Pearl Jam
Their Name
Means Jism. How Quaint.
The Lineup Card
(1990-2006)
Eddie Vedder (vocals, guitars)
Jeff Ament (bass)
Stone Gossard (guitars)
Mike McCready (guitars)
Matt Cameron (drums)
after 1998 Also Of Soundgarden
Jack Irons (drums)
1995-98 Also Of Red Hot Chili Peppers
Dave Abbruzzese (drums) 1992-4
Dave Krusen (drums) 1992-4 Also Of Candlebox
Pearl
Jam, by default, has become the Great American Nineties Rock Band by being the
only artist to actually survive the decade (more or less...those pesky drummers
keep coming and going) intact. Let's grok on the
grunge/90's rock explosion circa 1991-2 and the bands that were involved in
that, and then let's play Where Are They Now just like our names are Jon
Ferguson and Serene Altschul like on our favorite
music stations. Is Serena Altschul still on MTV, or
is she doing the inner city murder and car-accident beat for some second-tier
East Coast network affiliate? Eh, it's not like you guys watch MTV either. I
give you that much credit.
Back
to the game! Nirvana checked out in 1994 when Kurt punched in his time card.
Alice In Chains choked on Lane Staley's drug problem. Soundgarden
broke up in like 1997 because half of them didn't want to wuss
out their music and the other half did. Smashing Pumpkins was crushed by the
weight of Billy Corgan's ego and faltering record
sales in late 1999. Stone Temple Pilots is still here,
doing package tours with the Doobie Brothers and no
one gives a shit. Wannabe stars like Better Than Ezra and Candlebox
and Blind Melon are gone. Hard bastards like Helmet and Rage Against The
Machine and Tool are gone (though their influence also lives onward like
cockroaches deep in your walls). The only real group that fit into the whole
super-popular early 90's radio scene that still remains standing is the Red Hot
Chili Peppers who I don't count because they've been around since like 1982 and
don't really fit into that whole American Hard Rock thing. That shows the power
of Pearl Jam right there, that they have been able to somehow overcome the
mistakes and foundation cracks that scattered their competition like an
overturned Buzz Bin. Perhaps that's because The Jam got all their shit out of
the way early in the band's career, back when most of them were part of a
scarily bad Seattle hair metal band called Mother Love Bone, who were one of
the Bright Shining Stars of the local crowd in like 1989. Their leader, Andrew
Wood, took the Hot Dose To The Stars in 1990 and the remaining players joined
forces with the similarly godforsaken group
From
what started out as what seemed to be a much more commercial version of
the Seattle Sound, Pearl Jam has also been one of the best in sticking close to
their DIY/punk ethos, strangely enough. They don't do things that are obviously
antagonistic like yer RATM's,
but the band is constantly involved in benefit concerts and plays the rock star
game very reluctantly. In fact, most of the time you
just don't tend to hear very much from Pearl Jam in the mainstream press. And I
wonder why? Hmm...could it be that they refuse to kiss
ass and suck dick? Ahh yes, the rock star machine
rolls ever onward, and we'll hear a little bit about that from the band as
well. Now they don't release videos, or at least don't do it very often, not
after 'Jeremy' was played about a bazillion goddamn times on MTV in 1992,
anyway. And they certainly don't appear in their own videos anymore.
That's like a rule. Like the infield fly rule, or the rule about not flicking
your weed roach off the balcony. If anything, now they've regressed into a cult
act, albeit one of the most popular cult acts in the world. They tour forever,
release shitloads of live albums, change their setlist nightly, play a bunch of
covers, yadda.
What
they don't do is anything original, and that's the major failing of
As
a finish, I'd like to mention that Pearl Jam started out named Mookie Blaylock after the dynamite young NBA star then
plying for the New Jersey Nets. Mookie Blaylocks university? The
Peita
peitawakelin@optusnet.com.au
Any Short Comments?: I rate A to Pearl Jam.
I like your writing and think you are a good writer, but I do not agree with
some of your comments you have stated!
Pearl Jam are an individual band and write lyrics with meaning. They do not try
to write like other bands and that is what I love about them.
You listen to a song and hear the lyrics, and not all of them make instant
sense, you have to go away and think about it.
They are great and if only I could meet them. It is my dream and its all I want!
Sounds crazy I know but I am so connected to them and their music.
Well I'll leave it on that note. But everyone has their own opinions and they
are not unoriginal.
Thanks :)
Described by this guy I used to have German class with
back in 1992 as 'a real downer of a record' (his favorite ever being Led
Zeppelin I, the good lad), it took me awhile to realise
that, yes, the subject matter of nearly all these songs is a real bummer.
Jeremy shoots up his classroom. A kid finds out his stepdad
is not his real dad, and then has an incestuous episode with his mom. A teenage
girl wrongfully committed to a mental institution. Psycho
killers. Heartbreak. Homeless
people. A real smiley-face packed bunch of party tunes, huh? The next Get
Happy!, no
less! But I have an excuse, now let me just explain. I had no idea Damn near
each one of these songs has an arena-ready, fist-pumping, beer-swilling 'big
triumphant lick' that easily impresses the less upright of our colleagues. No
wonder Kurt Cobain hated this band...it was making music for jocks, as long as
you weren't listening to the lyrics. Or even if you were, it was still cool to
be 'grungey' in 1992 and wear a PJ t-shirt that said
'99% of kids prefer crayons to guns' or something equally sophomorically
liberal (I'm a pretty hard left-winger, just so you don't castigate me for that
comment. But it is sophomorically liberal.) Of course, Nirvana had its own
problems with hooks being misinterpreted by bone-dumb testosterone junkies, so
it's not like they had much room to talk.
Musically,
Pearl Jam put together those fist-pumping hooks pretty well, though damn near
each of the songs has an almost southern-rocky guitar solo section that goes on
way too fucking long for guys that don't solo very well. I mean, talk about Wah abuse! Leave the fucking Hendrix-isms alone, for Chrissakes! One thing you're not going to find on this
record is many riffs...and the ones you do find are Jane's Addiction clones
('Why Go' comes to mind). Instead, two chord dual-rhythm guitar sequences is
about the norm, leaving all the melody duties fall on the shoulders of Eddie Vedder, who does a fantastic frigging job of it. And even
though they're leaning so hard on sawblading through
chords, they're not doing it in a way that even whispers in the ear of punk
rock, like Nirvana. Or heavy metal, for that matter, like
So
while it seems that Pearl Jam is sorta Not Quite
Ready For Rock Stardom, they got their fame on anyway for some reason. Why,
then? If I listen to this album with an open ear again, I'm still very
impressed. They've reached around in the Classic Rock toolbox for those
reliable old pieces, stuck to certain parameters (no lyrical cliches, no blues, nothing acoustic, not too many overdubs,
everything has a 'serious' tone), and played the game right. All the pieces
fall into place with the addition of Eddie Vedder,
who's gotta be American rock's premier vocalist who
doesn't either sing blues or screech. His baritone dances all around his range,
he growls and spits out little spoken asides, he blasts the volume when it's
called for, and has the pipes to hold out a note for nearly frigging forever if
he wants to. Definitely comparable to Thom Yorke for
best 90's rock vocalist, and on this album it's his
personality that wins over the crowd and the critic. Without Eddie, this would
be a dunk in the lake. With him, its a dunk in the
lake with a sensitive sexy rock God who my wife thinks is cute.
Songs. The running order places all the
hit-worthy songs at the beginning of the album. Your
'Even Flow', which I can never stop reinterpreting as 'Sleazy Ho' ('Spreads her
legs like butterflies'....blame sophomore year of high school for that.
