VinylGuy wrote:Im a huge Jeff solo fan...but that was felt like a letdown for me when it came out. I still need to give it more spins, but its the one i care the least.
As for United...when it came out i felt it was too rock and not groovy enough, and Brad does groove better.
While my heart beats is my second favorite Ament record. I was really impressed with some songs and wished they would be used on a PJ record. Same goes for Heaven/Hell.
I love 'United we Stand' mostly because I saw them on their EU tour then. It was a blast! But it's their worst record. It's even more dad rock than Lightning Bolt.
As part of the epic, huge celebration of 20 years since Ten really, they released a book, a documentary, played a self-curated rock festival, and released this soundtrack to the documentary bearing the PJ20 stamp. The first side is largely composed of full performances of the live song snippets in the documentary, and side B a mix of live songs and demos spanning the band’s career. Based on the nature of this, it plays sort of like the CD bootlegs you can still find from time to time in small record stores that were independently created from audience recordings and leaked demos. The audio quality jumps around but it gives the picture of a band playing - live and in the studio. Of particular note and fascination to me is the run in the second disc that contains the acoustic demo of Given to Fly, Need to Know demo that shows a totally different direction for Matt than what came out on The Fixer, the double shot of Nothing As It Seems, a phenomenal demo followed by the even better finished product live, Indifference that kind of extends that smoky room vibe, and the instrumental Of the Girl, similarly great to hear. Other random highlights include Walk With Me with Neil Young, maybe the definitive late period version of Better Man, and a killer Rearviewmirror. The early stuff is neat but on a song level mostly toss away. Sorry folks. This is one of those compilations that is great to have if only to occasionally revisit. Really impossible to rank per se but it won’t be high on the list because it’s best digested in parts rather than the whole.
That's exactly how I feel about this set. The first disc is fine and the second disc does have some nice demos. But that second disc could have been soo much better. They did presented it as some sort of bootleg. Problem is that any serious PJ collector would have added more interesting stuff here. Disc 2 should have ben demos only. There are still some instrumentals out there. And just can't understand why they included 'Chinese' in the movie (or bonus scenes) and not on this disc. Inexcusable...
It's not even a demo of Given to Fly, it's just a brand new (circa 2010) recording of Mike plunking through the song at high speed on an acoustic guitar- for some reason...?
Birds in Hell wrote:It's not even a demo of Given to Fly, it's just a brand new (circa 2010) recording of Mike plunking through the song at high speed on an acoustic guitar- for some reason...?
Yeah, it's what he does in the movie. Chinese, Wreck or Folk D (Gossard demo), any early instrumentals or sketches like Acoustic #1, more solo demos, anything in between or puzzles and games. All would have been great on disc 2 here... It's already out there anyway, why not make it official...
Jeff Ament and long time collaborator Richard Stuverud are back, this time with Joseph Arthur, for RNDM. This time, it appears that they’ve found a singer and songwriter who most naturally melds with them to create a really great album of material that feels inspired and almost U2-like in spots. Jeff and Richard take Joseph Arthur, who tends to create more subdued material, and push him more into hard rock territory, and Arthur in turn takes the more interesting patterns this duo gets into and makes it wholly digestible. This one and the next one will be all about the strength of the entire album, so no need to go through track by track here really - it’s all really fantastic!
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Pearl Jam - Yield
Pearl Jam - Vs.
Pearl Jam - Ten
Pearl Jam
Stone Gossard - Bayleaf
Neil Young - Mirrorball
Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs
Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild
Brad - Interiors
Temple of the Dog
Pearl Jam - Riot Act
Mad Season - Above
RNDM - Acts
Wellwater Conspiracy - The Scroll and Its Combinations
Brad - Shame
Brad - Best Friends?
