Since STP have always been assessed in comparison with other bands, let's just say that Tiny Music . . . Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop is the band's most Beatlesque album -- a little poppy, a little groovy and ultracatchy. It doesn't really matter that STP are stylistic vultures. The cool thing about them is that they provide an alternative to "alternative" bands that wouldn't dare align themselves with (gasp!) the mainstream. STP seem to have no delusions that they are anything more than, well, a pop-rock band. With no attitude to get in the way, the outfit simply churns out summer hits, and the band does a smash-up job of it.

Tiny Music is a cornucopia of FM zingers and arena stompers, and STP leave their old confessional boy rock in the dust. Soft and fuzzy frontman Scott Weiland seems far less self-absorbed than he did on 1994's Purple, and far more confident and healed than he was on the band's debut, Core. Sure there's a couple of nobody-loves-me tunes suitable for those brood-in-your-bedroom-and-hate-your-parents days, but most of the songs are sufficiently party-worthy and even kinda, well, sexy. Weiland kicks off the album singing, "Can you figure out what I want?" as though he was tired of all the self-scrutiny and was passing off the job to his listeners so he could have some fun.

The Pilots now take their cues from the groovy tunes of Los Angeles' retro-rocking Redd Kross and the sugar-sticky Midwestern pop metal of Cheap Trick. In "Big Bang Baby," Weiland's vocals are bubblegum tough and downright glammy as he sings fab but meaningless lyrics that should be blasted through a cheap transistor radio ("Big bang baby, it's a crash, crash, crash"). Accented by a chorus of claps and a hip-shaking beat, this impressive chunk of ear candy shimmies harder than the Honeycomb hideout and proves even more addictive than Green Apple Sour Vines.

Weiland pokes fun at the scene from which many of his detractors spring. In "Art School Girl," he sings, "I gotta girlfriend, she goes to parties/Underground parties, Andy Warhol everywhere," as the tune goes from simple and tinny to screamingly abrasive. Other numbers feature such far-flung sounds as Deep Purple-circa- "Space Truckin'" keyboards and a cool, muffled trumpet. The smooth and swanky Burt Bacharach-style "And So I Know" stands out as the strangest song on the disc. Complete with xylophone, wood block and faux jazz guitar, it features Weiland's self-consciously sappy crooning about lost love as backing vocals whisper, "Campfire Girls make me feel all right."

The big, fat drags on this album are the "You Never Give Me Your Money" sound-alike "Lady Picture Show," which is far too magical and mysterious for its own good, and "Trippin on a Hole in a Paper Heart," which tries too hard to rock as Weiland rasps, "I am, I am, I said, I'm not myself, but I'm not dead, and I'm not for sale . . . just let me be." After that line, you might consider granting his wish.

Crappy tunes aside, STP hit at gut level with an album that's bolder and more street savvy than those of obvious precursors such as Journey or Def Leppard. Tiny Music also exposes STP as a multipurpose outfit, one that gives indie-rock artistes something to react against, critics something to complain about and, most important, listeners out in the real world something to call their own.