Horribly stupid and embarrassing, which is why I still like it.), your
'Jeremy', your 'Alive'. I like 'Alive' the best out of these even though the 'Ohhh-oh Ohhhhh I'm still alive, yeahhh!' note-sliding chorus doesn't give me chills
anymore, now that I know it's not a song of affirmation but a song of protest
at that fact. Awww, that angst'll get you every
time. I like the songs that break out of the mid-tempo rocker norm, like the
heartbreak torch rocker 'Black', which has the great line 'I hope someday
you'll have a beautiful life, I hope you'll be a sun in someone else's sky, but
why can't it be me?' Corny, sure, but a good one. I
also like the stately U2-ish 'Oceans', the fast-'n'-loose psycho-riffing on
'Porch', and the heaving 'Deep', which is about heroin, rape, and selling out,
all in one, and with another great line 'To the sky above, he just ain't nothin', but he's got a
great view, and he's in...in too deep, yeah!' Yeah,
the album's kind of a bummer if you're looking too closely to the scrawled
lyric sheet, but isn't that what Being A Nineties Kid
was all about? Wasn't it? Ever wonder why 'Generation X' sold out so quickly
from it's youth-oriented rejection of the greed of
it's parents? Because, for the most part, Gen X-ers
and the band that represented them wanted to be their parents, and
simply replaced real rebellion and change (which, like it or not, the hippies
worked for) for whining at every possible opportunity. Like the boy that cried
wolf, or the goth chick that cried suicide, these
people kept bitching and whining about stuff so much that nobody listened any
more after Kurt died. 'Vee ahr
nihilistsss, Vee belieef in nuthink!', but coming
from a sullen face-pierced kid in a $75 Abercrombie and Fitch flannel shirt his
parents bought him. Like that's to be taken seriously. Once those people got a
few more years on them and got their dot-com cookie in 1995-6 (had to lure 'em in there with casual days and foosball tables, though
didn't we?) they signed up with the Cubicle Brigade faster and easier than any
previous generation since World War II, and are happy to work fewer hours at
lower pay just as long as you keep feeding their nearly-forgotten 'edgy' early ninties tastes for Starbucks coffee, relaxed fit jeans, and
'rugged, unconventional' SUV vehicles. The downfall of the grunge generation in
two sentences, ladies and gentlemen.
I'll
be here all the week! Next up, why you don't want a Limp Bizkit
fan running your country in 20 years. And cream cheese...the savior of the
universe?
Oh
yeah, why is the album called Ten? That's Mookie
Blaylock's number, baby!
Capn's Final Word: Hard rock
is updated for the shallow generation. Doesn't live up to it's
alternative hype at all, but does pretty well with those Rock Anthem Cliches.
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Jacob Sneakthaslinger@aol.com
Your Rating: A-
Any Short Comments?:
Whoa, am I indeed the first commentator? Where to begin...well, for
starters, this album changed my life back in high school and steered me clear
the hell away from the rote predictable punk rock and bland hip hop I was
ingesting by the truckload back then. In fact, my love for this album is
more like sentimental value than actual musical appreciation. I was
having a hard time dealing with life back then and this album helped me cope,
ok? No other record has ever done that for me, I don't think. As
soon as I first heard "Alive" in its entirety, it immediately became
my favorite song, and it probably still is. "Porch,"
"Deep," and "Even Flow" also make me squeal, moan, and jump
for joy.
That said, in retrospect, this
really seems like one of those albums that's not quite as good as it could
be. First complaint is fired at the production...holy shit it
sucks. Half the time the band sounds like they're playing in a cave full
of bats, like a bunch of neanderthals. And
Eddie's voice is pushed WAY up there in the mix(that
reminds me...I'm
entirely fucking sick of people
complaining that his voice seems to have gotten "weaker" over the
years. It's because the first album was also the most over-produced one, dumbasses...besides, could YOU or anyone you know handle
singing this loud for 6 albums in a row? Didn't think so), making it hard
to concentrate on anything else, which can get annoying even though I love the
crap out of his voice. Second complaint concerns the songwriting.
Throughout the whole album you get the feeling that this material was thrown
together very quickly(which it was) and that the band hadn't really even spent
a lot of time with each other prior to making it(which a few, but not all of
them, had). Gossard's songs are all the
highlights here, but Ament's contributions are
lackluster for the most part("Why Go"
totally sucks and "Jeremy" is by far their most overrated
song). So in conclusion, I can no longer overlook all of its flaws after
all these years, but it's still a pretty damn good debut, and one that will
probably always hold a special place in my ear canal.
Slappy Wilson Your
Rating: A+
Any Short Comments?: Best Album of the Nineties. Like Stairway to
Heaven, it was understandably way overplayed. Thus diminished not by anything
native to itself, but by being too popular. In fact, a brilliant piece of
work. Some of the least played numbers are still stunning (Oceans,
Garden).
Your writing style is very, very entertaining and enjoyable, though you need a
fact checker before writing entire paragraphs based on mistakes. You list
nonexistent or misunderstood lyrics, and factual errors, then expound on them.
Also, many of your opinions, while interesting and worthy of great respect, are
wrong. I'm sure you'll correct these at some future point though.
(Capn's Response: Guh!! I'm
taking smack from a guy called 'Slappy'. Isn't this one of the Seven Signs of
the Apocalypse?)
Divyang Your
Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: Surprised by your liberal views on this album.Usually
you tend to see the more negative aspect of things.This album has some good
songs and maybe It might sound better to me if i listen to it one more
time.But apart from Alive it's not really that memorable. Deep I don't
like.Apart from that there is nothing to be despised on this album.P.S-I was
surprised when you published my 9 year old brother's Reader Comment.On your Pink
Floyd Page(Wish you Were Here).I was surprised when he started digging Pink
Floyd.and relieved.I was afraid he would start listening to 50 cents like other
guys of his age.What the heck,people of my age(16)consider Linkin Park better
than The Doors.So you can see why I was afraid for the guy.
(Capn's
Response: So, I'm Mr. Negative all of a sudden, huh? One person's negativity
is another person's shitty taste. You say you have a review site...does your
distaste of punctuation continue there, too?)
A
near-devastating dropoff in quality after Ten,
the Angry Llama Album (how do you know the album isn't actually
called that? Does it actually say on the packaging? Noooo!) comes across like an
defensive maneuver on the part of the Pajamas against all those attacks against
their grunge indie cred. In
response, they stop writing those triumphant, life-affirming hook lines that
were clumped all over Ten, and replace them with uninteresting, hairy
riffs that attempt to make Pearl Jam sound less polished and end up making them
sound inept. They bash through songs like 'Go' and 'Glorified G' as if making a
huge alt-y noise is a lot more important than creating any real sense of melody
or tension. The songs that do have more than one idea involved ('Animal', for
example, has this really cool heavy part that sounds like the Chili Peppers,
and then this funky lighter section on the chorus that lets Eddie Vedder come to the front with the absolutely distasteful
hook line 'I'd rather be with an animal'...alright, Ed. I'll just assume your
wife is okay with that.) are unfortunately few and far
between. Also more successful are the songs that ease up on the
distortion...when the guitar players don't have their Marshall crutches to
stand on, they come up with something like 'Daughter' or 'Indifference', both
of which have pretty, memorable melodies, though I pretty much dislike the
Black Crowesy 'Daughter', and the words rank as some
of Ed's most cloyingly angstful....'Don't call me
daughter, not fatal...the picture kept will remind me...' revisiting the
subject matter of 'Alive' again for the womenfolk, huh, Ed?. In fact, this
album has some of the PJ's more irritating lyrics
ever. 'Glorified version of a pellet gun', over and over and
over? Whoo...I see fists a-pumpin'
to that one. I mean, I'm pretty pro-gun control, but taking this tack to
attack gun worship in this society seems like a cop out, this message that
'it's just kids stuff'. C'mon...talk about killing cops or the craziness of
militia groups or Nazis or something! God, I really find this song annoying on
all counts. I think that's what kills this album for me...the fact that the
good songs ('Dissident', 'Animal', 'Daughter', 'Rearviewmirror')
all have some irritating little detail about them...some phrase in the chorus
that rubs me the wrong way, a guitar figure that's way too loud, Eddie Vedder's vocals too out front...and the bad songs have the
same problem. Nearly every song on here has something that annoys the living
fuck out of me, sort of like ABC situation comedies. Only 'Rearviewmirror'
gets by unscathed...it's just a nice little driving riff tune with a little bit
of a Police Zenyatta Mondatta
feel to it, and probably the only evocative chord sequence on the album. I
really visualize a car on a highway on this tune...and, interestingly enough,
future albums would take this sound to much higher levels. Thank God they
didn't choose to develop 'Glorified G' into a career.