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Brad Vs. Satchel
Jeff Ament - While My Heart Beats
Wellwater Conspiracy - Brotherhood of Electric
Wellwater Conspiracy - Declaration of Conformity
Wellwater Conspiracy
Brad - Welcome to Discovery Park
Three Fish
Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs
Pearl Jam - PJ20 Soundtrack
Green River - Rehab Doll
Jeff Ament - Tone
Brad - United We Stand
Green River - Dry As a Bone
Tres Mts. - Three Mountains
Mother Love Bone - Apple
Mother Love Bone - Shine
Green River - Come On Down
Hater
Hater - The 2nd
Three Fish - The Quiet Table
Bad Radio Demos
Green River - 1984 Demos
The Rockfords
Deranged Diction - Life Support / No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules
Eddie Vedder and the Walmer High School Choir - The Molo Sessions
The Rockfords - The Waiting EP
It’s been a few years since I’ve spun this one and I always thought it was a really excellent album, but I was blown to smithereens on this listen. For some reason, quality wise, this had me at 70s Neil Young great - it has a ton of range, and the songs are all really phenomenal. I am ready to put this one above Bayleaf now- in part because it feels a little bit more cohesive and the songs are just as strong if not stronger. Stone might have been slightly gun shy on Bayleaf with his vocal but here he lets his rock nerd flag fly, an acknowledgement that you don’t need an amazing huge voice to make great and interesting music. This nearly eclipsed Ten on this listen and very well might on the next - holy hell I loved this!!
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Pearl Jam - Yield
Pearl Jam - Vs.
Pearl Jam - Ten
Stone Gossard - Moonlander
Pearl Jam
Stone Gossard - Bayleaf
Neil Young - Mirrorball
Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs
Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild
Brad - Interiors
Temple of the Dog
Pearl Jam - Riot Act
Mad Season - Above
RNDM - Acts
Wellwater Conspiracy - The Scroll and Its Combinations
Brad - Shame
Brad - Best Friends?
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Brad Vs. Satchel
Jeff Ament - While My Heart Beats
Wellwater Conspiracy - Brotherhood of Electric
Wellwater Conspiracy - Declaration of Conformity
Wellwater Conspiracy
Brad - Welcome to Discovery Park
Three Fish
Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs
Pearl Jam - PJ20 Soundtrack
Green River - Rehab Doll
Jeff Ament - Tone
Brad - United We Stand
Green River - Dry As a Bone
Tres Mts. - Three Mountains
Mother Love Bone - Apple
Mother Love Bone - Shine
Green River - Come On Down
Hater
Hater - The 2nd
Three Fish - The Quiet Table
Bad Radio Demos
Green River - 1984 Demos
The Rockfords
Deranged Diction - Life Support / No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules
Eddie Vedder and the Walmer High School Choir - The Molo Sessions
The Rockfords - The Waiting EP
I considered the unprecedented move of moving up Bayleaf with it also. They are pretty neck and neck. Moonlander takes it for me on this listen. What’s crazy is that before this journey, I would have told you both are great but I would not rate them as elite albums. But they clocked me this time, and I’m sold. We are only a few years from Stone’s regularly scheduled solo check in. Let’s hope he has another one of these in him.
After what seemed like a long gap, Pearl Jam returned with Lightning Bolt, an album that on a macro level seems to explore mortality, not just as a concept concerning the finite nature of life, but perhaps also on a larger human race level at points. It’s not a bad concept, but the execution here isn’t particularly successful in large part because of a variety of decisions on this album that seemed aimed at making this a Ten for adults or at the least reaching for a more commercial and easy to digest sound. In moments, Backspacer could also be criticized for this, but there’s a *life’s difficult enough, let’s make this as uncomplicated as possible* easiness to Backspacer. Everything is sort of weighed down here as if Pearl Jam was tasked with the chore of sounding like Pearl Jam.
Without pulling punches here, the fault for this seems to lie with a combination of Brendan O’Brien and Eddie Vedder. Vedder is mixed way too high here, and his vocals often either don’t match the music coming out, or morph what could be a great song into something less satisfying. My Father’s Son has a cool bass riff and tons of potential, but in Eddie’s hands it comes across as self-derivative. Sirens has the potential to push into Nothing As It Seems territory, but instead demands to be “the next Black” only with the schmaltz turned way up. Infallible could have touched Tremor Christ territory, but the oversung ballady chorus negates it completely. Sleeping By Myself here seems like a dude laughing at his own joke, while Future Days would have been fine with just Eddie and his acoustic guitar but instead has the Phil Spector like crime of turning up the cheese with over instrumentation.
All that said, this isn’t a terrible album, which is how I am describing it. It needed more work to flesh out the good ideas and a sonic vision that demands more, and an honest voice in the room. I’ll say here that if Stone sang Let the Records Play it would be less derided because it needs his tongue-in-cheek vocal presence akin to Don’t Gimme No Lip or Mankind. I do otherwise enjoy it. Swallowed Whole has a down the middle Pearl Jam meets REM vibe, but I enjoy that as well. Pendulum for me is a legitimately great song. But this is an album otherwise full of solid singles when they could have legged out the double.
