(Im)perfect timing

Soundgarden's Superunknown and Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral were both released on the same day, 8th March 1994, and went on to become two of the most iconic rock records of that decade. While I was certainly a fan of the latter, it was the former that was, for a good year or so, my favourite album full stop: a sprawling, bruised and bruising beast.

Its lead single, though, seemed a curious choice. There was something odd about 'Spoonman' that I could never quite put my finger on - but now I can, thanks to this Stereogum article in which Christopher R. Weingarten hails it as one of 17 "essential songs" in 7/4 time. It wasn't Soundgarden's first experiment with that particular time signature, though - they'd tried it out on Badmotorfinger's 'Outshined' - and indeed other tracks on the album are similarly bewildering on first listen (I'm thinking of 'Limo Wreck' and the chorus of 'My Wave' here).

In a curious twist of fate, The Downward Spiral's lead single, 'March Of The Pigs', was also in 7/4 (though Trent Reznor confessed that the drums were sampled and tampered with rather than live) - hence Weingarten's article, which also features songs by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Devo, Blondie and (surprisingly, to me at least) Soundgarden's Seattle contemporaries Alice In Chains. I always had them down as meat-and-potatoes grunge - solid enough, but little more. This suggests I may have been doing them a disservice.