And
when no attempt is made towards a melody...watch for your life. Take 'W.M.A.'
as an example - this is a groove song based on a tribalist
drum figure, not a Tony Danza bit different than the
intro to 'Once' on Ten, except this one has this childish and childishly
naive lyric that somehow manages to damn police-MAA--aanns
and, um, I guess rich people in the same breath. It's FUCKING ANNOYING SHIT! It
makes me want to slap the living shit out of Vedder
and make him go back to writing concrete lyrics about insane asylums and incest
again. 'Blood' and 'Rats' pull the same trick, but with more infantile
screaming and even less interesting heavy wah-wah
work. Ohhh, I can barely make it through this part of
the album. If Eddie Vedder bellowing out
pizza-flavored howls over 'ironic' funk leads sounds like fun to you, I suggest
you check out the early works of a band called fIREHOSE...they
suck righteous testicles too. And if 'Daughter' was irritating, at least
it was memorable...'Old Bitch I Once Got Change From At A Stuckey's Store In
Some Podunk Redneck Town While I Was On Tour And Now I'm Gonna
Write A Populist Anthem About Old People Because Of Her' is another sad attempt
by Pearl Jam to identify with absolutely every female human being on the
planet, set to this non-song backing probably dashed off by the band during a
bathroom break. Ugh. At least he comes right out and wonders out loud whether
all this whining and protesting is ever gonna get him
anywhere on the closing 'Indifference'. He ends up realising
that it may not do a goddamn thing. And the band somehow ends up making a song
that sounds so much like The Unforgettable Fire that you wonder how you
missed it...until you realise that you've already
long forgotten the songs on the second side of Fire that all sound just
like this.
Ohhh...Pearl Jam get
oh so precious and pretentious on Vs. that I wonder if they're embarrassed by
this record so many years later. Oh, they changed the sound of Ten,
alright, and altered their sound for good with this record. In fact, I'd say
almost nothing on here could fit comfortably on their debut record...it's that
different (so different I hated this record when it came out...it
would've gotten a D at that time. I've come around somewhat.) However, all the
groove songs they no doubt consider to be 'experimentation' fall flatter than a
year-old Sprite, the screaming and yelling do nothing more than make me run for
the volume knob, and even the changeups like 'Old Woman' and 'Daughter' aren't
unqualifiedly successful. I think they let their press and egos get to them a
little on Vs., and judging by some of the press they released at the
time, wherein Eddie Vedder made statements of the
sort that Vs. was 'important music' or something (I did hear something
very egotistical come out of Vedder about this
record, but I can't find the quote...just trust me. He may come across like a
humble populist, but he can act the rock star like the best of 'em if you give him a microphone and a sympathetic
interviewer.). And about that he was dead wrong. Vs. wasn't important
for anyone but the band. All of it's grunge-mania era sales
placed them at the pinnacle of their popularity and set them up for the long
haul. And thankfully left them free to make better albums in
the future, no doubt as another 'rejection' of the popularity of this record.
Ain't the punk ethos great?
Capn's Final Word: An album
of failed experimentation within the confines of early 90's alt-rock. Pearl Jam
are denying their true calling as arena rockers, the
REO Speedwagon of the 90s!
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Jake McMofo
Your Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: Iffy at best. "Overblown" and
"pompous,"(two things that Ten has been accused of being even though
it's NOT) are two adjectives that come to mind. "Slump" is
another. Lacking in everything that made Ten so beloved amongst jaded
high schoolers...the intensity, the ferocity, and the
emotion that made Pearl Jam exciting the first time around are all gone for the
most part. Only on the opener "Go" and the near-closer
"Leash" do they come close to the best moments of the debut.
As for the rest? It's all a bunch of experimental
bullshit that may be interesting at parts, but is otherwise stupid, useless, and amateurish. "Glorified
G?" fuck it up the poo-hole! "W.M.A.?" What's that stand for anyway, "Wipe
My Ass"??? "Blood?" Yeah,
hopefully that's what you were coughing up when you finished the vocal track on
this song Eddie,
you self-righteous whinging piece of shit. "Rearviewmirror?"
Holy fuck, I love Rearviewmirror. That riff just loops and loops until
it spins your head around like the Exsorcist.
The ending is extremely block-rocking too. Almost redeems the entire
album by itself. Then what do we got?
"Rats?" Blah, they forgot they weren't a funk band for a
minute. "Elderly Whatever?" Pluh, alright
melody, fuck those lyrics
and guitar chords. Plus "Dissident" is somewhat
enjoyable even though it uses what can probably be called the most generic
classic rock riff in the history of the world. Overall,
P.J. getting nervous and fucking up. Oh well, they're human
too. The next album was a huge improvement anyway.
Nick C altrockreview@hotmail.com
Your Rating: A-
Any Short Comments?: I can't
believe you rated Vs the lowest grade for a Pearl Jam record! The second best
PJ record after Ten - virtually all the tracks are early '90s rock classics.
Especially Rearviewmirror....
Justin Your Rating: A
Any
Short Comments?: Your
an ass. VS is pearl jams best album by far.
Any Short Comments?: If you actually think Pearl Jam get embarrassed by any
of the numerous eggs they've laid, you must be less of a cynic than I am.
On second thought...probably not...
But the only two songs that I remember or like from this stultifying bore are
"Animal," which is a fast, fiery rocker, and "Dissident," which is a fantastic
song. The one where Eddie decrys White Male Americans has a great drumbeat, but
little else, and most of the rest could have come out of Politically-Aware
Everyband circa '94. No balls to speak of. What makes Eddie think he's Liberal
Jesus, anyway? All that separates him from the great unwashed is a cool voice
and not taking a shower in months. Joey Ramone had the same two things and you
never saw him jacking off in a hall of mirrors and releasing it as "Riot Act."
Pearl Jam operate as a unit, and
everything improves. I get this gut feeling from Vitalogy,
rightly or wrongly, that a lot of this stuff was performed live in the studio.
Even if it's not, it sounds like it's written and performed as a band.
Eddie Vedder isn't the main focus of attention, like
on Ten, and his mistakes aren't amplified by his brightness in the mix,
like on Vs. Even if he's screaming his head off, like on the pro-vinyl
rave 'Spin The Black Circle' (one of their most convincing alt-rock songs,
albeit someone correctly stated it robs Husker Du's
'Beyond The Threshold' like it was a lonely highway Texaco store at 3 am on a
Saturday night), he's not doing it right into your cerebellum like on the last
album, and my conditioned response is to bop my head and not cringe my face.
The music, too, is progressing into this organic vegan beastie, and the awesome
power of a fully operational dual-rhythm guitar attack is made witness to on
'Not For You', for me a true highlight on a great album of songs without
obvious melodic strengths. I almost choke on the words, but, umm...Pearl Jam
sound sincere on this record. I buy it. They got me. They're a genuine
band that cares about making decent records that have lots of good guitar
sound, a palatable populist message, and some dumb songs about bugs on them.
They're not trying too hard to blow your mind anymore, and don't even feel like
they care about their status in relationship to their peers (which they did too
damned much on Vs.) If they want to sound like Crazy Horse's younger
brother, dammit, that's what they're gonna sound like! They're all closet hippie potheads
anyway, why not just lose the pretense that they belong to anybody's punk
revolution and just make decent tunes? That's what I was saying all along!
Thank Christ for basic, interesting rockers like 'Corduroy', 'Not For You', the
faster 'Whipping', 'Black Circle', 'Immortality' and 'Last Exit' that make up
the bulk of this record. They're all at least good, and frequently great.
More
tunes: 'Nothingman' and 'Better Man' are ballad tunes
I can eat with some ribs and beer...the message of 'Nothingman'
isn't necessarily clear (I think it's about lost dreams or somesuch
other crap), but I sure like the gentle drunken roll of the chorus. That's purty. But 'Better Man' ain't.
It's about this old wife-type-person stuck in her dead-end life because 'She
can't find a BM'. Well, I'm sure she can find a Bowel Movement, dammit, but I thought I'd be cute and shorten the name of
the song down to its component initials just like someone would do in a Reader
Comment. Sorry it failed so dearly. I atone for my sin. Anyway, so like on
'Daughter' and 'Old Woman blah blah blah...' on the last album, Vedder
patronized his female characters. They were these victim people saddled to
these hopeless, one-dimensional situations like Vedder
saw them on 20/20 and decided to write a song about it. 'Better Man' feels like
a real person, a person with freewill, who has life happen to them as a
result of their own lame decisions, not some boogie man 'Bigoted White Guy' to
come and scare them at Halloween. And the triumpant hook sure don't hurt, either. I'm happy to see they haven't
lost that ability for good. Without those choruses I'm afraid we're left with
Soul Asylum's 'Runaway Train...Part II: The Revenge Of Casey Jones'. I also
need to say something about Vedder's vocals on this
song...the way he builds from this fragile crack to a more confident outrage is
amazing. Still one of the premier vocalists in rock.
