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"&lt;p&gt;The song titles and lyrics on their new album may suggest otherwise, but there are at least a few clich&amp;#xE9;s that the guys in Aerosmith can&amp;apos;t be bothered with &amp;#x2014; &amp;quot;aging gracefully,&amp;quot; for instance. On &lt;em&gt;Nine Lives&lt;/em&gt;, the band&amp;apos;s first studio effort since 1993&amp;apos;s &lt;em&gt;Get a Grip&lt;/em&gt; &amp;#x2014; and its first on Columbia Records since resigning with the label for an unspecified but presumably obscene amount of moola &amp;#x2014; Liv Tyler&amp;apos;s dad and his forty-something cohorts continue to embrace hard-rock bombast with a lack of self-consciousness worthy of a group of high school battle-of-the-bands contestants. &amp;quot;There&amp;apos;s a new cool ... that fits me like a velvet glove,&amp;quot; Steven Tyler howls in the thrashing title track. &amp;quot;She&amp;apos;s talkin&amp;apos; to me.... The girl&amp;apos;s in love.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;Grrrr.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, unlike the other spiritually adolescent hair bands that were all the rage around the time of Aerosmith&amp;apos;s late-&amp;apos;80s comeback &amp;#x2014; most of whom were wiped out by the Great Alternative Music Conquest of the early &amp;apos;90s &amp;#x2014; Aerosmith can be relied on to temper their puerile machismo with plenty of humor, heart and artistic ingenuity. The first single from &lt;em&gt;Nine Lives&lt;/em&gt;, the ingeniously titled &amp;quot;Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees),&amp;quot; is a cheeky love-gone-wrong lament fueled by fierce, swelling horns (arranged, incidentally, by Beck&amp;apos;s dad, David Campbell) and by Joe Perry&amp;apos;s electric-guitar flash. &amp;quot;The Farm&amp;quot; features exotic, densely theatrical orchestration reminiscent of the late-period Beatles, while &amp;quot;Pink&amp;quot; has a contemporary guitar-pop feel, with sweetly grainy textures and a snappy hip-hop beat.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;For those who simply can&amp;apos;t abide a collection of Aerosmith tunes without its share of power ballads, &lt;em&gt;Nine Lives&lt;/em&gt; doesn&amp;apos;t disappoint. &amp;quot;Hole in My Soul,&amp;quot; a catchy confection in the unabashedly sentimental tradition of &amp;quot;Dream On&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Crazy,&amp;quot; should have fans waving lighters at arenas across the country, as should &amp;quot;Full Circle,&amp;quot; with its anthemic chorus and bolerolike arrangement. The album reaches its melodramatic peak on its final track, &amp;quot;Fallen Angels,&amp;quot; an eight minute-plus opus that concludes with a flurry of wailing guitars and plaintive strings. &amp;quot;Sometimes your heaven is hell, and you don&amp;apos;t know why,&amp;quot; Tyler sings. Because that&amp;apos;s just the way the cookie crumbles, dude.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/nine-lives-19970221>