Gigaton: Official album thread

[Anders]

I've read a detailed description/review in the Dutch magazine OOR. It's a 2-page track by track analysis and it's not super positive, positive.....
Ill not fully translate the article but here are some rough translation/interpretations:

Who Ever Said: The hard rocking first track they have done before (Last Exit, Breakerfall, GSMF) and better. It's a blast but the reviewer thinks it's too long and could have been cut halfway (his biggest critism about the whole record)
SBWM: Another dumb rocker. They have done this much better. Why would I listen to this? I've stopped listening to the Foo Fighters ages ago...
DOTC: PJ meets Talking Heads and the first highlight of the album.
Quick Escape: After DOTC they continue with another bass heavy funky track. But much heavier, huge bassline that almost sounds like Rage Against the Machine. Freddy Mercury got namechecked and so did Zanzibar. Written by Ament. The chorus is really really catchy (Hey hey hey Hooooo). McCready sounds like Morello here. Spoiler Alert: best song on the album!
Allright: After two highlights we need to calm down. And this song does exactly that. It's a just a really good track, nothing more nothing less.
Seven O'Clock: Born out of a jamsession and that's noticable. He calls the chorus cheesy and the long long outtro over the top. A long outro with lots of vocal harmonies.
Never Destination: And another simple rocker. Classic punkrock with a bit of Replacements (on an uninspiring day). Up-tempo but nothing special.
Take the Long Way: How do you recognize the song written by a drummer? It has a weird time signature. And so does this track written by Matt Cameron. It's in 7/4. It has the best chorus of the whole record 'I always take the long waym that leads me back to you). The outro is soo different that most songwriters would have made another song out of it.
Buckle Up: A poppy slow track. PJ never sounded this British (Coldplay, Keane, Elbow..). But who knows..Maybe on a summer day at an outdoor festival I could the one sing-along hit from the album.
Comes then Goes: Vedder goes Into the Wild again. Onze again it's too long. Another Who reference when singing 'The Kids are Allright'. The lyrics are interesting 'Are you stuck in the middle of spectral and visible ghost?'.
Retrograde: A latter day REM-like ballad.A pretty simple song for the first 3.5 minute after which it becomes very (too) bombastic. A bit too exaggerated...
River Cross: A perfect closing track that summs up the whole album. The reviewer compared it too 'Biko' from Peter Gabriel.

Very interesting reviews. Thank you.

[Anders]

Edit: Joost beat me to it.

There is a review of Gigaton in a famous Dutch Magazine called Oor (Ear) where Mark van Schaick used to be chief editor. This review is written by the current chief editor and even though it might not seem a glowing review at all, reading between the lines as a fan still gives me hope for this album and makes me want to hear it even more. I did my best to translate from Dutch to English.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We had to wait for almost seven years: a new Pearl Jam album. The first forward-rushed music from Gigaton was hopeful: the funky Dance of the Clairvoyants was a Talking Heads pastiche, but a good one. Refreshing and daring. Atypical Pearl Jam, that's for sure. The second one was called Superblood Wolfmoon and turned out to be a rather obligatory rocker. Could it be still business as usual, this album? OOR's most hardened Pearl Jam-watcher was allowed to listen to it a few times and didn't get very cheerful in advance. Gigaton, track by track.

Who Ever Said

Yep, they did it before, on Vitalogy (1994), Binaural (2000) and Backspacer (2009) among other things: flying out of the starting blocks with two hard, unavoidable rock songs. Enter as entering is intended. It worked well at the time, but now? Who Ever Said sounds mainly rude and conventional. And lasts, with five minutes, far too long. I'm not a producer (like Josh Evans, the man responsible for Gigaton), but I would have said after two and a half minutes, the moment the band switches back: up to here and no further, boys. Then Who Ever Said would have been a powerful, concise opening statement instead of a song that with its time tricks - another half chorus, another piece of guitar solo, gas back on, and at last but not least a teasing sprint - shows just a little too much that the band clearly did not know how to put an end to it. But hey, "All the answers will be found in the mistakes that we have made '.
 
Superblood Wolfmoon

Throbbing entry number 2. Obligate and vulgar, with its almost anachronistic stomping drums. Or am I used to this kind of music? I haven't listened to the Foo Fighters for a decade either. Yet. Pearl Jam could be better. Eddie Vedder sounds rushed and angry, almost tripping over his words. There is not much more to say about it, because just like opener Who Ever Said, Superblood Wolfmoon does not contain a melodic hook with which you walk around with the rest of the day.

Dance Of The Clairvoyants

Pearl Jam goes Talking Heads, everyone agrees. The sum is therefore quickly made. Funky drums, scraping guitar line, pushing bass and - as a finishing touch - Vedder who sings exactly like David Byrne: the dictation, the high strings, the staccato sung couplets, the choirs, the crossing chants in the end. Pearl Jam may not sound like itself for a second, but Dance of the Clairvoyants is an (early) highlight on Gigaton.

