Pearl Jam (self titled): Official Album Thread

[Ms Harmless]

"Gone" is packed with atmosphere, a really tasteful use of the hammond organ, I always liked it

[Jaeti]

i love how raw and explosive the start of this album is. maybe my favorite 3 song sequence in the catalog.


Especially after how subdued Riot Act (and Binaural to a lesser extent) were. It has always been the sound of the band roaring back to life.


Life Wasted sounds so huge, and Eddie has that desperate energy

I like Life Wasted. Like it a lot. It deserved to be followed by a much better album.

[Jaeti]

I really dig the way the choruses on severed hand drop down into that lower register. and that great staccato guitar part between the the first chorus/second verse.

having said that, Ive never quite liked severed hand as much I think I should. It is fine, but I dont love it. Feels like it should be a little louder/huger, and the outro solo is busy without too much of an emotional core, which Mike’s solos usually have

I used to like it more than I do now. And for a while there I thought I was doing something "wrong" by liking it less and less. Might feel like a weird analogy, but I think I've realized it doesn't "go anywhere" or doesn't "get there" for me in similar way to how Unthought Known has fallen in others' eyes.

Great bridge, though.

[Jaeti]

marker really suffers from being on S/T. Eddie is too scratchy for the song, and the chorus guitars in particular should be a bit cleaner. The songs has all the elements of a soaring classic but its being played in a garage, not a stadium. This could have been an all timer.

the keys at the end work well.

i wish it was captured during yield. or gigaton

I tend to overlook Marker when thinking about very good songs of theirs. It definitely doesn't max out, but when I actually give it a listen I re-realize it's still quite good as it is.

[PHATJ]

i love how raw and explosive the start of this album is. maybe my favorite 3 song sequence in the catalog.


Especially after how subdued Riot Act (and Binaural to a lesser extent) were. It has always been the sound of the band roaring back to life.


Life Wasted sounds so huge, and Eddie has that desperate energy

I like Life Wasted. Like it a lot. It deserved to be followed by a much better album.

Life Wasted is ok, WWS has always been way more annoying than good. Comatose only sounds good to me about once a year. I really can’t understand how these three could be anyone’s favorite run, but to each their own.

[Jaeti]

I would probably hate parachutes if it was a beatles song, but it isnt and I love it.


such a lovely quirky oddity.

the way ‘parachutes have opened now’ floats into the next verse is so good.

but still, as good as it is, not sure rubbing the song down with s/t’s sandpaper production needed to happen. another song that would have been better elsewhere. not sure which album, though

Anyone know anyone who convinced a significant other to make Parachutes their "first dance" song? I tried, put it on my shortlist, but never really got close.

[Jaeti]

unemployable is right down there at the bottom of their studio tracks. I like almost nothing about it. The shiny sound of Eddie’s voice, the pop affectations of the chorus (so much worse here than infallible or ltrp), the surprisingly condescending lyrics. none of it works for me, and the music doesn’t grab me at all.

I kind of like the outro a bit

I never liked this one. I agree that there's almost nothing I like at all until the very end, at which point it's unclear if it's because they do something right for a few seconds, or if it's just because it's over.

[Jaeti]

pearl jam’s dreary acoustic numbers (all or none, thumbing my way, dead man) usually dont work for me. gone fares a little bit better, mostly because the chorus is really catchy and Eddie hadnt really done this kind of clean soaring chorus since Yield- and I do prefer this to In Hiding

yeah, gone is a bit of a pearl jam guilty pleasure. the ‘if nothing is everything’ sequence makes me smile

Gone gets stuck in my head. When it's on, I enjoy singing the chorus and the outro. But I'm never under the impression that it's actually a good song.

[Jaeti]

wasted reprise is easily my favorite of the album interstitial songs.

Agree. That is all.

[stip]

I would probably hate parachutes if it was a beatles song, but it isnt and I love it.


such a lovely quirky oddity.

the way ‘parachutes have opened now’ floats into the next verse is so good.

but still, as good as it is, not sure rubbing the song down with s/t’s sandpaper production needed to happen. another song that would have been better elsewhere. not sure which album, though

Anyone know anyone who convinced a significant other to make Parachutes their "first dance" song? I tried, put it on my shortlist, but never really got close.

