Wendy Carlos's Twin wrote:LoathedVermin72 wrote:Nice work. Engaging and insightful. Though I think your brief paragraph on Binaural and RA is off base, and colored by your personal (comparative) dislike of those albums. That part threw me off, as I think it's the one section that doesn't accurately portray the tone of the albums (How is Binaural claustrophobic? I don't hear that at all.).
It's that "positive, uppity Pearl Jam is good Pearl Jam" bullshit that so many fans abide by. I don't buy into that shit at all. It's all about the quality of the songs, and the quality of the songs on the last three albums is mostly garbage. Comparatively, there is not one bad track on "Binaural". And the fact that they left off some of the best songs, is a testament to how good their songwriting really was during this period. For me, "Binaural" is their magnum opus, and that fact that so many fans dismiss it outright, is proof that there is no accounting for taste when it comes to the Pearl Jam community.
Insofar as it is possible, I'd like for this thread to be about the ideas in the songs and how they relate to each other and the album (or fail to do so), rather than 'I like song X and dislike song y'. We have a million threads to do that in. In most of these past threads, if I've been critical of something, it is usually because I think the song fails to do what I think it set out to do, rather than because I dislike it (although that may be why I dislike it).
I don't really like Light Years, or Sleight of Hand. But I tried to keep that out of what I had to say about them in the Binaural thread, and treat with them on their own terms. Hopefully everyone can try to do the same. This will be a more interesting thread if we do.
Sleight of Hand
Although far from my favorite song on this record, Sleight of Hand might be the most important, the most archetypal, the one that cuts right to the heart of what this record is about. The song is cold, lonely, and would be hopeless if it wasn’t so tired. Sleight of Hand is what happens to the character in I’m Open if he forgot to make time to dream for himself, or the character in Small Town without her epiphany that it’s not too late to begin again. Sleight of Hand tells us the story of a man trapped in the same dull, repetitive, dark, monochromatic life devoid of color and light. Whatever hopes, dreams, plans, and ambitions got lost in the daily grind of living—the hours, days, years lost to the commute, the meaningless work, the routines necessary to fill the empty hours. 'He is alive, but feels absolutely nothing, so is he?' You get the sense that this is a character who had spent some time running away from himself, trying to escape who he was and who he is, and he was ultimately too successful. In his struggle for peace, his fear of engagement, his fear of himself, he lost himself—all that’s left is a shell, devoid of substance, meaning. Sleight of Hand is American Beauty without its second chances.
There’s still a tiny spark left—the part of him that remembers who he was, what he wanted out of life, what he was capable of doing. But it is so small, so insignificant. The listener is left with the sense that he might actually have been better off without remembering it. He’d still be empty, but he wouldn’t be haunted in the same way
There is a really powerful ambiguity in the climax of the song. There’s no redemption here. He waves goodbye to the spark—the part of himself that survived in the void that became his life, but we don’t know if this is because he chooses to kill himself or if he just buries the thought because it’s too hard, too painful for him to live with the memory.
The title concept is intriguing too. A sleight of hand is the misdirection involved in magic, pick pocketing, or anything where the subject ‘s focus is elsewhere. While they’re looking at what they think matters, what they think is significant, the agent is acting on him without him realizing it. A victim of sleight of hand has lost their agency and they don’t even know it, or don’t recognize it until it is too late.
The music tells this story perfectly—in some ways even better than the lyrics. While this is a strong lyric (the second verse after the Mondays were made to fall lyric is particularly strong )it is not as solid from top to bottom as I recalled—some of the lines are awkward or confusing, especially in the chorus. We don’t notice or care in part because the sentiment is still clear, but the real star of Sleight of Hand is the soundscape. The delicate, mournful sound of the guitar, the lost, wistful fills, the crazed feedback of the chorus, the uncertainty in the drumming, the distant sadness in Eddie’s voice. Sleight of Hand works best at this elemental level.
The question that remains is whether or not we’re supposed to feel sorry for this person. It certainly seems like we’re supposed to, but Soon Forget undermines quite a bit of that sympathy. That’s an argument for tomorrow, though.
Light Years
As much as I am a booster of the Light Years demo, Light Years fits Binaural better than Puzzles and Games would have, and the things that I think detract from Light Years musically help it fit in on Binaural. This is why thinking about an album is different than thinking about the collection of songs that make it up.
Pearl Jam has dealt with death before this, probably most movingly on Long Road. The music there is simple and beautiful, and even the dramatic swells are peaceful. The song invites us to accept and make our peace with the one thing we cannot change, and it ends (for me) with an image of two people holding hands facing a setting sun, understanding and okay with what is inevitably going to come. Light Years is not that song. We know that primarily from the music. If this was a song about coming to terms with death it would sound very different. There’s something off kilter and discordant, hesitant and resistant, about the music, even as it picks up urgency throughout the song. Eddie’s voice is slightly petulant, like a child (or someone small) railing against what he acknowledges is the basic unfairness of loss. Fitting for this record, the song is cold and isolating rather than warm and inviting, dominated by unfairness and regret rather than a calm, peaceful acceptance.
Lyrically Eddie begins the song shaken—all the things he can do and has done, all the facets of life he's mastered, none of these things are of any use to him in the face of death, they cannot undo the enormity of that kind of permanent loss. The second verse is equally personal, tinged with the regret and guilt that always confronts us with the death of someone we cared about. Did I spend all the time I could with them? Did I get everything out of that relationship I could have? Did I give everything to that person I could have? The answer is always no. It has to be. But knowing the truth of it and feeling the truth of it are two very different things, and where Long Road makes its peace with that tension, the subject of Light Years is (appropriately enough for Binaural) trapped by their guilt, haunted by the time not spent and opportunities lost (he’ll return to these themes a decade later on The End). In Light Years we’re left wondering whether we’ll spend forever in the dark now that we’re deprived of the departed’s light. It’s rare that we fully appreciate how much someone illuminates our life until we have to see things without them.
There are moments of promise in Light Years, just like there was the fleeting hope in Evacuation that worry could be strength with a plan. There’s the plea to make sure you live life now, to make every moment count with the ones that you love, but its advice being given too late, delivered with a plaintive sadness that comes from knowing you’ve missed your chance. It’s followed by the bridge that has its soaring notes and high moments, but the whole thing remains somewhat strangely discordant, almost like it’s too late for this person. Light Years becomes a cautionary tale in the end, the music promising to take us places the singer can’t go (the music elevates Eddie here, rather than Eddie elevating the music or both climbing together) and offering the possibility of salvation and redemption in its warning. One light is extinguished, but not all lights need go out.
As an aside the Light Years/your light made us stars connection is pretty clever (the last time the implications of a title were explored like that in a song was on Tremor Christ). Light years are the distance between stars, the amount of time it takes for light to travel between them. Although we can measure it, it’s a speed, and therefore a distance, that is completely beyond anything we’re capable of. Something that is light years away might as well not even exist, for all practical purposes. At the same time, we discover who we are, what shines best and brightest in us, through our relationships and connections to other people (echoes of Faithful)—we need them discover ourselves. Our own light comes from them. The question becomes whether that light can still illuminate us when the distances between us become impossibly vast.
or we could, you know, just exchange bags of dicks.