Quick Escape

And yes, they continue in funk mode. But then slower, harder and more compelling. First associations: Rage Against The Machine and its afterbirth, Audioslave. A great foundation for the - literal - trip by Eddie Vedder. "First we took an airplane and a boat to Zanzibar." Exactly, the place of birth of Freddie Mercury, who gets a name check just like Queen. And on. To Morocco. And whoever is old-fashioned on the road, of course has 'a sleep sack, a bivouac and a Kerouac sense of time' at hand. The choir towards the chorus ('Heyheyhey hooooo') is worth gold, the chorus itself no less. After a a minute or two, Quick Escape lets go of the highway and the whole thing gets off the ground. Great moment, topped with - didn't we talk about it just now
RATM? - a genuine Tom Morello guitar moment. Spoiler alert: best number of the record.

Alright

The much needed rest. After a calm ambient-like intro, the dark brown voice of Vedder comes in, for everyone who feels addressed to provide courage in an unctuous way. Drums beat the beat, the rocking music is nicely coloured. The message: it's okay. Okay sometimes to be alone, just to listen to your heartbeat, to have secrets, things to keep to yourself, to say no, to escape from everything, to ignore the rules, to be disappointed in yourself. New opportunities tomorrow. Typical a song that is alright, we say today. And we don't always mean that cynically.
 
Seven O'Clock

Derived from a jam session and you can hear that. The band uses a Pink Floyd-like groove and Vedder starts a long and Springsteen-like compelling story (`Seven o'clock in the morning, got a message from afar ... '). It is just a pity that a cheesy chorus had to be made to fit in.
Also a shame: just like opener Who Ever Said, the song is eventually killed by its length (more than six minutes). The last minutes go on with totally unnecessary vocal masterpieces, in which the orchestral music goes along as if it should. Falsetto here, Bono-like swipe there, lots of bombast and completely over the top at the end. Seven O'Clock? Time for a Cup-a-soup, Eddie.
 
Never Destination

And again the men go on the mature rock tour. Nice up tempo, that is, and sometimes it almost rubs against classical American punk rock, but mostly here they sound like The Replacements on an uninspired day.
 
Take The Long Way

How do you recognise (usually) a song written by the drummer? Exactly, by the awkward time signature. Making a scent trail. Matt Cameron establish the foundation of the nicely throbbing hard rocker Take The Long Way on a seven-quart measure, but that does not undermine the song anywhere. In fact, a better chorus ('I always take the long way - that leads me back to you ') cannot be found all over Gigaton. The surprising final piece is also so strong (and different from the foregoing) that a smart songwriter would have based a completely new song on it. But drummers are probably not by definition smart songwriters (come on in, Phil Collins fan club).

Buckle Up

Seat belts tight? Well, no. After Cameron, guitarist Stone Gossard was also allowed to lay an egg and it became an elegant and wafer-thin pop shuffle, in which Pearl Jam suddenly sounds very British: Keane, Coldplay, Elbow, they are never far away. With a well-stocked festival meadow in the vicinity, this could grow to be a weak and just as easy sing along.
 
Comes Then Goes

Vedder in Into The Wild mode: solo with acoustic guitar. Also tends to be too long (more than six minutes), but the bearing melody is strong and you want gradually to know more about the theme: is the main figure lost, disoriented, is there more going on, and who and where is the other? The sentences are beautiful and stimulating. 'High or low, where you go / Are you stuck in the middle of spectral and visible ghosts? (...) Don't know where or when one of us left the other behind. " But 'the kids are alright', it sounds with a sense of rock & roll history. Fortunately.
 
Retrograde

Reportedly two years old, this R.E.M.-like ballad. The decor is wide: clouds, rain and the seven seas. Too bad the whole thing after three and one half a minute - normally a good time to close a song - still has to be lifted to Great Heights through a swelling soundscape, including a Vedder soaked in reverberation. Exaggeration is also a profession.
 
River cross

Many fans will know this: Vedder played it during his solo shows, even if we had to guess the title - Share The Light?. So, River Cross, carried by the same old pump organ as Vedder played it live. Along with the other two funk tracks, clearly the Other Sound on Gigaton. A solemn, worn, combative ballad that recalls Peter Gabriels Biko. A bit pompous again, but the live audience will soon enjoy it: lighter app up, fists in the air, tears in the corners of the eye and then just join in. "Let it out, shout it out." And don't let it come to an end. "I want this dream to last forever." If there is a moment when the new Pearl Jam comes close to its title ("Unity of energy that released with an explosion of hydrogen bombs and other very energetic events') it is here, at the end of River Cross.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Ms Harmless]

three and a half minutes "normally a good time to close a song" lol

[EJ]

the dark brown voice of Vedder

Crapshoot Rapture

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Ms Harmless]

he stopped listening to Foo Fighters years ago

[VinylGuy]

damn leak already!!