As
for mistakes, I don't like the rote rocker 'Satan's Bed', especially those whip
sounds...I hate whip sounds, and 'Aye Davanita'
sho sounds like fillah
ta me, Mista Jam, Sah! Oh, and there is Vitalogy,
but they're cute, easily ignorable little oddities like the jokey
accordion torture 'Bugs' or the quick little whine 'Pry To', and only one is
really a bummer, the horrendous affront 'Foxymophandlemama'
that closes the album off on a really disturbing, unpleasant note. This little
kid tells us he'd rather be struck than hugged 'because you get closer to the
person', and then talks like Satan over repetitive feedback noise for seven
long minutes. Eeeks. I'm on the next plane to Clarksville when something like
that comes apart in my lap. Lawd have moicy! Curse Eddie, burn your posters, kick your pet...just
don't let this bull patty ruin the album for you, because this really is a big
anomaly on a record otherwise free of pretension. To call it unlistenable would be an insult to all the other songs I
ever called unlistenable. It actually makes me
loathe myself. I guess it's good they got it all
out in one place...
Capn's Final Word: The
third try gets it right...Vitalogy builds a
strong foundation of hard rockers, builds a nice frame house on top with the
ballads, and then promptly locks the nutso members of
the family in the attic.
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Jake Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: This
one's a godsend, if you were disappointed by Vs.(like I was). No more sissyass acoustic country-ish
sounding crap! YAY! No more shitty funk-sounding vomit songs!
WOOOO! Just rock, rock, ROCK and ROLL BABY! And the record starts
off with two of their fastest, most bitterly anguished songs yet: "Last
Exit," a rumination on
suicide in 5/4 time, and
"Spin The Black Circle," the best Husker Du
rip-off since "Territorial Pissings"!
Must've been a tough pill to swallow for all the meatheads who started
listening to Creed 3 years later after they realized that Pearl Jam weren't
dumb enough to attempt the BOMBAST of Ten ever again.This
is their darkest, most depressing album...even to this very day. Maybe
that's why they felt the need to include the dumbassed
experiments like "Bugs" and "AyeDavanita"...without
them, the album would be completely devoid of any sense of humor. However,
there's NO excuse for the inclusion of "Stupidmophandlemama,
whothefuck'sideawasthis?" that's a total
anticlimax following the spectacular depression ballad
"Immortality." I
guess they were going for an "L.A. Blues" type of album closer, but with
a bunch of little kids repeating inane, banal shite
over and over again, and NO COOL NOISES whatsoever through the entire course of
it's seven minutes. Imagine how many people sat through that and screamed
"FUCK YOU, PEARL JAM! I'M NEVER BUYING A RECORD FROM YOU
ASSHOLES AGAIN!"
Those people were all ingrates,
because the high points of this record are just too good to be ruined by the
most Horriblest Album Closer Ever.
"Corduroy" with it's catchy-ass riff and
poppy-ass chorus! "Better Man," which Eddie wrote when he was
16! SIXTEEN! How good were the songs YOU wrote when you were
16? "Satan's Bed," a rock song that isn't
rote at all, and I, being a
masochist, LOVE whipcrack-noises!
"Whipping" with one guitarist wielding the same 3 chords over and
over while the other guitarist bludgeons the same one-note riff over and
over! A BIG improvement over the last album in every
way. Too bad Kurt Cobain didn't live long enough to hear this
album...it probably would've convinced even HIM that Pearl Jam are a good
band.
Speaking of which, too bad nobody
took a picture of the time Eddie and Kurt were slow-dancing to "Tears In
Heaven" at the MTV awards....I mean, talk about your ultamite
Gen-X jack-off material! I damn near bust a nut thinking about that every
day...that is, until Courtney Love barges into my fantasy and I can no longer
sustain an erection. GODDAMMIT!
Bryan Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: Vitalogy was definitely an experimental album for PJ.
Some of their best stuff came from this album, ie Corduroy and Immortality.
I do have one problem with a statement you made though... Better Man was not
about "Eddie watching 20/20 seeing victims"... Better Man was written a long
time ago and was a personal song about his mother... or as Eddie states from the
Live in Atlanta Concert at the Fox Theater in 93.. "This song was dedicated to
the bastard that married my momma!". If you like the way Better Man was
done on this album... look up the Orginal version of Better Man from Eddie's 1st
band Bad Radio. You may only find it on a P2P file swapper... but its
definitely worth a listen.
Slappy Wilson
Your Rating: F
Any Short Comments?: No, this album was more of an utter, utter piece of
crap. 'Aye Davanita', which you pan, was the best damned song on the
record. It amuses me that as Pearl Jam sunk from the groundbreaking first
album, in which every song was "good", with each successive album we have to
really "work" at it to actually "enjoy" the damned thing. Reviews
simply explain that each new records is just less "accessible".
Lets face facts. The records have gotten worse, and worse, and worse.
No, it's not that they don't sound "commercial" anymore, and I'm just not
"discriminating" enough, or that I have an "immature" musical taste. It's
that they suck. They're bad albums. Sure, they'll have an okay song
or two, but they're mostly just shit.
Cool cover art on Vitalogy though.
So many people have claimed this is the 'weird' Pearl
Jam record, so many people are so wrong. What's so weird about this record? Do
they totally make a new form of music with their collective 10 sets of hands?
No way! There's more wacky shit on the Ventures $100000 Weekend than on No
Code. And you wonder why the world is messed up. This album's strange
reputation is just another example on my list of Reasons Generation X Is The
Most Grotesquely Conservative Group Of Young People Since The Middle Ages.
I mean, what's weird about taking it slow and mixing up your strokes a little
bit over the course of a record? Your mom sure liked it like that! She told me
after she loaned me this copy of No Code I'm playing right now. The
album starts off with a dang creepy nighttime lingerie in the moonlight kind of
haunt-ballad...I guess maybe you might be right. This is Pearl Jam consciously
trying to alter their view in the public eye. Not on 'Hail Hail', though,
wiseass. Thanks for pointing my mistakes out to me. 'Hail' is just a full-bore
rocker featuring Veddy Petter's
'creaky' voice that bears little resemblance to anything he's done before, but
the song is about as accessible as your mother. In case I need help with my
homework or something. Shit, I haven't had homework in like 4 years, what am I
talking about? I guess I'm just confused because that's the excuse I use when
I'm actually off having intercourse with your mom.
Anyway,
slap yo momma and call me Pop but she sure liked the
way I did it when I did it to the Eastern-y rhythm tracks like 'Who I Am' and
the raving 'In My Tree', and your father looked on mournfully as I pulled out
my 4-inch spliff and got a little party on along with
the Best Song On Ragged Glory That Isn't On Ragged Glory The Last Time I
Looked Through The Haze Of Ganj Smoke That Envelopes
All My Neil Young Records called 'Smile'. You know, I hate when people use
the euphemism 'party' for any sort of objectionable activity, beit sex or drug use or mailbox baseball or running around
the swimming pool or engaging in genocide. I mean, I'm sure Goering
said to Goebbels one day...'Hey there Joe, why don't
we go out and party on some Jews, then we can party with some Jager and call over a few members of the SS and have a
party while partying on their party platform?' Like the Nazis weren't all
sexual freaks. Psha. At least that's one thing you can count on the good ol' U.S. for...you can count on us to have our perversions
hidden way down deep and not subject to experimentation on horrified groups of
prisoners. Unless we're talking about your mom, that is.
Talking
about your mom, she got a little bored about song seven, which was just another
rocker rave-up that just didn't seem to be all that original, and went and got
some BlowenChows down at the local QuikTrip, and met up with your dad, who'd gone down to
cruise the toilets and ended up finding out that Pearl Jam had even gone and
gotten bluesy with 'Red Mosquito'. Well, I don't necessarily like people who
put Peee-sike-er-dailic Sixties blues cliches in their ballads material just to make it less
boring, but then I realised that the slide solo
sounded a lot like Mountain, and I like Mountain because Leslie West gets all
sweaty just like your mom. But then the end of the album just went slow boring
song, rote rocker, slow spoken word tone poem (maybe
not tone poem...let's say maybe a noise expletive. Or a feedback knock knock joke. Anyway, it's boring too.) and some rootsy thing at the end where you know they're being
serious at trying to be kd lang
because the former Chili Pepper drummer is using brushes on his drums and you
can't actually hear the music. But I didn't hear all that song because it was
time to go home and watch Charmed. Boy, I love Charmed.
