I'd say that empirically it's a good album - the song construction and melodies progress in a radio friendly way as someone mentioned above. We all knew the DeLeo's and Kretz would sound like STP, but Chester does compliment the band (Cmon, people Cry, Cry and Out of Time clearly, clearly take a page from the Weiland style of songwriting, and I don't know that a tune like Tomorrow would've been written otherwise and it still sounds like an STP track).
I really didn't like Talk Show and have trouble going back to it, I wanted to like Army of Anyone very badly (and some of it I did) but that grouping didn't naturally compliment each other well. This on the other hand has legs I think.
And to clarify for anyone here who is doing this - and you know who you are (even if I don't, but I know you are out there) - it doesn't make you a better fan to dislike the album as a positioning strategy. I'm not saying that all of the negative posting above is from people doing that - if you legitimately don't like the album then no problem, but anything else is nonsense.
