This album still embodies everything I love and loved about Pearl Jam, from the soft to the heavy, from the more traditional to the comparatively less conventional, from the visceral to the poppy, and many shades between. I still find a lot of kindhearted wisdom in the record, and really enjoy the unburdened feel of the sessions -- you can hear a band that really sound like they enjoy playing together, are enjoying a newfound appreciation for each other's talents, and are living in a space of peace that they hadn't experienced before and really haven't since, at least not in this way.
Semi-related: We cleaned out my parents' house a few months ago and I found a bulletin board I had hanging in my room in the late '90's/early 2000's that contained, among other things, tons of PJ crap that I had cut out of magazines, newspapers, etc. around this time. The full page Best Buy ad promoting Yield's release on 2/3/98. An Entertainment Weekly review from 1998 giving Yield a B+, celebrating that it wasn't an electronica record and predicting that "MFC" would make for a good single. A copy of the "All the Rage" Newsweek article that I had photocopied from the library. A picture of the band that I had cropped from Rolling Stone (I think it was from a review of the 2000 Europe bootlegs) along with a caption that read, "We're Still Alive." It definitely sent me rocketing back to that era, which -- like liebzz -- a really fun time to be a fan of the band. Nice to be reminded of stuff like that every once in a while