So
anyway, minus the idiotic tangent I just left on and it's many tributaries and
what-have-you's, I respect Pearl Jam trying to do
different things, and if you're in the mood for a bunch of slow tunes, this is
the Jam for you. I'm just not moved other than to go 'hmm...that's interesting'
and wait for the next song to start to give me another surprise. I rock myself
silly exactly once ('Hail Hail'), and while I don't really dislike any of the
tunes on here, I sure don't seem to recall a damn one of them either. Ah
well...it doesn't suck.
Capn's Final Word: Again
able to wriggle around in their Pearl Jam suit without coming across
pretentious-like, it's still a close call whether they do or not. The songs
aren't as good as Vitalogy, though.
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Cole Your Rating: D
Any Short Comments?: no, *your* mom. also, I don't like pearl jam that much.
same goes for generation x.
Tony Souza Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: Probably my favorite, though I like 'em
all. The main difference is that unlike the other drummers that drummed for
this group, Jack Irons had an influence on what the music sounds like on here.
I don't think the songs "In My Tree" and "Who You Are" whould have been made without him behind the drum kit. This
was also the period where they were consciencely
trying to get out of the spotlight that they were in in
the first half of the decade. There was some experimentation on Vitalogy, (notebly that stupid
sound collage stuck on the end) that just didn't work for me, but on here it
seems more focused (Present Tense). "Hail, Hail" isn't the only song
to get my blood pumping as "In My Tree", "Habit" and "Lukin" all get me going as well. I agree that some of
the slower acoustic-based songs, while still good, do drag a bit. Good groups
grow musically with time and Pearl Jam do so with No
Code.
As far as the number
of live releases are concerned, the 25 releases are from the European
leg of the 2000 tour. They released a bunch more from their American leg later.
The reason they released so many live albums is because they wanted the fans to
have quality-sounding live cds of their shows at a
reasonable price (all the cds are double cd recordings of each show), and not have to pay $50 for a
shitty sounding bootlegged concert. By doing this, fans have a complete live
documentation of their 2000 tour and can pick and choose which ones they want
to hear.
Jacob the Mick Your Rating: B-
Any Short Comments?: The people who called it "weird" were either paying
too much attention to the album cover/layout(trading cards? With lyrics on the backs of them? GASP! They've
gone and done lost they minds, they have!), or just can't handle music that
doesn't adhere to the "distortion cranked up all the way" rule of
"grunge" rock.
Sorry for overusing the quotation
marks there. No Code finds the band changing their approach(and
their drummer) yet AGAIN! But is it for the better? Well, they
certainly don't sound depressed as hell anymore, though the album does have a
few melancholy songs("Off He Goes" and
"Smile", two of my favorites here). But for the most part, this
stuff's SO much more uplifting, as though Eddie had JUST suddenly realized that
as long as millions of disaffected, impressionable youth were hanging on to his
every word, he'd might as well say something about the positive aspects of life
for a change. Of course, by this time those kids had long since given up
on Pearl Jam, but that's beside the point.
And boy, after that
"W.M.A." crap on Vs., I thought that they'd suck major asspipe(Prindle-ism! I think I spend too much time at his
site) if they'd ever attempted that tribal drumming thingy again. I was
wrong, cause "Who You Are" and "In My Tree" are both very
nice, angst-free songs with pretty melodies and great instrumental interplay
and whatnot. I'm also quite fond of that "Red Mosquito" song
which features some of the coolest guitar tone on the solos I've ever heard
this band use. I can't believe that somebody on Prindle's
site called that song "quite possibly the worst song ever written" or
something to that effect. Apparently, that guy has never heard
"Glorified G" before.
I haven't talked about any of the
rockers yet, because I don't really like them all that much. Oh sure,
"Hail, Hail" is alright, but "Lukin,"
"Mankind," and "Habit," which are the only songs here that
even attempt to kick butt, sound like they took about 10 seconds each to
write. And Stone Gossard's singing voice sounds
eerily identical to Robbie from the Goo Goo Dolls(which is not a good
thing). And ech, the album ends on a boring,
uneventful note with "I'm Open" and "Around The Bend," or
as I like to call them, "Perfect Cures For Insomnia." Goddammit, why didn't they end the album with "Present
Tense"?? That one's got "album closer" written all over
it!
So yeah, it could've been a LOT
worse, but give me one good reason why it couldn't have been better and I'll up
my grade to a B+
Slappy Wilson
Your Rating: F
Any Short Comments?: This record is just the rocking "Hail, Hail" with a
bunch of other shit. Pearl Jam continues their descent.
Great name for an album though.
Yield - Epic 1998
Hey
folks! I haven't written a review in like almost a week and a half because my
wife and baby came back from Russia and I started a job and it's taken me like
10 days to figure out that Yield is actually both Pearl Jam's most consistently
good record since Ten and the record in which they retrench (or 'advance
in a counter-front direction' if you talk like a WWII Soviet General, or 'Goo!' if you talk like my baby girl) into basic,
down-home dime-store Floyd the Barber hard rock like what most of Vitalogy was doing when it wasn't pulling scary
faces and gooning around like on 'FloppyMopHandleLodgedInMyRectumMakesMeSingLikeThisand
TooMuchTHCMakesMeLikeIt. In fact, this darn album is
so much like frigging Vitalogy, except the
hard rockers are a little more interesting but a little less rocking, and the
'experimental' stuff almost completely falls on the side of the 'easily
ignorable' rather than the 'gut-naggingly
blasphemous', so I say split the difference and give 'em
equal grades. I'll also say that, though 'Faithful' and 'Brain of J.' (Mascis?) are both fairly good songs, the album doesn't
truly kick in until 'Given to Fly' gives us a prayer to the adjective 'soaring'
like the band does nothing better than simulate the feeling of being 30000 feet
above the clouds, going at 1000 miles a second and feeling like your sitting still...the
song is grand and is a highlight the rest of the album just can't reach.
But
the middle segment tries...jeez, I mean, after No Code just sorta came and went from the supermarket shelves without
actually being caught up in the nets of the shipping carts, Pearl Jam released three
of these songs as radio singles...and even did a video for 'Do The Evolution'
for MTV. Of course, 'Evolution' sorta sucks as a song
and the video was just '101 Animated Reasons To Hate The Human Race And Wish
You Were Actually A Mindless Sea Fungi That Never, Ever Tested Hairspray On A
Little Cute Bunny Rabbit's Eyeballs', which is the type of Pearl Jam message
that I just fucking hate (yes, sirs and sirs, 1998 was the time that
most people stopped listening to annoying Generation X angsty
whining altogether. Me included. After this I spent
about 3 years listening to annoying British whining. Now I mostly get my
philosophies from old-school country music and Bazooka gum wrappers.) I mean,
the 'hard gritty rocking' is mostly just a bunch of crud on Vedder's
voice, and I can't even remember the dang riff at all. Oh, and even though I
think it's sorta cool, my wife wants you to know that
she severely dislikes 'Wishlist' and finds it unconscionably
whiny. She used to turn the radio station back when they used to play it all
the dang time back four years ago...and she likes this band. So, you know, take
it as you will.
The
rest of the songs I feel like not talking about at all because, shit, they're
really just more of that decently good Pearl Jam hard rock that you and I and a
dog named Cujo all know so well. I still think you
should get Ten and Vitalogy first, but hey, when have
you been listening to my ass? Nothing much sounds that good after 'Given
to Fly', but none of it sucks, either, unless you count the rap mistake snippet
that wasn't even given a title. They're simply over doing a lot of stuff that
sucks...they've plain gotten it out of their system. And even though I wouldn't
at all say this album sets my world on fire, it did get me successfully through
two 45 minute-long commutes without too much use of the fast forward button
after I learned the album (I'd say the untitled track, and maybe one of the
stupider filler songs near the end got the 'beep treatment' today.) and most of
the time entertaining the heck out of me. So Pearl Jam is marking
time...they're at the peak of their powders, and a little tad bit of Pearl Jam
doing what they do best is sometimes exactly what we need. Or maybe we just
need oral sex.
