Lightning Bolt: the official album thread

[Acidfuel]

I'm most disturbed by the fact that there are no Matt songs on this album, and I wonder how much O'Brien had to do with that.

"Pearl Jam fans don't like Matt's songs, so let's exclude those."

Makes me furious.

BOB hates Matt.......

[Strat]

I dont like how PJ feel they need to be relevant. Neil young doesnt give a shit. he puts out music as he does and every so often, it will strike a nerve in the media/music listening public. Makes for a far more interesting career. Seems as though BOB is all about "hey man, need a hit to stay relevant, he he he!!"

And most depressing about all that is PJ are in agreement with him.

Sad Face.

There is a reason Binaural is top shelf

[EJ]

that there are no Matt songs on this album

If that's true, I'd guess his involvement with Soundgarden would be the main reason why.

[ABNorman]

I'm most disturbed by the fact that there are no Matt songs on this album, and I wonder how much O'Brien had to do with that.

"Pearl Jam fans don't like Matt's songs, so let's exclude those."

Makes me furious.

I doubt that was the thinking, but generally I'm one of those fans. For a couple of albums I felt like they were squeezing his stuff on to make him feel included or something. I enjoyed his Backspacer contributions though.

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

I wish there were too. Hopefully all the stuff in the interview mentioning changing time signatures and interesting grooves will make up for this. He might've made the songs more rhythmically interesting as an act of rebellion. We can hope. It does sound like he puts a hint of that in MYM, even where it's not even needed (the intro).

Or hopefully we have been misled by O'Brien, and there *is* a Matt song on this album. Perhaps the afore-mentioned "complex" song that has yet to be designated to a writer.

[Waverider]

I am genuinely afraid that I'm going to have to retake my 12 step just because of reading this thread.

[EJ]

Fact:

I'd rather have BoB play piano on a PJ record than Boom, but I'd rather have any other guy in the band play the piano over BoB.

Yep. Ed can play some basic piano. Love his work on Rival. I really don't like the light, airy plonky-plonk BoB has done with them.

[stip]

All good points and questions, stip.

'Producer' = 'Editor' is a very interesting comparison, but because my brain was locked into "sound engineer", someone who just does the job of fiddling with buttons, I didn't see it that way. So thanks for that. I can say without any hesitation that at my stage in my writing career, I welcome a very hands-on editorial approach, as long as it's truly collaborative. Why an older band would do that? I don't know, but I guess they have their reasons for deferring this power and responsibility to someone else. All writers have editors, at whatever stage they're at.

I am hardly at the point where I would say I have the equivalent experience of an 'older band' but I know with my professional writing after a certain point I have no fucking idea what sounds good and what doesn't, what makes sense, what should be included. I'm not sure that changes.

[harmless]

I dont like how PJ feel they need to be relevant. Neil young doesnt give a shit. he puts out music as he does and every so often, it will strike a nerve in the media/music listening public. Makes for a far more interesting career. Seems as though BOB is all about "hey man, need a hit to stay relevant, he he he!!"

And most depressing about all that is PJ are in agreement with him.

Sad Face.

There is a reason Binaural is top shelf

And PJ still aren't relevant. I go out of my house, every single day, and even when the subject of Pearl Jam comes up, nobody gives a fuck.

[stip]

I'm reading some KoL articles ahead of their new album, and while they're not saying much, it's all more interesting and engaging than what PJ are saying. But they are a younger band.

I think pearl jam have always sucked about talking about their actual music.

that's probably true. I wonder why that is.

Because when they were making their best music they were trying to avoid appearing to be greedy by promoting it given their already massive success and now, having never learned, they don't know how to talk about it as their creative spark has dwindled with age?

talking about music is not necessarily the same thing as promoting it though, is it?

[Mine]

I think what the role of a producer is depends on the band 1st. Not every band out there writes all of it's music and this alone makes a huge influence on what the producers job in practice is. In my opinion PJ needs and always needed a producer that is able to bring their visions to a place their skills alone can't but without bastardising their work in the process. I'm talking about arrangements and mixing techniques here for the most part. What i think would work for them in general is, put extremely simply, more going on but still at a relatively subtle level and maybe some interesting extended instrumental parts instead of the "radio edit" approach.

[Norah]

Guys, B'OB isn't doing anything producers don't do on a regular basis. It's just that from an aesthetic standpoint, I don't think he's doing those things very well.

hard to argue with that.


What did you think of Mind Your Manners from a production standpoint (maybe not the best showcase song for that question), especially compared to similar tracks on S/T and Backspacer?

I like the sound better than Backspacer.

[harmless]

All good points and questions, stip.

