For me the worst Scott project was Happy in Galoshes by a mile. That album is just booooring. A mish mash of non committal, wishy washy crap with a few terrible covers thrown in. Compared to 12BB, it is an absolute dog. But I think a lot of that came down to the difference between working with people like Daniel Lanois, Victor Indrizzo and Martyn LeNoble, as opposed to working with the likes of Doug Grean. The 1 disc is a little mroe bearable than the deluxe edition, but still only has a handful of interesting tracks on it.
Man, I love HIG. It's maybe not on the same level of 12BB but there are a lot of interesting songs on there. Agreed on some of the covers (looking at you, Fame) and it's a bit long but some of my favorite Scott work is on there (Paralysis, The Man I Didn't Know, Sometimes Chicken Soup). It also felt like a true passion project for him, everything from the music to the videos, the Paralysis vid is a true work of art. Love the overall mood of it too, which the title captures perfectly.
I think if he had made it a 12 track single album, trimmed some of the fat and knocked off the covers it would have been better received. Unfortunately only Disc 1 is on Spotify, leaving off some of my favorites.
I began to have issues with what Scott and the Deleos were doing sometime after SLDD. The music from both ends just began to feel very different, and while I understand the group and Scott were changing, I thought 12BB was a superior musical effort when compared to HIG. With 12BB, I would say MOST of the songs are fantastic: Divider, Son, Where's The Man? The Date, and Barbarella are among my favorites. However, with HIG, I had the same issue I had with the S/T: I found myself in a position where I was talking myself into liking it simply because it had Scott's name on it. As others have said, there are SOME good songs there, but that remains my issue exactly. We get two discs and with them comes a few good tracks? I had the opposite problem with 12BB.
Growing up listening to STP, I immediately loved everything they wrote upon first listen and there was no debate about it. Today, whether it's Blaster, the S/T, or even the new songs, I have to listen to them over and over again just to sort of like them. To me, that's an issue.