Capn's Final Word: An album
that probably seems fleshier and more flawless than it really is, precisely
because it plays the game not to lose. Better songs than No
Code, too.
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Jacob Mc. Your Rating: B+
Any Short Comments?: Actually, this one reminds me more of Ten than of Vitalogy. "Arena," "Rock," and
"Bombast" are three words that come to mind when I hear the choruses
to "Faithfull," "In Hiding,"
"MFC," and "Given To Fly," if that goddamned Led Zep ripoff melody sung LOUDER and
in a higher octave counts as a "chorus." Hey, it's no crime...Lep Zep ripped off lots of people.
All I'm saying is, if there's any record where Pearl
Jam tried to recapture the grandeur of their glory days, it's this.
That's what brings it down to "not as good as it should be" in my
mind...after 3 records in a row of trying to expand the diversity of their
sound and shifting gears from "weird yet half-assed" to "darker,
harder-edged" to "quieter, more introspective," they're suddenly
content to just settle down into a "Modern rock band writing classic rock
songs" mold for the most part.Not that the
material isn't up to par; it's just that they've stopped doing things they've
never done before. In fact, most of the record sounds like - *gasp* -
Pearl Jam actually care about how many records they're selling! For the
first time ever! Oh sure, you've got your "No Way" with the
awkward melody and weird-yet-badass lead guitar tone, and your "Do The
Evolution" with it's jungle-funk-thrash-boogie-swing-jive-penis backbeat,
as well as your "Stupidass Red Dot Song That
Jack Irons Should Be Beaten Up For" and your "Push Me, Pull Me"
which is actually just Eddie talking while a Japanese radio station blares out
of Jeff's bass amp, but even the best of those have got "filler"
written all over them. They just don't sound like much effort has gone
into them, at least not to me. And they sound so out of place next to
"No Code-ish yet was less boring" pretty
ballads such as "Wishlist" and "Low
Light". And WHY the fuck did they decide to end the album on a
really dull! note AGAIN?? Bastards. All
complaints aside though, I really enjoy "Brain Of J", the song that
proves that Pearl Jam haven't lost their ability to write a solid,
bitchin' rock song, and you'd have to be a fucking
Nazi or something to not like "MFC." Overall, just call this
one the "comeback" album because it actually got some radio play and
commercial suckcess(compared to No Code anyway). You know what happens whenever
Pearl Jam seem to grow comfortable with who they are...time for a new drummer,
guys!
Slappy Wilson
Your Rating: F
Any Short Comments?: Yeah, two more good songs released with a bunch of crap
and called an "album". Funny it didn't sell well.
Live on Two Legs - Epic 1998
Uncompromisingly professional live album from the masters of the obvious, showing that while they may have worked out all the misdirected (and unintentionally funny) rage of their early days, they may have broken their connection with the audience at the same time. Eddie Vedder is no longer trying to out-Jesus Bono onstage anymore, and while the infrequent reports that he may be doing something provokative onstage like putting a Bush mask on a mic stand and dancing around it (Crimey! He's advocating impaling the head of the President on a stick in some sort of sick Satanic ritual!! Luckily it's the one part of the President's body the President doesn't seem to need to use on a regular basis...) for the most part the guy just does normal rock 'n' roll stuff nowadays, just with his better-than-average pipes. The band, though, well....I'd like to say they're special, but they're really just passable. The rhythm section especially hurts on this album...instead of the beat being rock-solid and driving, more often it's just present and accounted for, like that one dude I remember teaching in high school who would come in and say hi every day, never missed a class, but never did a goddamn stroke of work his entire semester in my class. Just sat there and watched me and grinned, that's all.
Like I firmly believe, Pearl Jam really want to be arena rockers, go for the long haul and put out samey albums every few years, tour a whole bunch for a whole fuckload of years until finally they're coupled with Creed and Soul Asylum and a reformed Alice in Chains with that bald Jew guy from live taking over for Layne Staley on a package summer tour through Wyoming and portions of western Montana round about 2030. They write songs that sound good live, and they wring as much from those anthemic chord sequences as they can...shit, it's all they've got besides Eddie, and lemme tell you, it's really almost enough. I can listen to the creamy crunch of 'Courdoroy' and the fruit filling of 'Nothingman' without a hint that I might be wasting my time, and there's really none of the self-indulgent crap that marked the studio albums right around this point, though Eddie does throw in my favorite verse from Neil Young's 'Rockin' in the Free World' in the middle of 'Daughter', probably one of my very least favorite PJ songs, but I can forgive him. I suppose I really could go back and listen to Yield again to decide if I really like a lot of these songs, but I sure don't mind 'em...hell, they're not delightfully mediocre flawed dull guys rapidly reaching middle age for nothing!
Capn's Final Word: More boring than you'd probably expect unless you're expecting competent guitar rock without a lot of extra juice, which you probably are if you're into latter-period Pearl Jam.
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Enjoyable but not very interesting....a more advanced
case of the disease that set in on No Code and grew worse with Yield:
Pearl Jam has a limited set of ideas, and after running through their
particular deck of cards, they simply shuffle them up again and start over from
the top. Sure, yeah, Yield was like the big ol'
Pearl Jam sell out bakesale, with the MTV videos and
the singles and all the airplay for 'Wishlist' on
'modern rock' radio stations instead of Marcy Playground or the Verve Pipe
(what a Verve Pipe may be, and what it may look like, are things that have
haunted me ever since my third year in college. Forgive
Hey!
If you were a hot dog, would you eat yourself? And if you were a former member
of Soundgarden, would you join up with a band that
stole your fame? Yes and and emphatic yes, I'd say.
You see, I forgot to tell you that the Gardeners' Matt Cameron took over on
drums for the killer Jack Irons, who was sick to death like he'd never been
sick before or something like that. Not that it really matters too strongly or
anything. Pearl Jam is Pearl Jam now, and just as long as you can put up with
your gicky song featuring ukelele
('Soon Forget') or weird vibes that make your gut crawl out your mouth and go
running down the street in disgust of your ears, you're gonna
get your rockin' fix on. But, unfortunately, that's
all you're gonna get with Binaural. This is Yield
sans 'Given to Fly', in other words. The distortion without
the surprisingly subtle show of compositional mastery. The tapioca pudding without the marachino
cherry. The sex without the squishing sound.
Not sadly incompetent in any area, but lacking that certain shimmer to
put it over the top and make it memorable.
Sheeit...maybe this should be a lower grade
for reasons that now that I'm here in front of my chosen reviewing medium, I'm
really at a loss to seriously remember much to praise on this thing. In fact, I
don't have this disc with me right now and I'm having serious trouble
remembering anything off the second side at all. I know there's a
really repetitive song near the end...is that 'Rival'? Oh, and the usual
'ruminative ballad' that ends the thing...I just know that's on there. And the ukelele filler-cheese.
Okay, I guess I've reconstructed enough of it to know it's a fairly weak
sequence of songs. And lack of strong material is the total hit here - There's
just too many 'generic Pearl Jam rockers' on Binaural. 'Light Years' is
damned good, but its no 'Given to Fly', and
'Evacuation' and 'Insignificance' stick out as something great, too. Crap.
Maybe I shouldn't be reviewing this album until I've listened to it a million
times and have the whole thing memorized, but I'll tell you right now what I'm
absolutely sure of: first, the rockers aren't as fresh as on Vitalogy, the hooks can't match Yield, it's
not a left-field change of pace like No Code, and they still haven't
been able to recreate the great bombastic Ten feeling yet, so you're
really left with the nuts-and-bolts Pearl Jam. Chunky rocking chord sequences
over Crazy Horse-feed backing, workmanlike but decent guitar solos,
uncomfortable lyrics and good singing from Vedder.
Some stupid potheaded 'experiments' that belie having
too damn much time in the studio without someone to tell them 'no!'. A new drummer under the tree each Christmas. Benefit
concerts. Endless series of live albums. Beer and weed. You be the judge if that's enough for you. I
honestly don't think it's enough for me, not when there's
still thirty-odd
At
least they're not Creed, who want nothing more than to
be Pearl Jam. Sad bastards.
Capn's Final Word: More
Yield with fewer ideas. Maybe this particular black circle needs to be
changed out some time, eh?
