Pearl Jam today vs. the past

[Sgt. Crackpot]

You're goddamn right I chose poorly.

[BurtReynolds]

Is this thread about time travel?

[Sgt. Crackpot]

Instead I'll actually go an have my once a year shag with my wife instead

Why the fuck didn't you do that anyways?

She fell asleep waiting for me.

[Lament]

You and I need to have a talk about priorities, Sarge.

[Sgt. Crackpot]

I hear you, brother.

[LetMeSleep]

We could have waited the 5 minutes.

[stip]

We lost an entire day's worth of posts. Sarge hit the wrong button or something.

You know it was nothing to do with me, man. My anniversary night last night was actually screwed because I evidently wasted my time trying to get it fixed. Now my wife hates me, and you're all a bunch of ungrateful buttholes.

Oh, and the next time anything like this happens, you're all on your own. Instead I'll actually go an have my once a year shag with my wife instead, at least that way I'll enjoy getting fucked.

Just think, B feels like this every day!

[Sgt. Crackpot]

We could have waited the 5 minutes.

5 minutes? You stud.

[Stickman]

just going through some old VHS tapes and came across this:


The ease in which he sang then.

[McParadigm]

One of the things that originally made Frank Sinatra stand out to people of his generation was the fact that he abandoned some of the "singer with a song" flash common to the era and zeroed in on what the lines were saying, emoting then as much as singing them. Relative to the times, mind you.

I think the same can be said for a lot of singers, good or bad, who at some point in their career have stood out as engaging. Dylan's exasperation mixed with sneer on Like a Rolling Stone. Any of Neil or Tom's best moments. Roger Waters's impotent rage on so many songs.

Jagger sometimes grabs it, sometimes sounds like he's mocking it. AC/DC songs always beg for a voice that sounds like it's getting off on life, and they do receive.

And so on over the years...Stipe's best moments. The undercurrent of sincerity that elevates Fear of Music and Yoshimi. Corgan's only saving grace. Daltry and Plant, in my opinion, injured as many songs as they sold, but I love Sam Cooke's gospel work and appreciate later day U2 for the one quality they still share: they both sound like they really, really believe.

Ed used to be fantastic at selling the emotion of each line...but his growing love of vocal catches, hiccups, vowel additions, and masks that "hide" his loss of power have just eviscerated any sense of truth in the songs. It's just a guy with a song he hopes you like, because he likes it when you like his songs (please like them)(please).

One thing stip has right...some of the weaker songwriting tracks on older records, like Off He Goes, if they were brand-new on the new record and done by modern PJ, I'd probably never really grab em at all.

[96583UP]

And so on over the years...Stipe's best moments. The undercurrent of sincerity that elevates Fear of Music and Yoshimi. Corgan's only saving grace. Daltry and Plant, in my opinion, injured as many songs as they sold, but I love Sam Cooke's gospel work and appreciate later day U2 for the one quality they still share: they both sound like they really, really believe.

yes, PJ used to believe. or at least conveyed that, genuinely. the band used to more than make up for its lack of academic-grade instrumental ability with sincerity/passion/depth.

Ed used to be fantastic at selling the emotion of each line...but his growing love of vocal catches, hiccups, vowel additions, and masks that "hide" his loss of power have just eviscerated any sense of truth in the songs. It's just a guy with a song he hopes you like, because he likes it when you like his songs (please like them)(please).

yes, now it does sound like low self-esteem.

some of the weaker songwriting tracks on older records, like Off He Goes, if they were brand-new on the new record and done by modern PJ, I'd probably never really grab em at all.

yes, but likely because of context. Off He Goes was an anomaly at the time. It was proto-solo-Ed. In the current era, the world has been saturated with volumes of his somewhat similar but far lesser quality pouty solo acoustic tripe.

[digster]

I think Ed's voice, at least in the studio, nowadays feels somewhat like scenery-chewing. He's trying to win every single line he's singing with how emotive the moment is. This even shows up in a lot of the solo work. I think it's okay to step back sometimes; what makes a vocal like All or None so powerful is that you know Ed could completely overwhelm it if he chose to. I don't think he needs to take that approach every time, but I'm not sure he does at all these days.

[stip]

I think what you guys are describing is really the crux of the issue with current Pearl Jam. I think the songwriting is still very good, and frequently right below peak levels. But beyond some legit production complaints with S/T and Lightning Bolt the real issue is Ed. How much do you still believe? One of the reasons (probably the biggest) I like the current stuff as much as I do is that I'm still convinced, and that, for all the issues people have with Ed's voice, I prefer how he sounds to the droning performance on riot act, the flattened feel of binaural, the nasal quality to no code, etc. (maybe that's an issue more with the sound then the sincerity but they're related). The climax in the final verse of lightning bolt still transports me somewhere special. The chorus of mind your manners makes me believe. What we have today is far from his best work, but for me his best work was 91-94 so thats nothing new

[Mine]

Ed used to be fantastic at selling the emotion of each line...but his growing love of vocal catches, hiccups, vowel additions, and masks that "hide" his loss of power have just eviscerated any sense of truth in the songs. It's just a guy with a song he hopes you like, because he likes it when you like his songs (please like them)(please).

