Dark Matter: Official Album Thread

[oneway23]

So, has this thing leaked?

Negative

[Higgs]

I feel a leak might happen soon

Me too, but I've just finished my 4th beer of the sesh, so that's pretty on point.

[Fattie_Vedder]

My sound engineer bro is going to listen to Dark Matter (song) and report back. When I spoke with him, he mentioned an artist his wife represents (she's in PR)- Molly Lewis. That lady can WHISTLE. She's like a theramin. Crazy.

She does some good stuff!

If you enjoy whistling, listen to Andrew Bird. He’ll whistle his way right into your heart.

He also plays violin pretty well! Seen him live- a delight!

Saw him last year and Sam Shepherd from iron and wine opened for him, and they played several songs together. It was super delightful!

[RockPusher]

My sound engineer bro is going to listen to Dark Matter (song) and report back. When I spoke with him, he mentioned an artist his wife represents (she's in PR)- Molly Lewis. That lady can WHISTLE. She's like a theramin. Crazy.

She does some good stuff!

If you enjoy whistling, listen to Andrew Bird. He’ll whistle his way right into your heart.

He also plays violin pretty well! Seen him live- a delight!

Saw him last year and Sam Shepherd from iron and wine opened for him, and they played several songs together. It was super delightful!

Cool man cool

[VinylGuy]

I feel a leak might happen soon

Me too, but I've just finished my 4th beer of the sesh, so that's pretty on point.

did it leaked there?

[Higgs]

I feel a leak might happen soon

Me too, but I've just finished my 4th beer of the sesh, so that's pretty on point.

did it leaked there?

Sorry VG, no dice. I was making a (very poor) joke about having a piss after drinking 4 beers.

But if I find a DM leak you'll be the first to know, promise.

[stip]

he better be, after what you just put him through

[VinylGuy]

I feel a leak might happen soon

Me too, but I've just finished my 4th beer of the sesh, so that's pretty on point.

did it leaked there?

Sorry VG, no dice. I was making a (very poor) joke about having a piss after drinking 4 beers.

But if I find a DM leak you'll be the first to know, promise.

Yeah I got it and the “there” was a lame attempt to see if you pissed yourself


We suck

Produced by Andrew Watt.

[E.H. Ruddock]

And that Kyle Meredith guy said it was Yield meets Backspacer.

Wtf

[Higgs]

I feel a leak might happen soon

Me too, but I've just finished my 4th beer of the sesh, so that's pretty on point.

did it leaked there?

Sorry VG, no dice. I was making a (very poor) joke about having a piss after drinking 4 beers.

But if I find a DM leak you'll be the first to know, promise.

Yeah I got it and the “there” was a lame attempt to see if you pissed yourself


We suck

Produced by Andrew Watt.

Well, that quote pyramid was certainly Something Special, amirite?

[VinylGuy]

I feel a leak might happen soon

Me too, but I've just finished my 4th beer of the sesh, so that's pretty on point.

did it leaked there?

Sorry VG, no dice. I was making a (very poor) joke about having a piss after drinking 4 beers.

But if I find a DM leak you'll be the first to know, promise.

Yeah I got it and the “there” was a lame attempt to see if you pissed yourself


We suck

Produced by Andrew Watt.

Well, that quote pyramid was certainly Something Special, amirite?

Speeeeeciaaaaaaal

[Anders]

It feels like they got Running and Something Special out early, to limit criticism when the album comes out. This way they have already released the fast rocker, and the cheesy ballad. So when everyone hears their usual type of songs on the album, they will be reassured and pleased.

[RockPusher]

Personally, I would like it if Something Special was actually out. I feel like it's going to be a little more interesting than people think, on the whole.

[Ms Harmless]

developmentally disabled adults.

lick my taint

No, I don't think I will.

However, I will apologize for that joke. It was in poor taste.

I appreciate it

[Ms Harmless]

i mean i think i can. when we say we prefer a song live isnt that at least partially what we are doing?

It does, and I'm not saying a good song can't get captured poorly. My point is more in terms of judging how an album succeeds, that thinking about the production seems as important as judging any other decision the band makes in terms of how a song sounds. Whether or not the guitars sound like shit, for example, seems as important (or almost as important) as what the guitar player is actually playing, especially because presumably the musician and/or producer have put thought into both of those things.

I think you can absolutely separate composition from performance, and then composition/performance from production, and all combinations of these -- and all of these things (composition, performance, production) are in and of themselves multi-faceted (i.e. a song can have great lyrics but dull music, excellent singing but a lousy arrangement, great mixing but poor mastering). In the end, an album could conceivably hook (or lose) any given listener with any element of any of these things, rendering all other elements "overlookable," but it's always a matter of degree -- specifically, (a) the degree to which the music succeeds at what it does well, and (b) the degree to which the things it doesn't do well are able to get out of the way.

I have no issues with the concept of looking past production value. I've been doing it my whole life. I've listened to concert recordings made from the audience, tapes recorded by my friends' bands in their basements, lots of '80's shit with unpleasant drum effects, my fair share of lo-fi indie records and absolutely my share of overproduced, oversugared pop and rock music. In any of those situations, could there have been a situation where the mitigating factor was just mitigating enough to turn me off? Absolutely. I have no issues with audience tapes, but it's possible that any given taper may have just been too far back for the music to be audible. I have no problem with recordings made in a basement, but if you put your mic right next to your water heater, it's possible that the environmental elements might push an already tough-to-listen-to recording over the edge. I am confident that I could take anyone's favorite song, dump it into Audacity as a wave file, and make it unlistenable within seconds just by adding compression and limiting. I think everyone has limits for this stuff, whether they recognize it or not. It's just, again, all a matter of degree.