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Well, either consistently coming up with entirely adequate Pearl Jam records is a whole lot more difficult than it looks and I ought to get a lot more excited when the former members of Thee Lost Seattle Druggie Bands put together yet another perfectly enjoyable, entirely forgettable album full of decent regressive album rock, or I ought to get a lot angrier that they've now completely abandoned the wild hair up their ass that gave birth to their best work 8-odd years back and resigned themselves to making perfectly enjoyable regressive guitar-rock albums. What I'm so mush-mouthedly saying here is that Riot Act really is just another Pearl Jam record, no cute covers of old necrophiliac anthems or way-out hardcore molar-busters to put their increasingly conservative audience off their $85 Ambercrombie and Fitch khakis. If anything, they're back in Neil Young mode again, cranking out the same old busted-amp chord sequences that ol' Shakey copyrighted back in 1969, except, you know, worse. Hard to distinguish between them, you see, just like their hero Neil had problems with about 5 years back (and 10 years back, and 15 years back)...it seems that old flannel might never die, but these sorts of goateed half-melodies sure begin to rot after awhile.
Shit, man, the best song on here (other than the cantankerous swipe at the Monkey at the Wheel of the Country, 'Bushleaguer', that is), 'I Am Mine', manages to sound completely derivative of about five other Pearl Jam mid-tempo songs, and 'Thumbing My Way' could have been yanked out of the short shorts of just about any random bunch of Nashville (or Austin, for that matter) alt-country hicks in about 15 seconds. The ultimate ripoff is when I realised the line 'to the universe I'm just nothing' from 'Love Boat Captain' is maybe, just maybe just about exactly the goddamn fucking identical to the hookline in Ten's 'Deep', thus finally proving my point that Pearl Jam has and has always had about 4 different songs in their reportiore, and they just change out the guitar tones and effects every now and again just to keep stuff honest. Listen, whenever these guys attempt something else, it either comes across as a total experimental failure or as a dumb joke by a bunch of whiny has-beens, but when they do their little schitck, everyone's a happy motherfucker, CDs get sold, arena seats get filled, and once again Eddie Vedder gets patted on the head for 'keeping the faith' in light of how much actually shitty music is out there. Man, not like he probably shouldn't be...Pearl Jam's version of how rock music should sound probably matches mine about 85% on a good day, it's just that they've stopped looking for those other, new ways which rock music might sound really fucking bitchin' as well. It seems they've left all that to Radiohead to figure out.
At the end of the day is another Pearl Jam album which I like fairly well and probably will never remember they put out unless I think really hard, and I usually don't like thinking about things that much unless somewhere along the line it's going to yield me either a good chemical buzz or some great sex. The electro-itchy 'You Are' is probably what U2 should've sounded like through most of the 1990's, 'Help Help' is good and swirly and scary in a way that reminds me of the best non-thrash heavy metal, 'Save You' and 'Ghost' are full-bore stompers that deliver the groceries and stick around for the hot fucking with the housewife, '1 2 Full' is a fair pass at bluesiness that probably divines the future of Pearl Jam best....Your Favorite State Fair Headliners Play All The Fist-Pumping Hits!
Capn's Final Word: Well, they traded that pesky experimentalism for consistency....and a one-way ticket to irrelevance.
Click Here to Fill Out the
Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
Garrett
Your Rating: A
[rant]
Dude...
Do you even give a damn what the music is about?
That is the thing with Pearl Jam. The music is 'about' something.
Some of it is an emotional release for Eddie, a cleansing of the soul, trying to
come to terms with emotional baggage. Re : Ten (Alive, etc),Vs.
(Rearviewmirror, etc), Vitalogy (Betterman, etc), No Code (Present Tense, etc),
Yield (I think),and Binaural (Sleight of Hand, etc).
A lot of it is just
the fact that they like to make music, they like to record and create. Judge it
as you may, it is personal and it is art. The fact that other people
really enjoy it has at times been a boon and a bane for the members of Pearl
Jam, I am sure.[/rant]
Now...that said, I think that Riot Act is great...not because I can listen to it
without thinking too hard (which I can, it has a lot of good music)...great
because it is about something.
Songs about dealing with life, about greed, about corruption, about making
decisions...Music that entertains and/or instills thoughts.
Music that you don't have to be ashamed about listening to. Music for musics
sake.
I don't think there is a track on here that I don't love except for Love Boat
Captain. I don't dislike it, but if I had been there when they were
writing the music I would have made a couple decisions about how to arrainge it
differently. Since I feel like it is a musical choice that I don't agree
with, I end up being very shallow about what is very personal music...much like
the original reviewer...heh...
I really like the whole record. I Am Mine and Cropduster are probably my
favorites. My wife really likes Save You, she is actually excited about a
Pearl Jam song, something that hasn't happened in a while.
I understand that not everyone gets the same things out of music as the next
guy. But, even in you only listen with your ears, this is good music.
(Capn's Response: [Irritated lecture to blind fanatic]
Sir
I assume you've bought into Pearl Jam As Suffering Artists, probably their most manipulative and disgusting ploy and one of the main reasons I trust them about as far as I can throw them, which isn't real fucking far. Listen, see if this sounds familiar....it goes something like this:
*I'm so very broken up that I am forced to sign huge deals with major record labels like Epic so people will *ack!* BUY and LISTEN to my music! It's so precious, I don't want anyone to look at it! It might just blow away in a cloud of dust! Like you! Are YOU one of the chosen few who is good enough to listen to a Pearl Jam album? Just between me and you, I think YOU understand what my song is about, but that guy in the stocking cap and cutoffs next to you? He hasn't a clue.*
Listen, sheep. 'The fact that other people really enjoy it has at times been a boon and a bane for the members of Pearl Jam, I am sure.' Well, then why don't you fucking STOP then, if it hurts poor Eddie so very badly? Eddie Vedder may care a little bit more about people than some rock stars do, but the man is still up there singing songs and selling tickets and selling albums. He's not Ian McKaye and he's not Neil Young.
Does Eddie Vedder somehow hold exclusive rights to artistic integrity now? Riot Act is great...great because it is about something. life, about greed, about corruption, about making decisions. You know, the last few Britney Spears albums were about some of the same things. Same with the Rolling Stones. Same with frigging John Coltrane. Same with motherfucking Sesame Street. There's PLENTY of artists out there who write songs about 'somethings', and while Eddie Vedder may have been, at times, more successful than a lot of them in getting his point across, he's just another dude in another band writing songs that he thinks are somehow important. He's not the only one. Music that you don't have to be ashamed about listening to. You're ashamed listening to other kinds of music? Why? Why do you have to be ashamed of anything? Because you're afraid what other people will think about you, or are you not living up to some personal creed when you're not listening to music 'worthy' enough? If I want to blast my motherfucking ABBA at mountain-splitting volume out of my car windows, that's my own choice. I'm not going to feel 'ashamed' about it somehow.
I don't dislike it, but if I had been there when they were writing the music I would have made a couple decisions about how to arrainge it differently. Since I feel like it is a musical choice that I don't agree with, I end up being very shallow about what is very personal music...much like the original reviewer...heh...Did you ask Eddie's permission before you went rearranging his song? Don't you think he might get miffed and go hide out in some Seatlle basement for a few decades, just becuase YOU had the NERVE to think that a song called 'Love Boat Captain' MIGHT SOMEHOW BE IMPROVED?!?!? So once again we're back to the 'Pearl Jam Music Cannot Be Touched! It's FRAGILE!' argument that I think even Eddie Vedder would think was crap. Thinking about music, what you like and don't like about it, isn't SHALLOW. Thinking that you don't have the right to think about it IS.
Anyway, I pretty much like this record. We're in agreement there. I think it's good music. But it's not as good as what Pearl Jam is capable of doing. And THAT, my dear fanatic, is what my criticism is all about.
[/Irritated lecture to blind fanatic]
Chris
Your Rating: B+
Any Short Comments?: While I think PJ does tend to repeat itself they still
put out great songs. You Are and Love Boat Captain are the standouts here,
the mixture of Eddie's emotions coming through and the feeling the music invokes
is a potent combination that most bands can't pull off as consistently as PJ.
I would like them to mix up the songs a bit
more on their next release though, they are trying to make albums where each
song fits into a certain pattern or mood. The album Lost Dogs is really
fantastic, it has a wide variety of styles and is arguably their best album in
years.
Rick
Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: How is the line "To the universe I don't mean a thing"
in ANY way a ripoff of "Deep"? "To the man above her, she just ain't
nothin..." isn't even the hook, for Christ's sake. And if your going to
criticize a line of music, and then quote said line, at least get the lyrics
right.
