Aerosmith

Rockin’ the Joint (Sony)
by Martin Popoff

Versus past bloats, both live and cringingly studio, Rockin’ the Joint brings back the magic of Aerosmith in their prime. And it’s all in the contours – this record has personality and magnetism. It’s an album for the deep, caring fan, the suffering fan. Sticking out like hell on a stick is “I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing,” but dispensing with that, one gets the only two heavy songs from Just Push Play, rendered raucous and intimate in a semi-club setting (this you can feel as well, the mark of a good band with roots), live rarities like “Big Ten Inch Record,” “No More No More,” and, most beautifully, “Seasons of Wither,” a long-lost sublime Get Your Wings soft classic (now if “Spaced” followed right after…). As well, there’s “the first song I heard these guys play,” sez Steven, a hard, old blues chestnut called “Rattlesnake Shake,” which sounds like prime Foghat. Best of the bunch is “Draw the Line,” though, which rips and tears, as L.A. Guns is wont to say, while “Train Kept a Rollin'” kicks hard at the close. Production-wise, I dunno, there’s still a bit of that blended bloat, that strange polish that makes you think things couldn’t have sounded quite this way in the venue. But that’s a minor complaint, cuz the performances are fiery, and like I say, there’s a personality that these songs, shuffled into this time and place, conjure. It’s a little jarred, a little addled (one gets only really old songs and very recent songs), but at the same time, it’s really quite pleasurably geared to the Aerosmith fan who’s been in it for the long, sometimes hair-pulling haul.
(www.aerosmith.com)