twitchy roargasms of Korn's Jonathan Davis. And then there's "Don't Go Off Wandering" (RealAudio excerpt), with its strings and waltz-like tempo, and a climax that features Durst crooning gamely against a droning wall of violins and guitars.
Given the accomplished sense of orchestration that informs individual songs, it's somewhat ironic that as an entire album, Significant Other is something less than the sum of its parts. There are a few too many throwaway tracks and interludes, particularly as the album winds down.
More consequential than that, however, is the band's limited emotional range. While Significant Other is more sonically diverse than its predecessor, it shares the same narrow range of feeling. Limp Bizkit are great at expressing cathartic rage and simmering, inward-directed rage. And cold-hearted, merciless disgust. And sneering vindication. But rarely do they project any emotion that isn't aggressively negative. The only song on the album that is remotely celebratory, something that could be listened to at a party that consisted of more than a couple guys, a couple 12-packs and their grudges, is the album's second track, "Just Like This," with its dance-friendly "phat-ass beats" and relatively docile lyrics.
As the album goes from fist-pumping anger to subdued seething, to fist-pumping anger again, its monotony sabotages its power. Limp Bizkit's cover of George Michael's "Faith" on Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$ was meant as a joke. But what it really showed, before the band started dismantling it in a demonstration of its essential hardness, was just how much it could benefit from adding a few brighter melodies and sentiments to its repertoire. Limp Bizkit's latest album could certainly have used a few such moments, even if insincere -- after all, who wants a Significant Other who's pissed off all the time?
