Dark Matter: Official Album Thread

[stip]

they said that about avocado at the time as well (the almsost a story). that’s certainly the album with the most narrative

[Ms Harmless]

This album seems to be one of their most thematically consistent lyrically. There are a number of internal lyrical references/callbacks. More than I can think of on any other record. There are also some songs that reference lyrics from past records or lyrics from songs that the song musically sounds like. Or am I overthinking this?

Scared of Fear
…one last setting sun. (Setting Sun)
I’ll give, but I can’t give up (Waiting for Stevie, Got to Give)

React, Respond
It’s better to give, give than to deceive (Got to Give)

Wreckage
Rivers overflowing, drowning all our yesterdays (All Those Yesterdays)

Won’t Tell
The chains in my heart -> The change in my heart (Corduroy)

Upper Hand
Lonely ship on the horizon (Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb – Distant ship, smoke on the horizon)

Waiting for Stevie
You can be told to not give up (Scared of Fear)
You can’t take or give what you got (Got to Give)

Running
Was cleared for, for liftoff / Aborted my takeoff (Invincible from Earthling)

Something Special
If you could see what I see now (Setting Sun)

Got to Give
Stormy seas behind your eyes (The Who - Behind Blue Eyes)
Something’s got to give (Scared of Fear)

Setting Sun
If you could see what I see now (Something Special)
We can become one last setting sun (Scared of Fear)

another callback (callforward?) in Scared of Fear is: 'Hurting yourself, nothing to tell / Your secret is well and safe with me' (Won't Tell)

[Simple Torture]

I hadn’t been to the record store in a while, I popped in today and Dark Matter was $62.

$62!

[mikejasond]

I've listened to the album so many times at this point, and my opinion on the songs has not changed. This album is amazing, and the first album in so long that truly feels like prime Pearl Jam.

But man....the more I listen, the more the production mistakes stand out. I don't think I've ever even noticed production in a negative way on an album until now, so this must be REALLY bad for people that actually notice these things.

The sounds are all off, sometimes its just like a wall of sound where everything is too loud and you can't distinguish the parts well, sometimes Eddie's voice is just too low in the mix for some strange reason, but the foreground instrumentation is just noisy. I don't know why, can we get a Brendan O'Brien remix or something? The ones he did of all the previous albums sound decent. I don't get how they let this be the final product? How could nobody realize this was messed up?

[rick malone]

I think the band is rather hands off with the final product in their last several albums. From Vs. to Self Titled the producer credits listed the producer and Pearl Jam. Starting with Backspacer, Pearl Jam is not given a producer credit.

They seem to look at recording as a chore in the last 15 years or so. Just hand off the songs to someone else to put the finishing touch on them.

[rick malone]

Checking Wikipedia, Ten also has Pearl Jam as a co producer with Parashar.

[hlniv]

can we get a Brendan O'Brien remix or something? The ones he did of all the previous albums sound decent. I don't get how they let this be the final product? How could nobody realize this was messed up?

Oh what short memory the RM message board has these days. Now we've come full circle back to wanting to get BoB to put some fixin' on it ? Trying to bring back fadeouts, toy pianos, and jangly feebly acoustic guitars ? Maybe some lasers?

They seem to look at recording as a chore in the last 15 years or so. Just hand off the songs to someone else to put the finishing touch on them.

BoB put the fixin' on Backspacer sure enough. And he put the fixin' on Lightning Bolt. Personally, I'm glad they found someone else to put the fixin' on the last two. The Gigaton fixin' is superb for any listening, including a highly focused listen. The Dark Matter fixin' is fine for a less than focused listen, in fact, in may even be better for the causal listener than all the other mentioned fixin' attempts. And the good news is, if we want an improved focused listening experience, we can put our own fixin' on the Dark Matter fixin' since it was superbly recorded and mixed with Atmos in mind.

[mikejasond]

can we get a Brendan O'Brien remix or something? The ones he did of all the previous albums sound decent. I don't get how they let this be the final product? How could nobody realize this was messed up?

Oh what short memory the RM message board has these days. Now we've come full circle back to wanting to get BoB to put some fixin' on it ? Trying to bring back fadeouts, toy pianos, and jangly feebly acoustic guitars ? Maybe some lasers?

No, but he remixed the first three albums and those are the Spotify versions, and they sound pretty fine to me - so Im thinking so long as he isn't the primary producer, he should at least be decent at remixing it into something listenable

[RockPusher]

I've been thinking a lot about what makes BS and LB such outliers against the rest of the catalog, seeing as most of us have them ranked at the bottom.

The three things that I've come up with:

1) The atmospherics in the songs tend to default toward schmaltzy piano. These are the "arrangement" moments that Stone is on record a lot lately saying he loves to do (think those twinkles in the Scared of Fear bridge). If you take the cheesy piano moments out of The Fixer and replace them with some off-kilter Stone arranging, I bet that song improves dramatically. Ditto things like the lasers in Lightning Bolt. For some reason, the band let BO'B handle the thing that Stone is really good at for those two albums, and it hurts. Listening to those two albums recently, there's a lot more of that piano cheese than I realized. Piano can be done right (see: any piano moments on Dark Matter). It's the arranging that's the biggest issue.

2) The instrument tracks seem isolated, as if they were each recorded separately in a booth. It's hard for me to describe quantitatively, but even on Gigaton, where the band wasn't always playing in the same room together, there is much more of an open room feel to the recordings. It feels to me like BO'B tried really hard to remove anything that wasn't his idea of a pure tone, and in doing so completely sterilized the recordings. I don't know why he did this, since it wasn't part of his method on previous records.

