Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop

Production

In early 1995, shortly after the band was forced to scrap two weeks worth of recorded material, lead singer Scott Weiland was arrested for heroin and cocaine possession and sentenced to one year's probation. In the months following this incident, Weiland formed his own side-band, the Magnificent Bastards, and recorded songs for the Tank Girl soundtrack and for a John Lennon tribute album.

During this time the rest of the band decided to put together their own side project, which would later become the band Talk Show. In the fall of 1995, when Stone Temple Pilots regrouped to record again for Tiny Music, Robert and Dean got together to figure out which songs should be Tiny Music songs and which songs should be Talk Show songs. Dean would later say "Robert and I had about 30 songs, and we sat in the room one night and basically went down the list and marked next to every song: Scott, Scott, Dave, Scott, Dave, Dave, Scott.... It's really weird, because in all reality it was like 'Big Bang Baby' could've been on [the] Talk Show record and 'Everybody Loves My Car' could've been on Tiny Music."

Issues with Weiland's drug use did not clear up after his sentence, and STP was forced to cancel most of their 1996-1997 tour for Tiny Music.

Musical style

Tiny Music displays a drastic change in the band's sound, featuring music strongly influenced by '60s rock and bands such as The Beatles. Stephen Erlewine of Allmusic stated in his review of the album that "Tiny Music illustrates that the band aren't content with resting on their laurels" and "STP have added a new array of sounds that lend depth to their immediately accessible hooks," naming shoegaze and jangle pop as two examples of genres explored on the album. Erlewine also wrote that the album "showcases the band at their most tuneful and creative."

Doug McCausland of Alternative Nation said "Tiny Music really gelled the individual band members’ musical tastes together into a new sound: vocalist Weiland’s underground punk and glam sensibilities, guitarist Dean DeLeo’s upbringing in sixties and seventies rock, and bassist Robert DeLeo’s interest in genres like jazz and bossa nova."

Album artwork

The album cover features a woman doll in a swimsuit standing before a pool with a crocodile in it and was created to resemble a 70’s-style LP cover. The cover was made by John Eder., based on an idea from Weiland. The cover model was a family friend of art director John Heiden. Said John Eder, "The little altar in the background was a last minute addition he wanted to put in, and it actually existed in his house, where I went to shoot it."

Critical reception

Rolling Stone favored the album, regarding it as the group's best effort to date. They expressed surprise, however, at "the clattering, upbeat character of the music" given Weiland's much-publicized run-ins with drugs and the law. The magazine also featured STP on its cover of issue No. 753 in February 1997.

David Browne of Entertainment Weekly, however, was less favorable of the album, writing that "none of it... has a distinct personality."

Band photographer John Eder recounts of the mixed reception, “I remember [Tiny Music] getting totally trashed critically, for example in Entertainment Weekly, with the critic even singling out and making fun of the bands’ physical appearances – like, their actual body types – in the little snapshot fold-out thing that came in the CD.”

Following Weiland's death, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins posited, "It was STP's 3rd album that had got me hooked, a wizardly mix of glam and post-punk, and I confessed to Scott, as well as the band many times, how wrong I'd been in assessing their native brilliance. And like Bowie can and does, it was Scott's phrasing that pushed his music into a unique, and hard to pin down, aesthetic sonicsphere. Lastly, I'd like to share a thought which though clumsy, I hope would please Scott In Hominum. And that is if you asked me who I truly believed were the great voices of our generation, I'd say it were he, Layne, and Kurt."

In 2016, The A.V. Club noted that Tiny Music "was an almost shocking leap forward in creative ambition" and that "[STP] got weirder and better than anyone gives them credit for."

Commercial performance

In the United States, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 albums chart on the issue dated April 13, 1996, with 162,500 copies sold. Because of the tour cancellation, Tiny Music did not receive as much exposure as initially intended. The album was certified 2× platinum but was not as commercially successful as STP's first two albums.

Personnel

Stone Temple Pilots

Additional Personnel