"A Different Kind of Truth" is a pretty ponderous name for a not very ponderous album -- Van Halen's first in 28 years with David Lee Roth as frontman. If they'd been in as cheeky a mood titling it as they were in recording it, maybe they could have gone with: "1985."
That's how directly this reunited lineup (give or take a bassist) picks up from where it left off with "1984," Roth's last full studio set with the brothers Van Halen. It really does take place in a different kind of alternate reality where Sammy Hagar, Gary Cherone, and Diamond Dave's Vegas lounge act never happened.
There are a couple of reasons to not find this a fairly joyous listen. One is if you were never a fan to begin with -- fair enough. The other is if you're incorrigibly churlish. Because although it lacks the classic song or three that would lift the album all the way to the level of the vintage canon, "Truth" finds the fiftysomethings playing and singing like kids, albeit the kids who already sounded impossibly virtuosic and raunchy/wise beyond their years as a teen-prodigy garage band in the mid-'70s.
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The opening track, "Tattoo" -- which met with mixed reactions as the first single -- sounds like an attempt to follow in the lighter footsteps of "Jump," the band's biggest and poppiest vintage hit. It's an already underrated song that marries the band's ludicrously funny and barely serious sides, as Roth weaves a series of ink-related anecdotes, from the aging gal trying to spice up her life with some self-illustration ("Tramp stamp tat/Mousewife to momshell, in the time it takes to get that new tattoo") to the young patriot who gets his uncle's military unit number branded on his shoulder.
After "Tattoo," anyway, the rest of the album passes without the band showing any more mercenary interest in crafting a single, as the tracks mostly lock into a blues-boogie hyperdrive halfway between Black Oak Arkansas and speed-metal -- fancied up, of course, with quick bursts of hooky vocal harmonies and the constant overlay of Roth's stand-up comedy act. Roth continues to be Henny Youngman with a philosophical side and a mean high kick here, with a pretty good ratio of zingers ("Love 'em all, I says/Let Cupid sort 'em out"; "suburban garage-a-trois") to clinkers ("My karma ran over my dogma"? Really, Dave?).
It may only be after the last three decades of lunkhead metal that once-wary critics can fully appreciate just how guiltless a pleasure it is to hear Dave's streams of consciousness complement Eddie's shredding. As ever, they're the Burns and Allen of rock. Not that straight-woman Grace ever came off as a combination of skilled surgeon and piledriver, the way Eddie Van Halen does when he's piling more notes into a solo than any human before him ever has and still bringing the songs in at (mostly) under four minutes.