So far, Watt's production on the Dark Matter tracks plays a pretty aggressive tug of war -- even if I approach the songs with the mindset of disregarding the production to see through to the songwriting and performance, it is still there, nipping at my ears, pulling my attention back. To use Stip's spice analogy, trying to ignore Watt's production is not like trying to overlook a slightly off-kilter hint of something; it's like trying to taste subtleties in the meat when he's used 15x the amount of recommended sugar in the sauce. Now, people have different thresholds for sugar, and yes, to some extent you can look past the superficial "sound" of a record to hear through to other things in it, but on the other hand, music is sound -- that's all it is, everything you process about music is based on your hearing of it, and how your ears interpret the presentation of these other things that really only exist conceptually (performance, composition, etc.). Telling someone to ignore that is like telling someone to stop focusing on the taste of the food, but to pay attention to the ingredients in the recipe. It's conceptually possible, but disingenuous to experience.

Well written.

I would add (and this is specific to me but maybe some others see it this way too): the production on DM thus far isn’t offensive enough to overcome my enjoyment of the composition. Further, I guess I am so glad that the guitars are finally loud and aggressive again that it’s more important to me than the amount of undeniable sheen on these babies.

Really - think about this for a second: where were distorted guitars on backspacer and bolt, aside form a few brief instances? Gig did better with WES, SBWM, Never, and TTLW, but still wasn’t what we got back on ten-vit.

I’m hearing instrumentation and effects choices that I be happy about for the first time in a while. Production is not ruining that for me to this point (of course part of producing a record is those very choices so - I suppose I like some elements of the “production” and am not overly put off by others).

I completely second this

[Ms Harmless]

There are distorted guitars all over BS and LB:

GSMF
Got Some
The Fixer
Johnny Guitar
Amongst the Waves
Unthought Known
Supersonic
Force of Nature
Getaway
MYM
My Father’s Song
Sirens (guitar solo)
Lightning Dolt
Infallible
Swallowed Whole
LTRP
Yellow Moon (guitar solo)

Insofar as they weren't entirely acoustic guitars then sure but the electric guitars in most of these songs is not what he's talking about.


Also, you spelled Lightning Bolt wrong. Or that was an incredible burn.

Sorry man but there’s no room for nuance here. Harmonic distortion is a measurable element and it’s clearly present on all those songs. The problem — if there is one — has more to do with his communication around what he’s hearing than it does my interpretation of the word “distortion.”

oh Trag

come on, you know there are levels and extents of distortion; you know that the more distortion you have (no matter how that is produced), the less "clean" and melodic a guitar sound is, the more attack, intensity, "noise" masking the chord; the Dark Matter singles have more of that than any song you've listed here, and even SS has distorted bass, which I don't remember hearing on Backspacer at all, even once

we're not talking about distortion being "off" or "on"

at least one member of Pearl Jam itself has called this album "the heaviest for a while", and you may disagree all you want, but the statement wasn't objectively, "measurably" wrong

[Mike]

It feels like they got Running and Something Special out early, to limit criticism when the album comes out. This way they have already released the fast rocker, and the cheesy ballad. So when everyone hears their usual type of songs on the album, they will be reassured and pleased.

I really want this to be true but when thinking about it a bit more that would imply some wild things. Do you think they knowingly put songs on the record where they think that people will not like them? I don't think they think of Something Special as a cheesy ballad that fans will hate. That would be a baffling marketing strategy and it would be even more baffling putting songs like that on the album in that case.
Or is it a case of "I know hardcore fans will hate this but we really want to have a successful pop song on the record"?

The answer is probably a lot more simple: They love these songs and think the fans will too. Maybe they just chose the most immediate songs as singles. I can't for the life of me imagine someone in Pearl Jam thinks "let's release some of the worst songs as singles so the fans have great songs left on the album". What would they gain from that?

All of that does not imply that these songs MIGHT be the worst on the record. I just don't think that that's on purpose.

[Ms Harmless]

I wouldn't put it past Pearl Jam to include songs at least one of them doesn't like, because that's a collective decision

I also wouldn't put it past them to save their personal favourites for the album listen, because in spite of the PRAMG narrative, they never usually seemed to care about singles being a great one-off statement; that doesn't mean they think the singles are bad

they could've just as easily released songs that show some of the musical range (groove rock, fuzz punk, glam country)

[Mike]

they never usually seemed to care about singles being a great one-off statement

I'm not sure that is still the case since Avocado. World Wide Suicide, The Fixer, Mind Your Manners, DOTC and Dark Matter all feel like statement songs to me and as if they were chosen very deliberately. Or what do you mean by one-off statements?

[Ms Harmless]

they never usually seemed to care about singles being a great one-off statement

I'm not sure that is still the case since Avocado. World Wide Suicide, The Fixer, Mind Your Manners, DOTC and Dark Matter all feel like statement songs to me and as if they were chosen very deliberately. Or what do you mean by one-off statements?

I think DOTC is an outlier there, the others aren't their respective albums' "best" songs imo, but we're playing with completely subjective categories here, and also a slightly archaic one, in "best"

I don't really think "best" is the main concern in these days of our Lord 2024, when the shuffle playlist is king, and (I think) variety, colour, is more important than what we might call "quality"

yes, I think Pearl Jam has tried to follow this trend as much as they cared to, but I have a theory that releasing a variety of sounds is more important to them than releasing singles that will be remembered in isolation for posperity (the "one-off" statement I mentioned)

in this way at least -- again, regardless of the PRAMG narrative -- if true, they would be working within the confines of the integrity they always had; it's a personal opinion (as is all of this) but if "The Fixer" was a one-off statement, it could be argued that it was for all the wrong reasons (and a perhaps knowingly self-sabotaging one)