Lament wrote:Iowaska_Experience wrote:I don't really get the hate for Sirens from the PJ hipsters. Is it really that much different in tone/style than, say, Wishlist, Light Years, or Parachutes?
Some people just don't think it's very good.
And can we please get a moratorium on calling people "hipsters"? It's like the world's catch all accusation to throw towards anyone whose tastes a person wants to belittle for being different from theirs (I'm not singling you out, Iowaska, it gets tossed around here by a lot of different people).
Anyways, I happen to be in the "I don't like Sirens crowd." I don't like the music. I'm not sure what everyone thinks is so great about Ed's vocal take on it; It sounds strained and almost unpleasant to me. The sentiment/message is something I can't relate to at all, and it doesn't do a good job of making me want to feel any empathy for the protagonist in the song. Wishlist is pretty mundane, but I can relate to the simple longing of it, and the sweetness and simplicity of the track make it work for me when I'm in the right mood. The pain and confusion of the protagonist in Light Years pulls me in by my heartstrings and sucks me into his plight. Parachutes has what amounts to some interesting/unique melodic/vocal approaches (by Pearl Jam standards) that transcend my lack of any connection to what the narrator is singing about. Sirens doesn't have a single one of those things for me. Maybe someday I'll feel differently about the sentiment because either a. I'll be able to relate to it or b. Someone will frame it in a way that allows me to at least empathize with it, but short of one of those two things, I don't see myself ever liking this song.
You of course may just never like the song. I know it took a few listens for me to approach it the right way, and to sort of get under my superficial but still real resistance to the song. Actually I think that ESPN bit probably speaks volumes for what's powerful about that song--what it says about how tenuous our happiness is. How fragile, precious, and even arbitrary it can be. And if you're fortunate enough to have something you really wanted to last forever, and then have to confront the reality that you can't, and that you will lose it, that will be very powerful.
The lyrics have some clunky moments. There are places where this song could use an editor. But there are also more than a few moments that really capture that feeling. Its made even more powerful by the fact that Eddie is singing it since for so many people his voice, when it's on, makes the world seem realer, makes true things seem truer. It is taking a powerful emotion and heightening it. In the context of the catalog (this was an insight from the Gleason piece) it is perhaps even more moving because it's being sung by someone you know always wanted to feel this way, and finally does. Contrast it with something like the end of Breath. This is the place he was looking for. How lucky he is that he has it. How unfair that he can't keep it. The scenes of Gleason and his son were a really visceral reminder of this.
Of course this does not necessarily explain the musical choices. I think in some respects the familiarity of the music, the way it is grounded in a style that has a reach that usually goes pretty far beyond what Pearl Jam is reaching for in terms of the target audience and how it aims to touch them, makes a lot of sense for this song. It heightens the message because it is so easy, takes no real steps to alienate, doesn't make you work for anything. It draws attention to the message and meaning, and makes it easy to take in. A more traditional pearl jam format would have made the song more private in a way. Something easier for the more narrow fan community to accept, perhaps, but I think this is a song that aims to reach beyond that.
None of this may make the music any better for you. But Sirens is a song I came to really like despite being quite reluctant to like it. I think this explains both why I do and why I was so reluctant to admit it.