This band turned into Beyonce?

[EJ]

that review doesn't discourage me at all. guy sure doesn't like long songs.

thanks to Ed, there will definitely be cringing wincing moments to be sure. hard to not just accept that these days.

[VinylGuy]

that review doesn't discourage me at all. guy sure doesn't like long songs.

thanks to Ed, there will definitely be cringing wincing moments to be sure. hard to not just accept that these days.

ohhhheeeeeee oeeeeeeeeeehh

[Monkey_Driven]

that review doesn't discourage me at all. guy sure doesn't like long songs.

thanks to Ed, there will definitely be cringing wincing moments to be sure. hard to not just accept that these days.

This has always been the case.

[EJ]

that review doesn't discourage me at all. guy sure doesn't like long songs.

thanks to Ed, there will definitely be cringing wincing moments to be sure. hard to not just accept that these days.

This has always been the case.

Hard disagree.

[Leatherhead]

I wanna know what makes people "wince" when it comes to other bands.

[Sgt. Crackpot]

"Throbbing [...] and vulgar. Vedder soaked in [...] dark brown [...] afterbirth. [T]he live audience will soon enjoy it."
-Oor Magazine

Gorgeous.

[Monkey_Driven]

I want more Google Translate reviews.

[Vindicator]

three and a half minutes "normally a good time to close a song" lol

he clearly has never listened to prog lol

[Ms Harmless]

I don't think Pearl Jam are inventive enough to do good prog, but I wouldn't mind hearing them be a jam band in studio at this point (though it has to be said that "jam band" is not what I wanted from them at their peak)

[E.H. Ruddock]

Dark brown voice of Vedder

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Ms Harmless]

I don't think Pearl Jam are inventive enough to do good prog, but I wouldn't mind hearing them be a jam band in studio at this point (though it has to be said that "jam band" is not what I wanted from them at their peak)

I'd argue that Inside Job and Of The Earth are both proggy

case in point, really

[bodysnatcher]

Can someone else please quote that eight page review

Sure here you go

There is a review of Gigaton in a famous Dutch Magazine called Oor (Ear) where Mark van Schaick used to be chief editor. This review is written by the current chief editor and even though it might not seem a glowing review at all, reading between the lines as a fan still gives me hope for this album and makes me want to hear it even more. I did my best to translate from Dutch to English.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We had to wait for almost seven years: a new Pearl Jam album. The first forward-rushed music from Gigaton was hopeful: the funky Dance of the Clairvoyants was a Talking Heads pastiche, but a good one. Refreshing and daring. Atypical Pearl Jam, that's for sure. The second one was called Superblood Wolfmoon and turned out to be a rather obligatory rocker. Could it be still business as usual, this album? OOR's most hardened Pearl Jam-watcher was allowed to listen to it a few times and didn't get very cheerful in advance. Gigaton, track by track.

Who Ever Said

Yep, they did it before, on Vitalogy (1994), Binaural (2000) and Backspacer (2009) among other things: flying out of the starting blocks with two hard, unavoidable rock songs. Enter as entering is intended. It worked well at the time, but now? Who Ever Said sounds mainly rude and conventional. And lasts, with five minutes, far too long. I'm not a producer (like Josh Evans, the man responsible for Gigaton), but I would have said after two and a half minutes, the moment the band switches back: up to here and no further, boys. Then Who Ever Said would have been a powerful, concise opening statement instead of a song that with its time tricks - another half chorus, another piece of guitar solo, gas back on, and at last but not least a teasing sprint - shows just a little too much that the band clearly did not know how to put an end to it. But hey, "All the answers will be found in the mistakes that we have made '.
 
Superblood Wolfmoon

Throbbing entry number 2. Obligate and vulgar, with its almost anachronistic stomping drums. Or am I used to this kind of music? I haven't listened to the Foo Fighters for a decade either. Yet. Pearl Jam could be better. Eddie Vedder sounds rushed and angry, almost tripping over his words. There is not much more to say about it, because just like opener Who Ever Said, Superblood Wolfmoon does not contain a melodic hook with which you walk around with the rest of the day.

Dance Of The Clairvoyants

Pearl Jam goes Talking Heads, everyone agrees. The sum is therefore quickly made. Funky drums, scraping guitar line, pushing bass and - as a finishing touch - Vedder who sings exactly like David Byrne: the dictation, the high strings, the staccato sung couplets, the choirs, the crossing chants in the end. Pearl Jam may not sound like itself for a second, but Dance of the Clairvoyants is an (early) highlight on Gigaton.

