Lightning Bolt: The Official Album Thread

[stip]

They did post an incomplete recording of eds set from portugal on the anonymouse page

I was just hoping we could get a live cover of imagine

[Norah]

fuck the dot net

[stip]

what type of pearl jam fan are you, chud?

[Lament]

fuck the dot net

Let's go to war against them.

[ABNorman]

fuck the dot net

Let's go to war against them.

Who's 4chan and who's JLaw?

[Norah]

fuck the dot net

Let's go to war against them.

We already have, and we've already won.

[Norah]

what type of pearl jam fan are you, chud?

One that can count past five.

[Lament]

fuck the dot net

Let's go to war against them.

Who's 4chan and who's JLaw?

WE ARE ALWAYS JLAW.

[Lament]

what type of pearl jam fan are you, chud?

One that can count past five.

Once Pearl Jam writes a song where you have to count up to six on your hand to fit in at a show, you're gonna have a lot more company in that elite group.

[ABNorman]

Lightning Bolt rankings one year out:

I'm at:
4.5: Sirens, Pendulum
4: Lightning Bolt, Sleeping by Myself
3.5: Getaway, MYM, MFS, Infallible, Future Days
3: Swallowed Whole
2: LTRP, Yellow Moon

I still would've preferred a bigger step from Backspacer, but this is the best for me since Binaural.

[epilogue]

Lightning Bolt rankings one year out:

1. Infallible 5/5
2. Yellow Moon 5/5
3. Pendulum 5/5
4. Mind Your Manners 4.5/5
5. Sirens 4/5
6. My Father's Son 4/5
7. Future Days 4/5
8. Sleeping By Myself 3.5/5
9. Let the Records Play 3/5/5
10. Getaway 3/5
11. Lightning Bolt 3/5
12. Swallowed Whole 3/5

[Jorge]

Swallowed Whole
My Father's Son
Sleeping By Myself

(dramatic dropoff; I quite like the above songs but don't much care for any of the following)

Mind Your Manners
Lightning Bolt
Pendulum
Getaway
Yellow Moon
Sirens
Let the Records Play
Future Days
Infallible

[Norah]

Swallowed Whole
My Father's Son
Sleeping By Myself

(dramatic dropoff; I quite like the above songs but don't much care for any of the following)

Mind Your Manners
Lightning Bolt
Pendulum
Getaway
Yellow Moon
Sirens
Let the Records Play
Future Days
Infallible

I'd swap MFS and SBM; and then Pendulum and LB, but other than that this is probably the same list I'd come up with.

[epilogue]

Pfffffft. Ya'all, Infallible is soooooo goooooooood.

[Jorge]

Ya'all

wtf is this?

[epilogue]

Ya'all

wtf is this?

Slang, m'ninja.

[Rob]

Yellow Moon is the only one I still love. Infallible, Pendulum and LB would be the next ones under it.

I can't stand Sirens, LTRP and Future Days.

[Kevin Davis]

I've managed to get some mileage out of this recently -- it surely has more to do with seeing them live than with the anniversary, but I've found more pleasure in these songs in the past couple weeks than at any point in the past year (though to be fair, it had pretty much been sitting on my shelf untouched since last December, except for when my wife took it off to rip "Sirens" to her iPod). One thing the "LB" songs gained in concert was the support of stronger songs; even though the album itself has a half dozen or so better than average cuts, I don't know that any of them really feel capable of taking on the responsibilities of the other, weaker tracks, which is a critical characteristic of many great albums. Furthermore, the weaker tracks aren't content to be insignificant -- for instance, "Corduroy" and "Do the Evolution" can shoulder some of the weight of "Bugs" and "The Color Red" because those songs are weighted proportionally to what they're supposed to do. But a song like "Let the Records Play," which in 1999 would have been a 2 minute throwaway on the B-side of a holiday 45, feels on this record like it has aspirations of being a hit single. In fact, every song on this album feels like it has aspirations of being a hit single. Weirdly and counterintuitively, the problem with "LB" ends up being the fact that it has no functional filler (despite the fact that, in another sense, it is composed of nothing but filler).

That said, a lot of my favorite artists have records like this -- records that ultimately do little more than document the latest travails of working performers, and feel more like passive reflections of the artists' states of mind rather than meaningful products of expression. When I look at my library of Dylan or Neil Young or Miles Davis CD's, I see a handful of great albums, a lot of pretty good ones, and probably a dozen or so whose existences I couldn't articulate a reason for, apart from the fact that they were created by someone whose job it is to make records. Sometimes these records end up being underdog fan favorites; sometimes they end up being the interesting, curious failures that litter the paths of many long-term career artists; sometimes they simply suck. Usually they end up being peripheral collection enhancers that you get an inexplicable itch to throw on once every two years, at which you point you find yourself pleasantly surprised by the few things about the album you like, find one or two things you missed before, and are unbothered by the remainder of things which don't move you one way or another. This is kind of the experience I've enjoyed with this album recently -- I'd managed to forget how much I enjoyed "My Father's Son," "Swallowed Whole," "Infallible," and "Sleeping By Myself"; "Pendulum" and "Lightning Bolt" have risen in my estimation after hearing them live; the fact that I grew up on '80's metal is a sort of natural vaccination for "Sirens," which is nice because there is a well-composed if workmanlike ballad under the sheen of the production; "Yellow Moon" is duller than I recall -- I maintain it would be better served by a sparser arrangement. The remaining four songs are all probably in my bottom ten Pearl Jam songs. Oh well. B minus effort overall.

[VinylGuy]

Its not on heavy rotation...i kinda forgot about it. Its a cool album but i need to listen to it again to see what happens.
I do love mind your manners, fathers son and yellow moon.

[McParadigm]

I can see what you're saying, Kevin, and even if it's not my experience with the record, it makes sense to me. A very interesting take.

The only thing I'll note is that, with Dylan, Neil Young or Miles Davis...the "it's my job to make a record" moments (good or bad) are bookended by substantial runs of music.

I probably wouldn't be so disappointed in a record that has no music I care to listen to...and I certainly would have liked Backspacer more, since it's not a terrible record...if these didn't each represent the band's only output for long stretches of time. The same is true for the last Tom Waits record. An album in almost complete isolation is an album with no story....an expression of committment surrounded by stretches of sleeping in late and seeing what's on TV. It can certainly work (Amused to Death springs to mind), but most of the time the best it can end up being is just kind of nice to listen to.

And I don't know if it's the lack of surrounding material hurting my impression of the emotional investment, if the lack of investment is causing the lack of creative output, or if the time away from writing songs just makes old ideas feel new to the artist and thus results in safe and boring rehash...but the truth is, you really have to come up with something interesting to keep it going, once music becomes your second-favorite hobby instead of your full-time job. You have to pop up and go "Oh, shit, you guys! Guess what I just thought of! It's pretty incredible!"

And this should not then be followed by, "Hee-uhr the sireh-hens...."

In all likelihood, by the time we get another Pearl Jam record (?) Riot Act will be at least fourteen years old. Fourteen years, during which the band made three records: a yelping 'return to form' that felt uncomfortably desperate and which they never followed through on, a very short and very syrupy transition record with nothing to transition from or to, and the new one....well, you described it better than I.