3) Ed was put front and center above everything. I was reading an old article about Vs., and it referenced how Ed being low in the mix in Animal turned out to be such a good thing. BO'B used to have good instincts, apparently. Not so on these two albums.

[warehouse]

also the songs on those two albums are much worse quality

[Birds in Hell]

Ed was put front and center above everything. I was reading an old article about Vs., and it referenced how Ed being low in the mix in Animal turned out to be such a good thing. BO'B used to have good instincts, apparently. Not so on these two albums.

It's interesting that when Brendan was listening to Dissident during the Beato interview he specifically noted that Ed's vocal now seemed too dark and he would want it to sound much brighter if he were recording it now.

[RockPusher]

also the songs on those two albums are much worse quality

I think this is partially true, but I also think that the raw ideas were probably a lot better than the finished product and that if a better process were applied, there would be some real winners. I think Swallowed Whole and Lightning Bolt could have been something, and Backspacer may have ended up a more worthy successor to Avocado.

[RockPusher]

Ed was put front and center above everything. I was reading an old article about Vs., and it referenced how Ed being low in the mix in Animal turned out to be such a good thing. BO'B used to have good instincts, apparently. Not so on these two albums.

It's interesting that when Brendan was listening to Dissident during the Beato interview he specifically noted that Ed's vocal now seemed too dark and he would want it to sound much brighter if he were recording it now.

I do not like the direction his musical taste has gone. Not one bit.

[stip]

also the songs on those two albums are much worse quality

I think this is partially true, but I also think that the raw ideas were probably a lot better than the finished product and that if a better process were applied, there would be some real winners. I think Swallowed Whole and Lightning Bolt could have been something, and Backspacer may have ended up a more worthy successor to Avocado.

I continue to think that, for the most part, the writing on those albums is generally up to snuff, but the songs were presented in ways that did not do them justice, or they settled for sub-par performances, or they didn't follow ideas through to completion. This was the height of the 'bring in a finished song' era, and it shows. But with more work almost all these songs could have been really good to great. Many still are.

[Jaeti]

Went back and listened to the metal door leak for old time's sake and just came here to mention that for some reason the Upper Hand clip comes before the Won't Tell clip. Everything else is chronological. Weird.

[Ms Harmless]

I've been thinking a lot about what makes BS and LB such outliers against the rest of the catalog, seeing as most of us have them ranked at the bottom.

The three things that I've come up with:

1) The atmospherics in the songs tend to default toward schmaltzy piano. These are the "arrangement" moments that Stone is on record a lot lately saying he loves to do (think those twinkles in the Scared of Fear bridge). If you take the cheesy piano moments out of The Fixer and replace them with some off-kilter Stone arranging, I bet that song improves dramatically. Ditto things like the lasers in Lightning Bolt. For some reason, the band let BO'B handle the thing that Stone is really good at for those two albums, and it hurts. Listening to those two albums recently, there's a lot more of that piano cheese than I realized. Piano can be done right (see: any piano moments on Dark Matter). It's the arranging that's the biggest issue.

2) The instrument tracks seem isolated, as if they were each recorded separately in a booth. It's hard for me to describe quantitatively, but even on Gigaton, where the band wasn't always playing in the same room together, there is much more of an open room feel to the recordings. It feels to me like BO'B tried really hard to remove anything that wasn't his idea of a pure tone, and in doing so completely sterilized the recordings. I don't know why he did this, since it wasn't part of his method on previous records.

3) Ed was put front and center above everything. I was reading an old article about Vs., and it referenced how Ed being low in the mix in Animal turned out to be such a good thing. BO'B used to have good instincts, apparently. Not so on these two albums.

this is spot on imo

[Ms Harmless]

Ed was put front and center above everything. I was reading an old article about Vs., and it referenced how Ed being low in the mix in Animal turned out to be such a good thing. BO'B used to have good instincts, apparently. Not so on these two albums.

It's interesting that when Brendan was listening to Dissident during the Beato interview he specifically noted that Ed's vocal now seemed too dark and he would want it to sound much brighter if he were recording it now.

I do not like the direction his musical taste has gone. Not one bit.

yeah I didn't watch that Brendan Beato thing but reading that made me shudder

[stip]

the guitar sound on the chorus of Scared of Fear. So good

also really love those fills matt plays at the end

incredible song

[mikejasond]

One thing I miss is the old boots how every album sounded even better live - to the point where songs that don't even sound that good on the album become live highlights. Binaural and Self/Titled were both helped a LOT by the live renditions of the songs. Grievance on the album is ok...live it's a monster. That 2006 tour...I'd rather hear a live version of each song in album order than even the studio album. The songs are good on album, it's an album I like, but live wow they take on a new life. What a great tour. And it goes without saying how great they sounded from Ten to Yield.

Listening to the dark matter songs on boots, they sound ok. Some sound good even (Scared of Fear, or React/Respond). Some sound much worse than the album (Wreckage, Got to Give). Few seem to sound BETTER than the album (I can't think of any). Which is especially sad because the production of the album is so lacking that having amazing live versions would have made it perfect.

When did it stop that the live performances were just even better? Was it Backspacer? I haven't listened to much of that tour so I'm not sure I'd know. I wouldn't say the LB songs sounded all that great with some exceptions (Pendulum and LIghtning Bolt...especially the latter which was amazing live, and very elevated). Though some like Sirens were much worse.

[stip]

I don't know - there are songs that are exceptions, but very few pearl jam songs sound unequivocally better live for me. They sound different, they have energy, but they are an all together different beast. Binaural may be the one example where most of the songs are better live for me. But that's certainly an outlier.

The live versions of Dark Matter sound great. Great energy. Great concerts. They don't replace the studio versions for me. But almost no live songs do. They enhance. They recontextualize. Far more successfully than many of the recent tours.