Quick Escape

And yes, they continue in funk mode. But then slower, harder and more compelling. First associations: Rage Against The Machine and its afterbirth, Audioslave. A great foundation for the - literal - trip by Eddie Vedder. "First we took an airplane and a boat to Zanzibar." Exactly, the place of birth of Freddie Mercury, who gets a name check just like Queen. And on. To Morocco. And whoever is old-fashioned on the road, of course has 'a sleep sack, a bivouac and a Kerouac sense of time' at hand. The choir towards the chorus ('Heyheyhey hooooo') is worth gold, the chorus itself no less. After a a minute or two, Quick Escape lets go of the highway and the whole thing gets off the ground. Great moment, topped with - didn't we talk about it just now
RATM? - a genuine Tom Morello guitar moment. Spoiler alert: best number of the record.

Alright

The much needed rest. After a calm ambient-like intro, the dark brown voice of Vedder comes in, for everyone who feels addressed to provide courage in an unctuous way. Drums beat the beat, the rocking music is nicely coloured. The message: it's okay. Okay sometimes to be alone, just to listen to your heartbeat, to have secrets, things to keep to yourself, to say no, to escape from everything, to ignore the rules, to be disappointed in yourself. New opportunities tomorrow. Typical a song that is alright, we say today. And we don't always mean that cynically.
 
Seven O'Clock

Derived from a jam session and you can hear that. The band uses a Pink Floyd-like groove and Vedder starts a long and Springsteen-like compelling story (`Seven o'clock in the morning, got a message from afar ... '). It is just a pity that a cheesy chorus had to be made to fit in.
Also a shame: just like opener Who Ever Said, the song is eventually killed by its length (more than six minutes). The last minutes go on with totally unnecessary vocal masterpieces, in which the orchestral music goes along as if it should. Falsetto here, Bono-like swipe there, lots of bombast and completely over the top at the end. Seven O'Clock? Time for a Cup-a-soup, Eddie.
 
Never Destination

And again the men go on the mature rock tour. Nice up tempo, that is, and sometimes it almost rubs against classical American punk rock, but mostly here they sound like The Replacements on an uninspired day.
 
Take The Long Way

How do you recognise (usually) a song written by the drummer? Exactly, by the awkward time signature. Making a scent trail. Matt Cameron establish the foundation of the nicely throbbing hard rocker Take The Long Way on a seven-quart measure, but that does not undermine the song anywhere. In fact, a better chorus ('I always take the long way - that leads me back to you ') cannot be found all over Gigaton. The surprising final piece is also so strong (and different from the foregoing) that a smart songwriter would have based a completely new song on it. But drummers are probably not by definition smart songwriters (come on in, Phil Collins fan club).

Buckle Up

Seat belts tight? Well, no. After Cameron, guitarist Stone Gossard was also allowed to lay an egg and it became an elegant and wafer-thin pop shuffle, in which Pearl Jam suddenly sounds very British: Keane, Coldplay, Elbow, they are never far away. With a well-stocked festival meadow in the vicinity, this could grow to be a weak and just as easy sing along.
 
Comes Then Goes

Vedder in Into The Wild mode: solo with acoustic guitar. Also tends to be too long (more than six minutes), but the bearing melody is strong and you want gradually to know more about the theme: is the main figure lost, disoriented, is there more going on, and who and where is the other? The sentences are beautiful and stimulating. 'High or low, where you go / Are you stuck in the middle of spectral and visible ghosts? (...) Don't know where or when one of us left the other behind. " But 'the kids are alright', it sounds with a sense of rock & roll history. Fortunately.
 
Retrograde

Reportedly two years old, this R.E.M.-like ballad. The decor is wide: clouds, rain and the seven seas. Too bad the whole thing after three and one half a minute - normally a good time to close a song - still has to be lifted to Great Heights through a swelling soundscape, including a Vedder soaked in reverberation. Exaggeration is also a profession.
 
River cross

Many fans will know this: Vedder played it during his solo shows, even if we had to guess the title - Share The Light?. So, River Cross, carried by the same old pump organ as Vedder played it live. Along with the other two funk tracks, clearly the Other Sound on Gigaton. A solemn, worn, combative ballad that recalls Peter Gabriels Biko. A bit pompous again, but the live audience will soon enjoy it: lighter app up, fists in the air, tears in the corners of the eye and then just join in. "Let it out, shout it out." And don't let it come to an end. "I want this dream to last forever." If there is a moment when the new Pearl Jam comes close to its title ("Unity of energy that released with an explosion of hydrogen bombs and other very energetic events') it is here, at the end of River Cross.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------