'Producer' = 'Editor' is a very interesting comparison, but because my brain was locked into "sound engineer", someone who just does the job of fiddling with buttons, I didn't see it that way. So thanks for that. I can say without any hesitation that at my stage in my writing career, I welcome a very hands-on editorial approach, as long as it's truly collaborative. Why an older band would do that? I don't know, but I guess they have their reasons for deferring this power and responsibility to someone else. All writers have editors, at whatever stage they're at.

I am hardly at the point where I would say I have the equivalent experience of an 'older band' but I know with my professional writing after a certain point I have no fucking idea what sounds good and what doesn't, what makes sense, what should be included. I'm not sure that changes.

This is true.

[Mine]

I'm reading some KoL articles ahead of their new album, and while they're not saying much, it's all more interesting and engaging than what PJ are saying. But they are a younger band.

I think pearl jam have always sucked about talking about their actual music.

that's probably true. I wonder why that is.

Because when they were making their best music they were trying to avoid appearing to be greedy by promoting it given their already massive success and now, having never learned, they don't know how to talk about it as their creative spark has dwindled with age?

talking about music is not necessarily the same thing as promoting it though, is it?

in practice it tends to be however

[stip]

I wish there were too. Hopefully all the stuff in the interview mentioning changing time signatures and interesting grooves will make up for this. He might've made the songs more rhythmically interesting as an act of rebellion. We can hope. It does sound like he puts a hint of that in MYM, even where it's not even needed (the intro).

Or hopefully we have been misled by O'Brien, and there *is* a Matt song on this album. Perhaps the afore-mentioned "complex" song that has yet to be designated to a writer.

to be fair, prior to backspacer I didn't care much for his songwriting, but with the drummer especially I am far less concerned about whether or not he wrote songs for other people and far more concerned with whether or not he is doing good stuff on the songs they have. I suspect (and I could be 100% off base with this) that when people bring in song ideas the drummer has more room to play and make a song his own than other people in the band.

[Tuolumne]

I dont like how PJ feel they need to be relevant. Neil young doesnt give a shit. he puts out music as he does and every so often, it will strike a nerve in the media/music listening public. Makes for a far more interesting career. Seems as though BOB is all about "hey man, need a hit to stay relevant, he he he!!"

And most depressing about all that is PJ are in agreement with him.

Sad Face.

There is a reason Binaural is top shelf

I think the Neil Young comparison here is irrelevant and misplaced. He's a SOLO artist. Totally different beast. He can go from Crazy Horse, to Daniel Lanois, to his wife Peggy, to CSN, etc.

A better comparison would be to find a GROUP that's had a 20 plus year career. Also, a group that's had signficant commercial success (where the benchmark of appealing to mass/cult audiences are different). That would be comparable.

If you still really want to compare them to Neil Young, I'd look at the band members individually, and if you look at say, Ed. and combine his PJ output that he wrote himself with ITW and Uke songs, you'd have a fairer comparison to Neil. Solo artists are completely different animals. Apples and oranges.

[harmless]

I'm reading some KoL articles ahead of their new album, and while they're not saying much, it's all more interesting and engaging than what PJ are saying. But they are a younger band.

I think pearl jam have always sucked about talking about their actual music.

that's probably true. I wonder why that is.

Because when they were making their best music they were trying to avoid appearing to be greedy by promoting it given their already massive success and now, having never learned, they don't know how to talk about it as their creative spark has dwindled with age?

talking about music is not necessarily the same thing as promoting it though, is it?

in practice it tends to be however

In papers and magazines, yes it is. Everything you say about a piece of work in a public venue is promotion.

[Acidfuel]

Guys, B'OB isn't doing anything producers don't do on a regular basis. It's just that from an aesthetic standpoint, I don't think he's doing those things very well.

hard to argue with that.


What did you think of Mind Your Manners from a production standpoint (maybe not the best showcase song for that question), especially compared to similar tracks on S/T and Backspacer?

I like the sound better than Backspacer.

MYM sounds awesome.........Im not scared of the fast rock songs........Im scared of the slow ones

[stip]

I'm reading some KoL articles ahead of their new album, and while they're not saying much, it's all more interesting and engaging than what PJ are saying. But they are a younger band.

I think pearl jam have always sucked about talking about their actual music.

that's probably true. I wonder why that is.

Because when they were making their best music they were trying to avoid appearing to be greedy by promoting it given their already massive success and now, having never learned, they don't know how to talk about it as their creative spark has dwindled with age?

talking about music is not necessarily the same thing as promoting it though, is it?

in practice it tends to be however

true.

It's just surprising since this is a band that seems really steeped in music history, is full of very productive artists who do interesting things, and so you think they'd really be able to talk about this stuff.

I wonder if they think talking about their own music is boring or narcissistic.

[stip]

okay, off to class.

Today is a good day for the album to leak. Someone get on that.