(Capn's Response: Dude, call me a fucking
idiot, but if Bob Dylan were to rewrite one of his own lines like that, people
would be all over his ass. He's written over 40 albums, Eddie hasn't even done
eight. Listen, the line has a different subject, but the intent, cadence,
and performance is EXACTLY THE SAME. It's blindness that prevents you from
admitting the fact that your band has now made the same album three times in a
row. I swear, no other band has such a bunch of sheep for a fanbase (not even
the Dead, if you can believe it), and Eddie Vedder is your PC-Fascist Fuhrer.)
bill
anderson Your Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: the reason that that PJs last two records dont strike
any chords with me is because of eddys voice. eddys voice in ten, and songs in
or around 91,92 are what his voice should sound like. The voice that creed
copied. if he would use that voice in new songs they would be alot better.
(Capn's Response: I hope you're not insinuiating Vedder should try to sound like that dogfucker in Creed, but I agree with your point.)
Jim
Your Rating: A-
Any Short Comments?: Dude, tell me this, do you call yourself a pearl jam
fan.? i've read all your reveiws on their various albums and it seems to me you
knock every one of them. Why then do you waste your precious time making a site
deticated to a band you say you "like" if your are goin to hit down every album
they release.
(Capn's
Response: First off, never once did I claim to be a Pearl Jam fan. I'm
not a 'fan' of too many people. See, that's the difference between me and you. I
enjoy Pearl Jam when they're doing their best work and think they're lazy and
derivative the rest of the time. You don't have the ability to distinguish
between differing levels of quality because you're a 'fan' and therefore have to
like each and every shred of PJ product that comes sliding down the pike. And
did I not award three of their albums A- grades? I promise you that's pretty
fucking good. And as for wasting time, I'll just say that if I've shown just one
person out there the difference between an honest expression of one's opinion
and blind devotion, I won't consider talking to you and all the other Vedder
Bootlickers who have written to be a waste of anyone's time.)
Dave
Your Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: Personally I'd give this album album a C grade but
I figured I'd agree to das capitan's assessment because I pretty much agree with
what he says.
Y'see, I honestly do like this record, I love that there song "I am mine"
and some other stuff here is highly spiffy. But when did Prole Jam become
so...middle aged? This whole album is clogged up with classic rock guitar sludge
that a million other bands (especially in this era of retro "garage rock" tripe)
are dishing out in alarming quantities....did you know Mike is in a UFO tribute
band now, does that honestly surprise you AT ALL?
ps* "Thumbing my way" blows, a songwriter as obviously talented as Ved
Pedder could crank out a million sensitive acoustic folk rock ballads in one
drunken jam seesion, so why the hell is he clogging up album space with one of
them?
I'm not sure at what point it occurred, but Pearl Jam became an ordinary hard rock band playing competent but highly unengaging guitar rockers. It didn't used to be that way - compared to the more authentic Pixies/Black Sabbath hybrids that were sprouting from the Seattle scene in 1991, Ten was a classic rock record dressed up in Gap flannel and $200 Doc Martens, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still one of the best classic rock records of the last 20 years. The band sounded on when slaying their way through great stuff like 'Even Flow' or the genuinely charged ballad 'Black', and Eddie Vedder, despite the sneers of 'surfer poseur' from the 'real' grungers, was positively transcendent when howling out the chorus to 'Alive'. Vs. had all the piss and vinegar but none of the payoff, and Vitalogy was a scarred semi-masterpiece with flaws as obvious as the scars on Ashley Simpson's schnoz. The band went left field on No Code and redeemed themselves on Yield, but by that time the signs had become clear...Pearl Jam was to become not the Who/Crazy Horse hybrid they desperately wanted to be, nor the New Grateful Dead their fans hoped they'd be, but a sort of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers which replaced late 70's arena rock for his mid-60's folk rock. They're authentic, listenable, and clearly competent, but absolutely nobody's choice to become the Great Transcendent Rock Band they once threatened to be. The riffs have become too banal, the rhythm section runs on a fuel made up of cliches and formulas, and Eddie Vedder, formerly a sort of maelstrom of bared nerves, has become either too tired or too self-conscious to bare himself like he used to be able to do. This is the type of album that, on its surface, provides you with everything you'd expect it to - a very organic, live-in-the-studio band sound, a blend of fast, punky rockers and mid-tempo potboilers with a smattering of lighter songs sprinkled in, and plenty of political pointy sticks courtesy of Mr. Compassion himself. The thing is, nothing fucking engages. That political sensibility? It never once grabs you by your lapels and screams 'WAKE UP!!!' into your face like Neil was able to do on his recent Living With War LP (an album which, I'd like to point out, not only took but three weeks to record and two months to release, was also Neil's fourth album since Pearl Jam put out Riot Act. (Pretty funny for a band that once claimed to have wanted to put out an album every 6 months like their idols Kiss used to do, innit?).
So is this that much worse than Riot Act, which I rewarded with a non-committal B and prophetically stated that I wouldn't remember whatsoever. Well, I was right...I don't remember a damned thing about it, but I already called it Binaural II, so where does this place this one? I say further down the craphole, to be sure. The opening single 'Life Wasted' sounds absolutely generic, from the two chord riff to the thumpa-thumpa drumbeat by Matt Cameron, a drummer that evidently never moved beyond 2/4 snare hits and bashing his ride cymbal like it was David Hassellhoff's wife's face. 'World Wide Suicide' is where we're supposed to remember Pearl Jam as once having possessed the conscience of a generation - they were the superego to Nirvana's less mature id - but we're treated to clumsy lines like ' Tell you to pray while the devil's on his shoulder' and ' Next to a handsome face/That the President took for granted/Writing checks that others pay'. That's not the howl of an enraged citizen - that's the whine of a rich middle aged white guy who left his righteous anger somewhere on the No Code tour. Remember how Pearl Jam used to pay sideways glances to punk rock? You get 'Comatose', which sounds much more like Mr. Petty's 'Jammin' Me' than anything off Machine Gun Etiquette.
They crawl back into their increasingly narrow comfort zone on 'Severed Hand', and from here the album begins to regain a bit of credibility as far as I'm concerned - no matter what I've said about them in this review, nobody does half-assed Pearl Jam like Pearl Jam themselves, not Creed, not the Foo Fighters, not Nickelback, not nobody. And seriously, mediocre but listenable is where Pearl Jam has lived since, like, 1998 or something, and they've now worn their path so well they sound like they're trying even when they really aren't. Therefore, the best moments are the exceptions rather than the rules: the highly John Lennon-y ballad 'Parachutes', for one, is a great track with some nice vocal overdubs and quite a bit of impact for a song with such a stripped down arrangement (just some acoustics, some quiet drumming, and a bit of organ). 'Unemployable' revels in its very 70s-ness, sounding at times like something Bad Company would have released and at times like REM in their similarly worn-out New Adventures phase. The difference between REM 1996 and Pearl Jam 2006 is this: even when the fumes were running thin and the magic had left in the middle of the night leaving not even a note, REM never repeated themselves. Not three times in a row. Or more, come to think of it.
Capn's Final Word: Pearl Jam still can't find what they're looking for. Except now they've forgotten what that even was in the first place.
Click Here to Fill Out the Handy Dandy Reader Comment Form
pedro andino
pedroandino@msn.com Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: urkel: look what you did!. don't be such an ass cap! the
peral jam fans are gonna flame you for that!. anyway i am gonna pull a henry
rollins on this one!. hollywood runs out of ideas and you know i still hate it.
ew or entertainment weekly sucks! all they fucking care about is fucking trends
and shit. i do not care. now do you have a dvd collection? cause if every rapper
has scarface i say i have this great dvd. ghost in the shell. also heavy metal.
anime is so much better for me than faggy toons like shrek and over the hedge.
say do you know that i can do the entire lyrics to informer? here goes: informer
you no se daddy me snow me i go blame a licky boom boom down detective man say
daddy me snow so me stand singing down the lane a licky boom boom down! ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!. this come back album gets an a.
Capn's Note:
Pajammy released a
series of 72 live albums from their 2000 live tour. Seventy two. The Grateful Dead have only released
twenty four Dick's Picks sets (plus about 12 other live albums), and they
toured for 30 years. Pearl Jam puts together a few months of shows and
releases all of them. Alrighty. I don't own any of those, and I probably will never do so.