Lets Actually Listen to the Album: Backspacer

[Lament]

Well, it'd be silly not to get that edition. I'd better just buy every edition though, just to be on the safe side.

[IlluminEddie]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Anyway, Riot Act was by far the worst album this band ever released. It's such a joke that people here love that album so much. It's terrible... and this is coming from a fan.

Yet, the largest irony... the biggest irony... is RM'ers are starting to move towards acceptance of Backspacer more and more (see this thread post-LB)... and hatred of LB more and more (see recent album threads). This is typical hipster behavior...

Out with the new, in with the old.

[malice]

hipster is quite the buzzword, i hear

[IlluminEd Sr.]

GET THE FUCK BACK INTO BED YOU LITTLE SHIT.

That's it. No more cereal with sugar in it for you. You've proven you can't handle it. We'll revisit this topic when you turn fourteen. I'm so disappointed.

[malice]

fail

[Birds in Hell]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Yes, if music history has taught us anything, it's the undeniable link between musical merit and sales figures...

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Anyway, Riot Act was by far the worst album this band ever released. It's such a joke that people here love that album so much. It's terrible... and this is coming from a fan.

[mastaflatch]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Anyway, Riot Act was by far the worst album this band ever released. It's such a joke that people here love that album so much. It's terrible... and this is coming from a fan.

Riot Act is not a good album.

[Jorge]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Anyway, Riot Act was by far the worst album this band ever released. It's such a joke that people here love that album so much. It's terrible... and this is coming from a fan.

Riot Act is not a good album.

Fuck off

[Birds in Hell]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Anyway, Riot Act was by far the worst album this band ever released. It's such a joke that people here love that album so much. It's terrible... and this is coming from a fan.

Riot Act is not a good album.

I kind of agree but it's still dramatically better than Backspacer.

[darthvedder81]

In terms of weak PJ Riot Act and LB are both close to being tied for me. I give RA a slight edge since it feels like a complete album and while it has some weird detours (Help Help, Bushleaguer) it has an interesting vibe different from anything else in the catalogue. A lot of LB feels like "been there done that" to me and it's the first time I've ever felt that about a Pearl Jam record. If PJ wants to rip themselves off do it by copying Vs/Vitalogy/Yield not your previous album (and I like Backspacer).

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

Riot Act was the last album PJ made that wasn't mostly filler. It's not as strong as Binaural, but much better than anything after.

[VinylGuy]

I feel the exact opposite with RA.

[harmless]

"And This Is Coming From A Fan"

The new Pearl Jam biographical work charting the years between 2006 and the present.

[mastaflatch]

Backspacer is undoubtedly the band's best album since Yield. This isn't just one person's opinion, it's the majority opinion. Look at sales, RM hipsters.

Anyway, Riot Act was by far the worst album this band ever released. It's such a joke that people here love that album so much. It's terrible... and this is coming from a fan.

Riot Act is not a good album.

Fuck off

i rest my case - it probably shines besides subsequent PJ albums, we probably rank it higher than we should because we're PJ fans and aware of the drama behind its inception but it's very patchy and while i like it when Ed's more subdued, you have to have songs that fit that approach and that's one of the biggest reason why it's not a good PJ album, let alone a good album amongst good albums.
i really don't like Backspacer but it was successful at being their most cohesive output since Yield, meaning that the album feels thought out, it sounds like they were reaching for something (poppy, short songs with big hooks - for PJ - and incorporating Eddie's solo songs, cashing in on ITW's recent acclaim). too bad most songs felt hollow and disposable.

[Jorge]

You can't say "I rest my case" and then go on to defend your case further!

[mastaflatch]

You can't say "I rest my case" and then go on to defend your case further!

i said it prophetically. now it's resting.

[Norah]

i (will) rest my case (at some point)

[McParadigm]

My case has will to be rested.

I know Ed said some things at the time about singing differently to try and reach more middle aged voters who don't want to listen to yelling, and that's pretty misguided logic if it's actually what he thought. But I see that record more as the result of Binaural being (in the band's eyes) a failed effort, and the band being directionless and not totally certain they wanted to be there anymore. For a record that they wanted to believe was political, it sure is ambivalent about what it actually wants the future to be. It doesn't really sound like it plans on sticking around, anyway.

In that regard it's actually grimmer than Vitalogy, because that record confronted everything head on and intellectualized or turned a lot of its problems into creative fuel. Vitalogy is the one that wants to change the world, because Vitalogy is all about living. Riot Act reminds me more of when someone is actually serious about ending it all. They feel a little eased by that decision ("I won't live forever" gets one of the most at-peace sounding deliveries on the whole record), they go about taking care of some affairs they think need to be dealt with first (doing what they can to help that friend with the big problem, making attempts at getting right with whatever higher power or ideals they adhere to), and they get a sudden urge towards "outside looking in" philosophical reflection. And they never, ever tell you that it's coming, because you only tell if some part of you still wants help.

As far as the singing thing, I just don't know. I only know that I think it fits the record perfectly.

He'd toyed with his upper register more and more during the preceding records, so it might have been a happenstance rediscovery of sorts. It might have been an attempt to figure out a way to age gracefully (in which case, lesson totally not learned I guess). Maybe he'd been thinking a bit about how Jim Morrison (truly a man to be aped, if ever there was one...) just affected the basic finger-snapping croon of the Frank Sinatras of the world, and how that delivery had been given multidimensional new perspective by the swirling mysticism of the Doors music. Maybe he thought he was getting some of that.

But I also think that the perception of the record would be a lot less nose-wrinkled if they had named it something else. If it had come out with those hunched over skeletons on the front and the title I Am Mine slapped across the bottom, then the somber mood, sparse production, and opening track would have all felt exactly right from the first listen, because you would have been coming at it from a completely different assumptive point than "Riot Act" gave you.

I Am Mine. As in, not yours anymore. As in, Let it Be. Goodbye.

[Norah]

McParadigm understands Riot Act better than anyone alive today.