Eddie Vedder - Earthling

[guitar_davey]

Rose of Jericho is the best heavy rocker since Grievance.

Yes.

[Anders]

Does that include all releases with Pearl Jam members, or just Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder?

What are your top three?

[Tj]

Does that include all releases with Pearl Jam members, or just Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder?

What are your top three?

Everything top three of all time. Maybe Last Exit Evolution and Animal since 2000 Grievance Servered Hand Rose of Jericho, but Good and Evil is right up there.

[Tj]

Fall Out
The Dark
Invincible may be top 3 since Binaural

[Anders]

Does that include all releases with Pearl Jam members, or just Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder?

What are your top three?

Everything top three of all time. Maybe Last Exit Evolution and Animal since 2000 Grievance Servered Hand Rose of Jericho, but Good and Evil is right up there.

Wow, wish I could say the same. Good for you.

[Anders]

Fall Out
The Dark
Invincible

This could be my top three as well. Really good songs.

[Anders]

[SJM]

Rose of Jericho is the best heavy rocker since Grievance.

Yes.

I don’t think these posts are going to age well but to each their own!

Save you
Take the long way
Quick escape
Ghost
Severed hand
Comatose
Mind your manners
Life wasted
My fathers son
WWS

Just off the top of my head. Rose of Jericho is fun for what is is even if it reminds me of two guys kicking each other in the nuts.

[basically_infirmed]

I didn't listen to any of the singles or the live videos or whatever, so Brother the Cloud is still new to me and hooooooo boy.

Also Try is delightful.

[Anders]

Try is cool, but I’m afraid it won’t last. That counts only for that song. It’s so different.

[jgardz]

My apologies if I’ve missed this or it’s in the wrong part, but I just saw that Sirius has been airing the show from the Beacon. Anyone here capture it and be willing to share? I saw that it’s being shared around on the Pit, and since there’s so many loyal Jamily Pit dwellers here I figure it might be around here too. Cheers to anyone who can help

[Anders]

I see the apple music version is lossless, is it better than the spotify-version?

[liebzz]

Try is cool, but I’m afraid it won’t last. That counts only for that song. It’s so different.

You mean we don’t need a whole album of Eddie Vedder playing a punk riff underneath Stevie Wonder going apeshit on harmonica!?

[jgardz]

My apologies if I’ve missed this or it’s in the wrong part, but I just saw that Sirius has been airing the show from the Beacon. Anyone here capture it and be willing to share? I saw that it’s being shared around on the Pit, and since there’s so many loyal Jamily Pit dwellers here I figure it might be around here too. Cheers to anyone who can help

Please note I was being sarcastic about the jamily pit dwellers comment…

[Jaeti]

Whoever mentioned the piano solo in Picture kind of mimicking McCready's Alive solo, I can hear it. Nice little observation.

[Kevin Davis]

Andrew Wottman is not the problem here. He seemed to encourage some fast, fruitful sessions with a bunch of new sonic territory. It’s the mix and master that are trash.

Right out of the gate, the album Earthling reminded me of -- in a really uncanny way, for two records that are so stylistically and sonically dissimilar -- was Beck's Colors. After reading this post and going down the Wikipedia credits rabbit hole, I learned (in a discovery that made me feel way more like a master detective than it should have) that the two albums were mastered by the same dude -- an apparently very well-traveled guy by the name of Randy Merrill, who won Grammys for his work on both Colors and its follow-up Hyperspace (which I've never heard), as well as Taylor Swift's folklore and Adele's 25. The mixing engineer, Serban Ghenea, seems to have his prints on all of these albums as well, though he only mixed select tracks on most of them, and the credits indicate that he's responsible for all of Earthling. Nevertheless, birds of a feather and all that.

After revisiting your extremely useful rundown of these various job titles, the reason these two very different records sound more or less "the same" becomes really clear -- it's the way the aggressively emphasized vocals and the extremely limited (not sure if I'm using the right term here) drum sounds relate to each other, with a square wall of crystalline sonic detritus in the middle, that feel something like these guys' (or at least Merrill's) sonic signature, as distinct across projects as a singer's voice. My ears don't usually latch onto stuff like this, but having this connection confirmed was kind of revelatory to me; it definitely makes me think differently about where certain buttons are being pushed and what decisions are being made at which steps, as well as how much this post-production stuff really does take on a life of its own within the music.

I really enjoy both Earthling and Colors (and folklore, for that matter), so clearly what these guys are putting down doesn't inherently put me off many finished products. However, I expect that might be different in an environment where I come in with a preconceived notion about what the chemistry between five distinct players is supposed to sound like. Without any meaningful framework for, or attachment to, what a musical dialogue between EV, Klinghoffer, Watt, and Chad Smith naturally is (I didn't realize until getting the CD that Hansard and Cheney weren't part of the studio band), my ears just follow whatever cues the presentation tells them to follow, i.e. "hooks hooks and more hooks." While it's a shame that a drummer as good as Chad Smith would be effectively reduced to the role of session hack on any project, I ultimately don't think I'd feel any differently about this record if the drummer actually was a session hack -- it's an EV solo album, he's clearly the focal point, and that's what I'd expect. On a PJ album, regardless of where the music goes stylistically, a presentation style that naturally diminishes the individuality of specific players is going to be up against 25-30 years of intimate familiarity with and connection to how five individual musicians communicate. That's a heavy lift.

All that said, probably my biggest takeaway from Earthling so far is that what I know in regards to what ingredients are going to contribute to an album that I end up liking falls somewhere on the spectrum between "very little" and "jack shit." With what I think is pretty reasonable precedent (i.e. three advance singles I didn't really like, and advance reviews that suggested the rest of the album would be more of the same), I fully expected to hate this record, and I was 100% wrong, this despite the fact that all of the superficial things I feared about it more or less came true. So who knows. Ultimately, I find the more I can separate myself from the, "What does this mean for PJ's next record, how does this compare to different PJ albums, etc." exercises, the more enjoyable Earthling is. Whatever it signifies directionally, it's just a really fun album to listen to; as soon as Eddie starts in with his dumb-assed spaceman banter on "Invincible," I'm smiling and strapped in for the ride. Do I want this same thing from a PJ album? Maybe I do; I don't think I'll know until I hear it.

[Strat]

Matt apparently said "sure, whatever" on Lightning Bolt, so the jury's out imo

Matt recently had an audio clip on Pj Radio and said he loves the sound of of drums on Binaural.

just a side note here.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[psychobain]

I prefer the slow songs
The rock songs sound very generic
Brother the cloud was good

[Anders]

Matt apparently said "sure, whatever" on Lightning Bolt, so the jury's out imo

Matt recently had an audio clip on Pj Radio and said he loves the sound of of drums on Binaural.

just a side note here.

And they do.