Backspacer: Official Album Thread

[stip]

Although I'm perfectly comfortable skipping it so it's not like the fact of its existence has influenced my opinion of Yield. But if I am listening to the whole thing from start to finish that song never fails to piss me off.

[stip]

Just breathe kinda sucks, amongst the waves kinda sucks, supersonic kinda sucks, unthought known kinda sucks. Force of nature I haven't decided upon yet, still. Unthought known seems to be significantly better when live and they jam it out.

4 songs that kinda suck shouldn't mean you just revile the album though (although maybe you don't)

I think an album having even one song I really don't care for is something of a deal-breaker for me; if it isn't a cohesive and enjoyable listening experience all the way through, it's very rarely going to be something I feel like returning to. Pearl Jam haven't managed that since Yield for me.

Red Dot is horrible though.

Red Dot is a cute little curio, it does nothing to disrupt my enjoyment of the record. I don't much care for Low Light but I find it tolerable in context of the album, it's not "train-hurtling-off-the-tracks" bad like the least-enjoyable moments on the last few Pearl Jam albums (or the uneven pacing of Binaural and Riot Act).

it was also a welcomed sign of a band still putting little experiments on records for the sake of it. i'd take an album littered with little moments like this over pseudo grand gestures à la Sirens any day.

I don't see how this comparison makes any sense. They are two totally different things and they've never been mutually exclusive. Red Dot is just a few tracks away from Given to Fly or In Hiding, after all.

[bodysnatcher]

i love Red Dot.



and Hummus.

[Jorge]

MELODY MAKER: Have you been keeping up with what's new?

WAITS: As a father, you don't have much of a choice-- it's curious how you used to seek out music in used record bins, now music just finds you. Seeks you out. And you may fight it kicking and screaming but it always ends up taking over your house and robbing you of precious hours of sleep.

MELODY MAKER: I take it you're not happy with the current scene?

WAITS: There's all sorts of very talented, very clean people making music right now, and getting paid a lot for it. Actually what I've been interested in the most in the last few years has been hip hop music. You know, these are the folk and protest singers of this age. My son-- he's exactly at the right age now to be into rock and roll music, but not Bill Hayley and the Comets. He listens to music that seems to be designed to make parents angry and/or concerned.

MELODY MAKER: Are you concerned?

WAITS: I'm concerned for all these angry young men. They're going to get an ulcer or something. But, honestly, I love Pearl Jam-- you know them, right? Who doesn't? I bet you could do a census in Timbuktu and you'll find at least a thousand people who own Pearl Jam records.

MELODY MAKER: They're back with a vengeance.

WAITS: Where are they back from?

MELODY MAKER: Their last album didn't do very well.

WAITS: Well, people make all sorts of assumptions. They're always in a hurry to say you're back. People keep asking me where I've been the past six years. Well, I was stuck in traffic school. They wouldn't let me graduate. Hand-eye coordination problems have haunted me since I was a child.

MELODY MAKER: So you like "Yield" (Pearl Jam's new album)?

WAITS: I do. I like the drummer, he reminds me of a demented Shelly Manne. The songs are good too. There's a song in there that's just 40 seconds of steel drum and some strange chanting. Right up my alley. Sometimes you get the most propulsive and stimulating and invigorating music from these small outbursts of craziness. You know, I went to see an orchestra play Schubert, and I wanted to leave after they were done tuning up. It was going to be hard to top that.

[stip]

I laughed at 'where are they back from'

[Morris Buttermaker]

It's pretty crazy how they made a concept album about a button on a computer keyboard.

[Norah]

Just breathe kinda sucks, amongst the waves kinda sucks, supersonic kinda sucks, unthought known kinda sucks. Force of nature I haven't decided upon yet, still. Unthought known seems to be significantly better when live and they jam it out.

