At the Chicago stop of Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger" tour, Chris Cornell did a short press session before the show, the sort of en masse interview that's usually reserved for Don King or the Secretary of Defense, after which his manager shuttled him off to safety. Meanwhile, the rest of the band were fair game for interview hounds, assaulted by everyone from newspaper hacks to grade-school fan clubs until minutes before showtime.

With that kind of coddling, it's no wonder Cornell fell prey to the same delusions of grandeur that launched personalities as diverse as Sonny Bono, Ginger Spice and Bruce Dickinson away from the safe shores of group gigs and onto the shoals of embarrassing solo careers. Abandoned by Kim Thayil's crunching riffs, Euphoria Morning finds Cornell creatively shipwrecked with nothing to save him but an acoustic guitar and a 16-track with a jammed echo knob.

Euphoria's points of interest are mere moments, teasers that lead nowhere -- the Freddy Mercury-ism of Preaching the End of the World, the industrial sounds fading out of Pillow of Your Bones, the reverberating distortion at the end of Follow My Way. All the rest is string meandering, vocal wanking and knockoffs of superior Soundgarden material. Do yourself a favor and play Loud Love instead.