I got her to commit to At My Most Beautiful pretty quickly so we never moved into pearl jam territory


Also, thinking about it, I got married a year before S/T came out

[stip]

wasted reprise is easily my favorite of the album interstitial songs.

Agree. That is all.

we are like S/T twins. How do you feel about the first 3 songs

[Jaeti]

the army reserve story is pretty moving and I like the verses, but I have always felt like the chorus belonged to a different song. I wish this was on Binaural. Another case of S/T’s production undermining what is a pretty atmospheric song - or should be.

This is a song I've just always wished had entirely different lyrics. I love the music, I love how Ed sings it, but I've just never been able to really connect with it as a whole. Hard to explain.

[Jaeti]

i love that they wrote a song like Come Back, and quite enjoy it, but this is maybe the song that S/T’s production does the most dirty. It strips the warmth from a series of very engaging performances. you get the sadness, but it is too abrasive to be as lonely as it should be. this song should leave a cozy pocket for you to slide up into, but it never does

intellectually the choices all make sense. the singer is trapped and desperate and hopeless. but the song’s heart gets sacrificed in the name of its head, which does not play to their strengths

still a good song. but could have been great

Love this one.

[PHATJ]

pearl jam’s dreary acoustic numbers (all or none, thumbing my way, dead man) usually dont work for me. gone fares a little bit better, mostly because the chorus is really catchy and Eddie hadnt really done this kind of clean soaring chorus since Yield- and I do prefer this to In Hiding

yeah, gone is a bit of a pearl jam guilty pleasure. the ‘if nothing is everything’ sequence makes me smile

Gone gets stuck in my head. When it's on, I enjoy singing the chorus and the outro. But I'm never under the impression that it's actually a good song.

If you enjoy it, why is it not a good song?

[Jaeti]

what was the last great mike song that was great because of him? it isnt inside job. i actually like the music (more than i remembered. i love my new headphones !), though the song goes on a bit too long and the catharsis isn’t powerful enough to justify the length. and the lyrics (while clearly personal) are too obvious, and this is not a winning vocal melody (though eddie is game)

I enjoy the music here, for sure. The lyrics, yeah, they're there. This is the last of several songs* on this record that I really enjoy musically but have lyrics that don't move me. Were those songs different in some very specific personal way, I might really love this album.

*Those songs are: WWS, Big Wave, Gone, Army Reserve, Inside Job

Across the rest of the album, I consider Life Wasted, Comatose, Marker, Parachutes, Wasted Reprise, and Come Back are all pretty great.

[Jaeti]

i do like the twinkling at the end

That twinkling hit me unusually hard for some reason in my early days with this record, and I still love that it's there.

[Leatherhead]

Is there a way to download the Spotify version? I don't use Spotify and I don't really want to switch over to it whenever I want to listen to this album.

[VinylGuy]

I loooove Life Wasted so much. The energy, the guitars, the bridge!!! and i absolute adore the lyrics. They also got me a few times. And they helped a lot.

Avocado has a special place for me, its a full burst of energy and at the same time it deals with so much stuff. Its a mixed bad, but they really worked hard and it shows. Its such a good album really, i love it.

[Jaeti]

wasted reprise is easily my favorite of the album interstitial songs.

Agree. That is all.

we are like S/T twins. How do you feel about the first 3 songs

I've always been very turned off by WWS because of its title, as well as how it appears as a lyric. Everyone has their own set of "juvenile Ed" lyrics, and for me this is one that just grates.

But even that would bother me less if "worldwide" was at last written as a single word.

I think Life Wasted and Comatose are 4-star songs on their worst days, and sometimes play up. But WWS rockies up the opening run for me.

[VinylGuy]

And i looove Life Wasted's video. I absolutely adore the visuals and the montage.

I loooove the letterman show. I love the fucking amazing epk they did. The fucking awesome AOL sessions.