4 songs that kinda suck shouldn't mean you just revile the album though (although maybe you don't)

I think an album having even one song I really don't care for is something of a deal-breaker for me; if it isn't a cohesive and enjoyable listening experience all the way through, it's very rarely going to be something I feel like returning to. Pearl Jam haven't managed that since Yield for me.

Red Dot is horrible though.

Red Dot is a cute little curio, it does nothing to disrupt my enjoyment of the record. I don't much care for Low Light but I find it tolerable in context of the album, it's not "train-hurtling-off-the-tracks" bad like the least-enjoyable moments on the last few Pearl Jam albums (or the uneven pacing of Binaural and Riot Act).

it was also a welcomed sign of a band still putting little experiments on records for the sake of it. i'd take an album littered with little moments like this over pseudo grand gestures à la Sirens any day.

Team flatch,

[digster]

This is probably the wrong thread for this, but is anyone's enjoyment of Yield actually hindered by Red Dot? It just seems so slight (purposefully so) that it's hard to imagine anyone actually docking points because of it. I'm not really talking about people not liking it, more than it actually hurting the album in their view.

Yeah, it does. I hate the track to begin with and it's like a brick wall after DTE and signals the start of the really uneven pacing in the back half

It's just so small it's surprising to me it could even engender that much feeling. I'd have the same reaction if someone told me Pry To just really screwed up a listen through of Vitalogy for them.

[stip]

It might be totally irrational. But it's still there.

[mastaflatch]

Just breathe kinda sucks, amongst the waves kinda sucks, supersonic kinda sucks, unthought known kinda sucks. Force of nature I haven't decided upon yet, still. Unthought known seems to be significantly better when live and they jam it out.

4 songs that kinda suck shouldn't mean you just revile the album though (although maybe you don't)

I think an album having even one song I really don't care for is something of a deal-breaker for me; if it isn't a cohesive and enjoyable listening experience all the way through, it's very rarely going to be something I feel like returning to. Pearl Jam haven't managed that since Yield for me.

Red Dot is horrible though.

Red Dot is a cute little curio, it does nothing to disrupt my enjoyment of the record. I don't much care for Low Light but I find it tolerable in context of the album, it's not "train-hurtling-off-the-tracks" bad like the least-enjoyable moments on the last few Pearl Jam albums (or the uneven pacing of Binaural and Riot Act).

it was also a welcomed sign of a band still putting little experiments on records for the sake of it. i'd take an album littered with little moments like this over pseudo grand gestures à la Sirens any day.

I don't see how this comparison makes any sense. They are two totally different things and they've never been mutually exclusive. Red Dot is just a few tracks away from Given to Fly or In Hiding, after all.

i have a hard time imagining Yield-era PJ releasing a song like Sirens. i also don't like the link you make between GTF and In Hiding and Sirens.

i mean, there's that strange correlation between when they stopped incorporating funny stuff like Red Dot and when they began to be less interesting to me and it's not because of the funny stuff not being there, it's more about the apparent attitude the band had towards its music.

[Leatherhead]

i have a hard time imagining Yield-era PJ releasing a song like Sirens.

Yield-era PJ released Last Kiss.

[Jorge]

Which is a cover and not really anything like "Sirens".

[stip]

It kinda is, insofar as they are both over the top heart on sleeve anthems, which have always existed alongside songs like red dot

[Norah]

But still, nothing alike.

[hlniv]

i have a hard time imagining Yield Any-era PJ releasing a song like Sirens.

Yield-era PJ released Last Kiss.

Sirens still doesn't register for me as a PJ song. My brain can't process it that way.

Last Kiss fit with some of their other late '90s covers - Leaving Here, Soldier of Love, etc... They had a little early '60's thing going there for a bit. It fit just fine.

Sirens remains baffling to me.

[stip]

Sirens is a good song. A bit obvious, but it rings true.

[Jorge]

Shut up Stip

[hlniv]

Stup up Shit

[stip]

Your hearts are as misshapen and frozen as your avatars

[Strat]

I love Sirens without shame.