Dance of the Clairvoyants

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[VinylGuy]

Im in for a concept album if all the lyrics are like this one.

[LoathedVermin72]

Orange man losing his head
Over the words young Greta said

[E.H. Ruddock]

Yeah but that out of this world line is cringey

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Birds in Hell]

Yeah but that out of this world line is cringey

If you showed it to me on paper before I actually heard the song, I would totally agree. But the way it’s delivered, and in contacts with the music, I think it works great

Yeah, I have no issues with it at all.

[96583UP]

It could be about a few things at once - Ed has mentioned in interviews before about how lyrics can take multiple meanings

I. For example - to Strat's point - this could clearly be about supporting Harvey Weinstein:

(1) Confusion it is to commotion
(2) What love is to our devotion
(3) Imperceptibly big
(4) As big as the ocean
(5) And equally hard to control

translation:
(1) the women are now confused after having first consented
(2) they were actually in love
(3) his penis is large
(4) ibid.
(5) his penis is hard to control

The looser things get
The harder you become
The looser things get
Tighter

translation: (you get the idea)


II. Then there are the Pete Townshend references:

(1) I know the girls wanna dance
(2) Away their circumstance
(3) I know boys wanna grow
(4) Their dicks and fix and fire(file?) things

translation:
(1) + (2) = just walk it off, it was no big deal
(3) you were dressed like you wanted it
(4) those charges that were filed were inappropriate; this was research only


III. And then we have their newly re-kindled faith in Christ:

Stand back when the spirit comes

translation: Ho! Ye! He shall return! Praise Him! Hosanna! Praise Him!


What an amazing band. Great insights, guys! Great teamwork on this one. Case closed. Really excited to decode the rest of this album 'when the spirit comes!'.

[stip]

i am still collecting my thoughts and am enjoying reading other people’s interpretations. But I dont, at least at this point, think it is about climate change. But I do think it is looking for a way to respond to the dislocation of our times, and climate change is a part of that

[stip]

nevermind - 965 cracked it

[96583UP]

nevermind - 965 cracked it

Spoiler: show

[LoathedVermin72]

Jesus Christ that’s a great post

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[dprival78]

best thing about it is that there's plenty of room for interpretation. remember the times ol' ed did that more often?

[96583UP]

i am still collecting my thoughts and am enjoying reading other people’s interpretations. But I dont, at least at this point, think it is about climate change. But I do think it is looking for a way to respond to the dislocation of our times, and climate change is a part of that

The music video that’s 100% about climate change begs to differ

there's a lot of theories out there about how the video could be about climate change, but there is still no concrete link between humans making the video and it being about climate change. the video could just be about climate change on it's own - there have been plenty of stages through earth's history history where videos were about climate change, well before humans had video making or editing equipment. the link between the two is still unproven.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[dprival78]

best thing about it is that there's plenty of room for interpretation. remember the times ol' ed did that more often?

Again, I refer you to the music video that is 100% about climate change

i'll just listen to the song without the nature montage vid

[McParadigm]

Stand back when the spirit comes
I have no idea what this part means! But it sounds great.

I think your interpretation is *basically* right, in that environmental catastrophe is a primary inspiration for the song, but that you're overfocusing the song in part because you're not sure what to do with one of the most repeated and important lines in the song.

I think it's about the idea that trying to control the pieces of our lives that are natural is both wrong and destructive. Let's take the first verse only, for now, but let's take it at its word....at what it is saying directly:

Love is imperceptibly big, which makes it hard to control. This enormity is (we all assume) a positive thing. But the danger is: the same is true of confusion. Confusion...a want to make sense of things that may not in their natural state make sense...is as powerful a human force as love. And where love causes devotion, confusion only causes commotion. Destructiveness. The inability to see clearly.

So don't try to predict these forces, and don't waste your time trying to control or use them as a means to an end. Reject the urge to convince yourself that you can. Reject the idea that confusion can be broken through, simply by using equations and well-structured arguments. Interpretations are, at their heart, open. They're part of an instinctive urge to force perfection where beauty already existed. Don't do it. Stand back when the spirit comes. Stand back.

[96583UP]

and it is simultaneously about Christ's return and Harvey Weinstein's jizz

just like how 'Animal' has multiple meanings

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[mastaflatch]

I could say that it was worth the wait but I wasn't waiting for anything from this band anymore. The overall feel of artistic compromise that hovered above Lightning Bolt and the crass ridiculousness of Can't Deny Me kind of put the nails in the coffin of PJ for me. Add to that that I won't see them live anymore (don't like the ''experience'' of paying overpriced tickets to hear drunken bros singing over Ed and co.), I thought that was it - this band was a great companion in the 90s, we'd slowly drift apart in the oughts and the 10s marked our proverbial split. I must say that I've been a good fan until then, i.e. I still think that the self-titled album is kinda great, like a yang to Riot Act's yin but afterwards, despite some rare moments of togetherness, this band, at best, hinted at what they were capable of doing before being cut short by highly questionable production decisions. They were fooled, maybe by BoB, that they were going to be the next big thing again because even their most daring songs of the era were thwarted by the chorus tyranny or by the obligatory guitar solo motto or the classic Eddie moment religion, whatever - it did the songs no good and probably caused harm to their already fragile cred (they had to deal with this from the very beginning). They had to remember how they managed to get this far, after Ten, after Vs and on until Riot Act but seemingly they had lost the plot or maybe they got lost in the band's pseudo-democracy which gave way to the aforementioned artistic compromises. Of course, Eddie Vedder is the focal point of Pearl Jam but to put all their cash on him, like BoB seemed deemed to do, must have been a pretty frustrating experience for the rest of the band and for me, it seemed like a waste of a mightily creative unit.

Come this single, teased beforehand with electronic-sounding snippets that really didn't sound like something serious from PJ (''it must be an intro or some kind of tongue in cheek bit'') - I had to take a breath. While this isn't a breakthrough to some unchartered territory, it's still fucking bold for this band to release this song as a lead single, especially at this stage of their career. Now, I'm absolutely unfamiliar with Talking Heads or David Byrne but I rekon some kind of Peter Gabriel influence there. I think, after reading this thread (fuck me - it was good reading your reactions) that it's not a lift from any TH song - like Got Some was somewhat aping a Devo song. The band comes together pretty nicely, like, one by one, adding texture and personality, there is silence and there is attack, there is melody and emotion without falling blatantly into the old tropes, etc. I fucking love this - they take us on a journey here and they, at last, let the song go on. The Pearl Jams are a groove band, they forgot that for a long while but apparently, they're still pretty good at creating an atmosphere so on with that, we may need a new atmosphere soon. Thanks folks!