I'm not so sure he likes the songs that much to begin with, which could be the issue in the 1st place. The rest of the band seems to be much more vocal about their satisfaction with their current output.

You described a lot of ageing singers btw. Aretha Franklin comes to mind. I'm not a fan of melisma or other pseudo acrobatic vocal flourishes. Having said that, i think people exaggerate Ed's use of it to make a point. He's been doing it on Ten extensively so he's not exactly new to it (i don't like it there either). When LB came out the reviews often focused on the vocals as one of the best aspects of the album which i find to be an interesting perspective that isn't as biased as former fans are.

If you want singers of a certain age to "sell the emotion of each line" you need to start with decent enough songs and give them enough freedom to work their ways trough them with their changing voices. Pearl Jam is nowhere near that at this point. It's not like he ruined any song with his delivery. There's no contrast between the music and the vocal approach. The arrangements aren't any more tasteful than his singing is.

[Mine]

I think what you guys are describing is really the crux of the issue with current Pearl Jam. I think the songwriting is still very good, and frequently right below peak levels. But beyond some legit production complaints with S/T and Lightning Bolt the real issue is Ed. How much do you still believe? One of the reasons (probably the biggest) I like the current stuff as much as I do is that I'm still convinced, and that, for all the issues people have with Ed's voice, I prefer how he sounds to the droning performance on riot act, the flattened feel of binaural, the nasal quality to no code, etc. (maybe that's an issue more with the sound then the sincerity but they're related). The climax in the final verse of lightning bolt still transports me somewhere special. The chorus of mind your manners makes me believe. What we have today is far from his best work, but for me his best work was 91-94 so thats nothing new

It's subjective. I think a lot of people respond to certain qualities with vocalist that are often purely stylistic. I think describing a vocal as sincere or emotional is often so subjective to be completely irrelevant. I'd never thought of Ten era Ed vocals as sincere or particularly emotional. He had nowhere near the control to express any emotion in it's complexity. He was over the top all the time and many do perceive this as sincere and emotional. I perceive the "nasal Ed" of Sometimes to be much more sincere and successful at "selling" the emotion of that song precisely because of the subtlety of the performance (and music around it).

If people thought the songwriting was anywhere near peak levels, they wouldn't need Ed to sell it to them. I think you stumbled upon an oxymoron there. Mediocre songs rely on great vocal abilities more than great ones do.

[McParadigm]

But beyond some legit production complaints with S/T and Lightning Bolt the real issue is Ed. How much do you still believe? One of the reasons (probably the biggest) I like the current stuff as much as I do is that I'm still convinced, and that, for all the issues people have with Ed's voice, I prefer how he sounds to the droning performance on riot act, the flattened feel of binaural, the nasal quality to no code, etc.

I can understand that. But like you said, you're describing tonal approaches, which is a separate performance issue. I have no real tonal preference with singers, but I can understand why someone would.

I'm not a fan of melisma or other pseudo acrobatic vocal flourishes. Having said that, i think people exaggerate Ed's use of it to make a point. He's been doing it on Ten extensively so he's not exactly new to it (i don't like it there either).

I'm not talking about histrionics. Those are a separate (if overlapping) topic from vocal catches, hiccups, vowel *additions* (and consonent deletions), and masks.

I think Ed's voice, at least in the studio, nowadays feels somewhat like scenery-chewing. He's trying to win every single line he's singing with how emotive the moment is.

It's possible that he thinks all those catches and vowels are adding to the emotional pull of the song. But it has the opposite effect...it sounds like someone who knows the song is supposed to feel something, but doesn't really get what that might be, so I guess I'll just fake it. He's Shatnering in the worst way, and it creates a really weird disconnect. Sort of like when you follow up "Somehow it is the biggest things that keep on slipping right through our hands," with a jubilant "YEAH YEAH!"

I did, out of curiosity, stream a recent bootleg this morning during my workout. It opened with Infallible, and ironically I really liked the sound of that song so sped up. Probably the first time I've liked it at all. Why? Two reaons: first, because in order to keep up Ed had to drop most of the creeky additions. He sounded sincere. It was a nice change. Second, the sound engineering on the live album is an (alarming) improvement over the studio cut. Oh, and the "I've lost control of my guitar" sputters were kind of cool.

[Alex]

it's not often such insightful, carefully considered analysis targets something so undeserving

[Strat]

Shut up

[McParadigm]

it's not often such insightful, carefully considered analysis targets something so undeserving

http://forums.theskyiscrape.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=518

[Alex]

it's not often such insightful, carefully considered analysis targets something so undeserving

http://forums.theskyiscrape.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=518

well, you're right about the undeserving part, at least