In between fronting the multi-platinum, award-winning bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, Chris Cornell has often dabbled in the acoustic – from the song Seasons for the 1992 Cameron Crowe film Singles, to his 1999 solo debut Euphoria Morning and now his first live album, Songbook; documenting a recent American acoustic tour.

It’s an understated aspect of his repertoire and one often overlooked, but Songbook is disarming enough to change that perception. Songbook is remarkable for tying together Cornell’s multitude of disparate musical ropes.

Material for the tour has been culled from every aspect of Cornell’s career to date, from Soundgarden to Temple of the Dog to Audioslave to his solo material. It even includes an unreleased track originally written for Johnny Cash in the mid-90s called Cleaning My Gun. Of particular note is a studio recording of The Keeper, a track written for the film Machine Gun Preacher.

Its speedy fingerpicking isn’t too far removed from Seasons, and if he decides to release a full studio acoustic album in the future it’s a good indicator of the potential therein for such a project. Instead of a mash of contrasting styles grinding against each other from song to song, we are in fact left with a cohesive set, with Cornell in some cases totally reworking rhythms to fit his slower, sparser acoustic style.

Even Ground Zero, taken from the unfortunate R&B experiment album Scream, is reworked totally, and feels more at home here than it ever did. It’s a quiet joy to hear the powerful, downtrodden psychedelic Soundgarden songs Fell on Black Days and Black Hole Sun reduced to just guitar and voice, as if they were ever intended to be delivered in any other style.

John Lennon’s Imagine and Led Zeppelin’s Thank You are both covered here and the former in particular is one of the better recorded versions, paying a certain amount of respect but twisting and turning it into a song that only Cornell can pull off. 

The near-mumbling of the lyrics on Thank You is jarring; slurred together yet as intense as the most scorching of Soundgarden tracks. Cornell’s voice, being a focus of constant discussion, sounds better than ever. Regardless of his range, which is as expansive as it ever was, on these slower acoustic songs he’s given a platform to display his agility, poise, strength and timing.

Lyrics roll out, stained and powerful, sombre and rough, disappearing into the guitar’s notes and off into the darkness of the crowd. When he belts out, holds and raises a single note, as the guitar strum drops off for a bar, you can hear his throat strain and his voice stretch like no other singer can.

Songbook isn’t Cornell lazily firing off acoustic versions of his back catalogue, it’s Cornell typing up his career to date and crafting something completely new in the process. ‘Can’t change me’? We wouldn’t even think of trying, Chris.

Mark Murphy