Ain't Life Grand

On Ain’t Life Grand, the follow-up to Slash’s Snakepit’s ’95 debut, Slash’s playing is as flashily incendiary as ever, but the songs and arrangements recycle hard-rock cliches worthier of Ratt than of a bona fide guitar god. Dime-a-dozen singer Rod Jackson, a disciple of the stuck-pig school of ’80s hard-rock vocalists, doesn’t help. It needn’t be Axl, but Slash requires a foil. C