Van Halen: A Different Kind of Truth

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Singer David Lee Roth’s reunion with Van Halen has produced an album that’s “far better than it needed to be,” said Sarah Rodman in The Boston Globe. Not only does the collection meet nostalgia requirements. It’s also “shockingly cohesive for a group of clashing personalities lugging a tour bus worth of baggage.” The band revisited demos from their 1970s inception for the record, their first with Roth since 1984. It proved to be an inspired move, said Steven Hyden in the A.V. Club. Sure, Roth’s range has shrunk to the point that he’s only capable of “glorified talk-scatting,” but that voice “remains an integral part of the band’s sound.” Eddie Van Halen fares even better. He can still make a guitar sound “like the world’s finest symphony orchestra blasting through outer space at a million miles per hour,” and he salvages even the several lackluster songs here. The musicians might not like Roth much, but somehow he seems to bring out their best.

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