Dance of the Clairvoyants

[LetMeSleep]

People went crazy in 2009 when they played The Fixer.

It was pretty popular.

Yep. The Fixer was huge circa 09/10.

I remember I was at a club a month or two after it dropped. The DJ put it on and the place went absolutely wild. Hundreds of people bouncing and grinding to the song. I approached one girl who was loving the song and asked if she preferred the Brendan O'Brien remixes of some of the songs from Ten on the 2004 Rearviewmirror set or his more recent mixes on the Ten 20th anniversary set. She looked at me with confusion and disgust and told me to leave her alone. Fucking pleb.

Love it, stump. Never change.

[evenslow]

A lot of potential from that write-up. It’s ridiculous we’re reading that with two months to go though. I’m not worried about Retrograde yet given the production of the first single. The few Evans quotes are great; if he’s taking Ed’s first vocal takes in some cases then they are going for something completely different than the BOB shellacked shit on a plate.

Feels nice not to contend with the editors at billboard doesn’t it?

The RM staff do a bang up job.

what is going on here

I could be wrong but trag drew attention to something I wrote that might have been construed as grammatical laziness or a misspelling and I replied in what was intended as an “aw shucks you folks are great” kinda way. Privately I was proud of my past tense usage of shellac.

Right but the billboard reference. Are you jc? Tap two times for yes.

[Jessica Fletcher]

Jesus Christ? No, just a humble high school English teacher turned mystery novelist that moonlights as a homicide detective. I’ve also clearly stepped into some RM history of which I’m not aware. No second account here.

[evenslow]

Jesus Christ? No, just a humble high school English teacher turned mystery novelist that moonlights as a homicide detective. I’ve also clearly stepped into some RM history of which I’m not aware. No second account here.

Ok don’t mind me I’m suffering from new PJ brain.

[Jessica Fletcher]

Jesus Christ? No, just a humble high school English teacher turned mystery novelist that moonlights as a homicide detective. I’ve also clearly stepped into some RM history of which I’m not aware. No second account here.

Ok don’t mind me I’m suffering from new PJ brain.

I think that’s all of us whether we admit it or not. It brought me out of lurk mode.

[Homeboyd]

This song is pretty great...I've listened to it enough times to be comfortable in saying this is some good shit

[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

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

the video, sure, but you could swap any number of political issues for climate change in your analysis without having to change it. I think he is writing at a level above in a way that lets the listener map the song onto an issue of choice. Maybe this album is different, but historically when eddie goes after a specific issue you know it because there is no subtlety

[stip]

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!

great post!

[stip]

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.

what he said

[stip]

”Produced by the group in tandem with longtime collaborator Josh Evans, the 12-track “Gigaton” is arguably the band’s strongest and most diverse work since 1998’s “Yield.” It begins with the driving rocker “Who Ever Said,” with Vedder intoning, “All the answers will be found in the mistakes we have made,” and shifts directly into the similarly propulsive “Super Blood Wolf Moon,” featuring a sizzling Mike McCready guitar solo.”

OMGOMGOMG!!!!

thats a great lyric quoted from who ever said. Eddie’s best writing are those kind of aphoristic moments

[stip]

that variety article put a smile on my face


all these things are being archived in a stickied post if you need em

[joostone]

that variety article put a smile on my face


all these things are being archived in a stickied post if you need em

Thanks! Don't forget that Zane Lowe interview with Stone. That one is being post every three pages here...

https://music.apple.com/us/post/sa.142a ... jHLspCeSCU

[oneway23]

that variety article put a smile on my face


all these things are being archived in a stickied post if you need em

thanks, stip

[elliseamos]

I'm going to saunter over to the album thread now.

Thanks for the (instant) memories DotC!

[oneway23]

Not sure it's been mentioned, but, for those who care about such things, DotC is now available for streaming in 24-bit/96kHz here in the US.

[DWFB]

"I know the girls wanna dance away their circumstance

I know the boys wanna grow, their dicks and fix and file things

Stand back when the spirit comes"

Most of the lyrics in the song are extremely vague but there seems to be nothing complicated about interpreting this part. It seems to state the obvious problem of the widespread self indulgence in current times and warns to "stand back when the spirit comes" to followers of that lifestyle.

[rick malone]

"I know the girls wanna dance away their circumstance

I know the boys wanna grow, their dicks and fix and file things

Stand back when the spirit comes"

Most of the lyrics in the song are extremely vague but there seems to be nothing complicated about interpreting this part. It seems to state the obvious problem of the widespread self indulgence in current times and warns to "stand back when the spirit comes" to followers of that lifestyle.

"You're all just pissin' in the wind, you don't know it but you are."

[DWFB]

"Ambulance Blues"?

[stip]

"I know the girls wanna dance away their circumstance

I know the boys wanna grow, their dicks and fix and file things

Stand back when the spirit comes"

Most of the lyrics in the song are extremely vague but there seems to be nothing complicated about interpreting this part. It seems to state the obvious problem of the widespread self indulgence in current times and warns to "stand back when the spirit comes" to followers of that lifestyle.

I still haven't figured out exactly how to phrase this (and since I am going to write at least two more long posts about this song for an album review and a guided tour I am really trying to get my thoughts in order) but I think he is really approaching the two of these different. The line about the boys, whatever it ends up being, is clearly assigning blame for the world around us, or at least the masculine impulse behind it. And I think it makes sense to think of this as least in part as masculine/feminine, not male and female. Gendered, not sexualized - or better, that it's both. But the female line isn't meant to be dismissive. The dance has two components - one is that it is a justified sort of escape. Thomas Jefferson was on the cutting edge of a lot of terrible racialized anthropology that was used to justify slavery, and he noted that his slaves often sang and dance late into the night even though they had to perform backbreaking labor at dawn - and he drew the self-serving conclusion that this meant they just had more endurance and stamina, or didn't feel pain or have deeper emotional anxiety about their position - rather than seeing the dance as a way to hold onto their humanity and stay sane. That's how I read it.

But since he has the complicated clairvoyants line earlier, and references it again in the context of the dance, there is also some admiration here - for the way in which the dance (or the dancers) point to a way forward towards the understanding and meaning which alludes him here - which speaks, I think to a more feminized view of the world to juxtapose against the more rigid, violent, self-indulgent, and controlling masculine (not the same thing as male) impulse that has taken us to the point of collapse.








I put this song on as I was writing this post. The 'stand back when the spirit comes' part is paralyzingly good. I just stop what I'm doing to get swept up in it.

[blueviper]

All of my DotC listens so far have been via headphones.

I put it on my Bluetooth speaker this morning and it sounded great as well.

Really digging this song. That first verse with Vedder singing really threw me for a loop the first time I heard it, but now I’m fully on board.