Having just read Mick Wall's Axl Rose biography (well, I needed a break whilst chewing my way through the Gram Parsons 'Twenty Thousand Roads' work by David Meyer... phew, there's a dry read, if ever I experienced one), I decided to give the 'Chinese Democracy' album a proper listen. And, blimey, it's not that bad! In fact, I've played it pretty solidly for the last week, and I have to admit it's a great LP to crank up loud and have a jump around to: Does everything a rock album worth its weight in gold (boom, boom) should do. Yes, it's overworked and a bit busy (and I have very little clue what Axl is actually singing about most of the time), but a good album nevertheless.

There's some well executed ideas, a decent handful of catchy vocal melodies, some blinding guitar work; all leading to at least five tracks that should, in an alternative dimension where Axl Rose clearly wasn't his own - and everyone's else - worst enemy, be massive pop hits straddling the number ones slots on either side of the Atlantic simultaneously.

To get there, however, you do need to suspend more than the average amount of needless preconceptions: Get past the fact that it's not an actual GnR album in the style of old, through the lack of everyone but Mr Rose - therefore, a solo album in all but the branding. Equally, turn a blind eye to the rather dis-likable fact of Mr Rose as a person (ranking him up there with the likes of Bono and Mick Hucknall: dodgy people you wouldn't want to get stuck in a lift with, but who clearly possess obvious talent); and somehow get onside with the crazy Orson Welles-ness folly of the whole project. But if you can get past that arcade game-like assault course of reasoning, it's a blinding listen. Heck, who said great pop and rock music was based on prerequisite common sense?

Very much a forward-thinking, 21st century album, one that provides another view on what rock can deliver; sort of like the heavy rock equivalent to a latter stage Michael Jackson album: grandiose, itchy dance-infused production, with the amount of ideas that only blank cheques multiplied by a kind of paranoid fear having to better your last work produces, and subsequently at times too clever for its own good... but still does what a great rock record should.

I'd stake my claim that it's fundamentally an album in thrall to Jane's Addiction (specifically Dave Navarro's eclectic, left-field guitar style, and JA's swift cornering within song structure), and probably would have been made for a tenth of the price and a tenth of the time if Axl had Mr Navarro as an equal co-pilot, and hadn't been working it alone. Beyond that there's also some mammoth, beautifully over-indulgent Jim Steinman operatic-sized moments that it's rare to experience in our post-ironic, 'keepin' it real' times. But, as a standalone piece of work, well, I reckon it deserves more attention than it has/will receive.

Well worth the time, if you're that way inclined.