Stone Temple Pilots: A New Sensation?

Give Stone Temple Pilots credit: they still haven't played Lollapalooza, and lead singer Scott Weiland rocks on, despite his occasional drug-rehab run-ins (and walkouts). Three albums after their 1992 debut, Core (Atlantic), and despite the nay-saying of critics, they're still racking up platinum sales.

The STP recipe has never been too hard to follow; their heavy-metal mentality, mixed with "post-punk power pop," has been sweet enough to climb up the charts and land cleanly into Wal-Marts across America. And, of course, the similarities to Pearl Jam and Nirvana don't hurt. The live STP experience, however, is another animal, as more than 18,000 fans found out at last Saturday night's Tiny Music . . . Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop world-tour stop at the FleetCenter.

Decked in a snazzy black and white pinstripe suit, Weiland strolled through most of the evening with enough pomp and circumstance for 10,000 graduations. On the opening "Pop's Love Suicide," his nasal vocals sounded strained, wilting beneath the wall of sound pelted out by sibling stringmen Robert (guitar) and Dean (bass) DeLeo. "We're a rock-and-roll band called STP," Weiland snarled, leading the group into an unimpressive rendition of "Seven Caged Tigers," which was obscured by nonstop flashbulb lighting accompaniment.

Weiland and STP did shine during the mid-show acoustic set and in their generous offering of back-catalogue performances. Perched on a round, candle-cramped stage that had been lowered from the ceiling, the Pilots delivered a breathy Weiland-ized version of Zeppelin's "Dancing Days" prettied by Robert DeLeo's free-flowing slide guitar. On their best offerings of the night -- "Creep," "The Big Empty," and "Pretty Penny" -- Weiland's voice remained in a low-crooned, raspy bellow, the same pitch you'd hear on nearly all of the successful tracks of Core and Purple (Atlantic). Breaking from the studio fuzz etched into his voice on most of Tiny Music, he sailed smoothly through "Tripping on a Hole in a Paper Heart" and "Lady Picture Show," both of which benefitted from Eric Kretz's precision drumming.

But STP's rock-and-roll shtick is hard to ignore. Weiland introduced the landmark anthem "Plush" (their big MTV video single from Core) as "a brand new one for ya, now" and the intentional slip of the tongue was enough to focus attention on that song's copycat origins (it's the most Pearl Jam-like of all their material) and on the production values: the giant Buddha, the candles, the Rush-sized light show, and the rest of the "alterna-facts" that littered the stage. Shaking his hips and mocking the audience's clapping and arena-rock sing-along, Weiland let self-parody take over. The only thing that could have overshadowed his antics was a political-convention-style balloon drop, which, no kidding, actually did happen during the shaky, encore performance of "Big Bang Baby."

STP played only a handful of songs from the latest album. Over some stretches, they proved their chops and their musicality. But when Weiland sings "I'm lookin' for a new rock sensation" on Tiny Music's "Tumble in the Rough," you have to wonder. Sensation they're not.

-- Jonathan Vena