Pearl Jam Twenty: Official Album Thread

[Kevin Davis]

I almost never go back to any of this.

Thinking about this…how often do any of us really go back to old albums? I often use language like this as a loose metric for speaking to an album's enduring value, but really, apart from things that are new/new to me, I can't think of many albums at all that I play more than once every 6-12 months, and that would be on the more frequent side; for many other albums, even ones I really really like, 2-5 years is probably more standard. I occasionally read people saying things like, "Three years later and I am still listening to Gigaton once a week," and I can't relate to that at all. I wonder where others fall on this spectrum. How long between listens to an album can you go before the fact that you’re not listening feels like a value judgment? Does it ever?

[Kevin Davis]

Follow up question — if you do have albums that you listen to once every few weeks or whatever, what are they?

This is probably a better discussion for OB.

[stip]

I almost never go back to any of this.

Thinking about this…how often do any of us really go back to old albums? I often use language like this as a loose metric for speaking to an album's enduring value, but really, apart from things that are new/new to me, I can't think of many albums at all that I play more than once every 6-12 months, and that would be on the more frequent side; for many other albums, even ones I really really like, 2-5 years is probably more standard. I occasionally read people saying things like, "Three years later and I am still listening to Gigaton once a week," and I can't relate to that at all. I wonder where others fall on this spectrum. How long between listens to an album can you go before the fact that you’re not listening feels like a value judgment? Does it ever?

After something is no longer new (say more than 3 months), I rarely go back and listen to it in its entirety - even my favorites. My favorite songs will make it into heavy rotation when I listen to those bands, but the album itself, maybe just a handful of times a year, and often with some larger purpose - I am going through a catalog, or I got new headphones and they are an excuse to revisit old favorites.

But I also generally have less space in my life for music than I used to. I'm just not alone during my day as much, and some of the times I would spend listening to music I now listen to podcasts.

[stip]

Hindsight is 20/20, and while there are some gems and cool insights scattered across the decade that began with Lost Dogs and ended with PJ20, it’s clear to me now that they embraced their own legacy much too early, and without enough objectivity.

The HOF circus began a full five years after PJ20, and at that point I felt — and still feel — that their resilience deserved some celebration. Kind of wish they’d otherwise skipped all the “looking back” stuff in favor of 1-2 more albums, and then used HOF to launch a PJ30 retrospective. I’m now at the age where I’m starting to have my own sense of nostalgia for things, and it’s disappointing that there’s no more juice to the PJ squeeze than these paltry 30th anniversary pressings we just got.

Part of me wonders (I think the timing works out) that this all happened during the peak age of their kids being the primary driver of their lives and choices, and so the look back was an easy way to keep Pearl Jam going during that time. Not that things are necessarily different now in terms of output. I guess they're better if there are only 4 years between gigaton and 12

[liebzz]

There are albums I go back to. A lot of them are sort of added to the ever expanding lists of favorites. There aren’t many or probably any I listen to once a week or anything, but every few months, I need a good helping of something on that list, be it one of the Pearl Jam albums or selected albums from My Morning Jacket, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, etc.

Modern examples of albums I typically go back to every few months for a few listens include the most recent War on Drugs album, Goose’s Dripfield, KGLW’s Ice, Death… and Omnium Gatherum.

[VinylGuy]

I really like what they did for PJ20, but i was also very invested on it, as i went to the festival, got the book in USA when it came out, saw the movie twice at the theatre...i remember thinking it was surreal to think i was watching a PJ doc in a full theatre.

Also got the ten club dvd filled with great stuff too.

I believe the book is better than the movie, and that the soundtrack is a very cool and interesting item for fans.

[Hypnos]

Do we have an official unofficial expanded ost?