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Pearl Jam - Yield
Pearl Jam - Vs.
Pearl Jam - Ten
Stone Gossard - Moonlander
Pearl Jam
Stone Gossard - Bayleaf
Neil Young - Mirrorball
Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs
Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild
Brad - Interiors
Temple of the Dog
Pearl Jam - Riot Act
Mad Season - Above
RNDM - Acts
Wellwater Conspiracy - The Scroll and Its Combinations
Brad - Shame
Brad - Best Friends?
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Brad Vs. Satchel
Jeff Ament - While My Heart Beats
Wellwater Conspiracy - Brotherhood of Electric
Wellwater Conspiracy - Declaration of Conformity
Wellwater Conspiracy
Brad - Welcome to Discovery Park
Three Fish
Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs
Pearl Jam - PJ20 Soundtrack
Green River - Rehab Doll
Jeff Ament - Tone
Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt
Brad - United We Stand
Green River - Dry As a Bone
Tres Mts. - Three Mountains
Mother Love Bone - Apple
Mother Love Bone - Shine
Green River - Come On Down
Hater
Hater - The 2nd
Three Fish - The Quiet Table
Bad Radio Demos
Green River - 1984 Demos
The Rockfords
Deranged Diction - Life Support / No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules
Eddie Vedder and the Walmer High School Choir - The Molo Sessions
The Rockfords - The Waiting EP
Last edited by liebzz on Tue February 08, 2022 11:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I considered the unprecedented move of moving up Bayleaf with it also. They are pretty neck and neck. Moonlander takes it for me on this listen. What’s crazy is that before this journey, I would have told you both are great but I would not rate them as elite albums. But they clocked me this time, and I’m sold. We are only a few years from Stone’s regularly scheduled solo check in. Let’s hope he has another one of these in him.
Love this.
They've each been elite albums for me. But I totally hear you. I think Moonlander is a wonderful record. Please don't think I'm dragging you for ranking it above Bayleaf. That's just a taste thing. They are both glorious.
This album features Matt Cameron and Ben Shepard, and Alain Johannes, so lots of Pacific Northwest talent. The result sounds like what you would expect, a Soundgarden meets QOTSA vibe, but meshing the two for me ultimately made this a mostly forgettable set of songs (with the exception of the instrumental Sketch 9 with Peter Frampton which I really liked). It just seemed like good enough hard rock music without much to take away from it.
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Pearl Jam - Yield
Pearl Jam - Vs.
Pearl Jam - Ten
Stone Gossard - Moonlander
Pearl Jam
Stone Gossard - Bayleaf
Neil Young - Mirrorball
Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs
Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild
Brad - Interiors
Temple of the Dog
Pearl Jam - Riot Act
Mad Season - Above
RNDM - Acts
Wellwater Conspiracy - The Scroll and Its Combinations
Brad - Shame
Brad - Best Friends?
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Brad Vs. Satchel
Jeff Ament - While My Heart Beats
Wellwater Conspiracy - Brotherhood of Electric
Wellwater Conspiracy - Declaration of Conformity
Wellwater Conspiracy
Brad - Welcome to Discovery Park
Three Fish
Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs
Pearl Jam - PJ20 Soundtrack
Green River - Rehab Doll
Jeff Ament - Tone
Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt
Brad - United We Stand
Green River - Dry As a Bone
Tres Mts. - Three Mountains
Mother Love Bone - Apple
Mother Love Bone - Shine
Green River - Come On Down
Hater
Hater - The 2nd
Three Fish - The Quiet Table
Bad Radio Demos
Green River - 1984 Demos
Ten Commandos
The Rockfords
Deranged Diction - Life Support / No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules
Eddie Vedder and the Walmer High School Choir - The Molo Sessions
The Rockfords - The Waiting EP
Ten Commandos should have been so much better. The lead single with Lanegan was great though.
LB...what else can i say about it? Worst PJ album is still at least, a compelling listen. Pendulum, Sirens, Yellow Moon and Fathers Son are all great, with MYM and Getaway being ok. So many half baked songs and the worst production ever makes me be really far from the album.
