Can it really be 30 years since the release of one of my first and fiercest musical loves, Soundgarden's Superunknown? The sort of expansive, all-encompassing record you could live inside for a month, emerging briefly to draw air into your lungs and be blinded by the dazzling daylight, only to be sucked back in once again.
At various times over the past three decades, pretty much every single one of the album's 15 tracks (16, if you count bonus 'She Likes Surprises') has been my favourite. Today? Maybe 'Head Down'. Maybe 'My Wave'. Maybe the title track. Ask me tomorrow and it'll be different.
Ten years ago, I linked to Stuart Berman's piece for Pitchfork. Here's another appraisal, from the Quietus' Val Siebert, which - though briefly dunking on the album's unfairly maligned successor Down On The Upside - pinpoints the curious chemistry between the band members that set them apart from the grunge herd and rightly cites the "sublimely dissonant crunch" of '4th Of July' as evidence that they hadn't come close to selling their souls to the mainstream.
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