10th album rumors and speculation

[stip]

not to argue with coffee speculation, but EVERY pearl jam album has several short, 'crackling' songs on them (except maybe Ten). All this tells us is this album could sound like Vs, Vitalogy, No Code, Yield, Binaural, Riot Act, S/T, or Backspacer. Or something entirely new.

That one is a single is strictly a decision about what impression you want to lead with. It says nothing about the album.

Now if you hear mind your manners and it does sound like Ole then it makes more sense to start to speculate on how indicative of the entire album (or at least the sound of it) the song is. Speeno's point will still be accurate, but you've got something to go on.

[Monkey_Driven]

Is crackling slang for anything in Australia?

[broken iris]

I guess the question is what do they consider a Pearl Jam fan.

well many of the people who post regularly here don't actually seem to like pearl jam very much anymore.

I guess I would fall into this camp - I really don't like the last two albums. However that doesn't diminish my love for the previous 7 albums or take away from what Pearl Jam's music means to me. I still consider myself a Pearl Jam fan.

The lack of touring isn't helping either.

[stip]

so far everyone who has heard something from the album has said they really liked what they heard. That's a good thing. On the other hand these are all friends of the band, so take it with a grain of salt.

we've gone through several hundred pages of anxious and dispirited speculation knowing precisely nothing. Just think--in a few weeks we'll actually have MUSIC to be anxious about. Hang in there!

[stip]

I don't know. They still need to be artists first and foremost. Stop writing music to keep them current or to try and grab attention of new fans. The % of people who hear a new pearl jam song that actually stick around long enough to become a fan that dives into their music is probably not substantial enough for that route of making music worthwhile.

Spot on here, chief. The "album" culture of the old music industry died with Tower Records and for studio music to be a commercial success, you need a catchy clear channel friendly lead single. That just isn't 50 year old white guys still rocking the Chucks and occasional flannels, and the will.I.am-based mainstream audiences will not connect with them, even if they have modest success like with Just Breathe. The style of writing just frustrates their hardcore fans precisely because they did the opposite for so long and we end up with 200 pages of cynicism and sarcasm disguised as 'rumors and speculation'.

The assumption (once again) that you're making is that Backspacer was a crass cash grab or mid life crisis attempt to be popular.


Backspacer was a challenging record, for people who wanted challenging music. Challenging does not mean complex (although it can). Something is challenging (in this context) if it plays against type or expectations--if it forces the listener to engage the music in a different way. Backspacer did that. They took the optimism, even innocence, that was underneath almost everything they've ever written, and decided to punch it up to the fore of the music, for the first time making something implicit explicit. In that way it is far more of an outlier in their catalog than 'challenging' albums like Binaural or Riot Act.

It is a mostly upbeat album, but it was written in an upbeat time. Pearl Jam's 2000s output was profoundly shaped and influenced by the domestic politics of that era. Backspacer reflects the naive and innocent assumption that by electing Barack Obama all the baggage of the last 30 years will disappear. The music reflects that.

If you think the songs suck then they suck. Something can be challenging and not be good. Just about every Pearl Jam album has songs that miss the mark in some way--some more than others. But they're not pandering.

[EJ]

They really botched up Speed of Sound. Really shouldn't have been modified to fit into the album's "sound." A shame, really.

[evenslow]

I'm with everything stip said over the last few pages. Thanks for doing yeoman's work. I'm tired.

[stip]

I listened to backspacer driving home from work this morning (it's a great hot day record), and that's a good example of a failed 'challenge'. They tried to do something pretty new for them with what would have otherwise been a good but hardly groundbreaking pearl jam song. I don't think the studio version is fully successful (although I've warmed to it over the years), but it was an attempt at something genuinely new.

[evenslow]

My one bit of speculation - I'm interested that they used Spin the Black Circle as a reference point. That's about as hardcore as Pearl Jam gets, suggesting it's more like Comatose than WWS. Also, there was nothing like STBC on Backspacer. So there's that.

[McParadigm]

I guess the question is what do they consider a Pearl Jam fan.

well many of the people who post regularly here don't actually seem to like pearl jam very much anymore.

I guess I would fall into this camp - I really don't like the last two albums. However that doesn't diminish my love for the previous 7 albums or take away from what Pearl Jam's music means to me. I still consider myself a Pearl Jam fan.

I don't mind either of the last two albums, really, although they never meant as much to me as earlier works did upon arrival.

I can't speak for anybody else, but with Vitalogy Pearl Jam marked the first time that music became something more than just a reasonably-sized and ordinary part of my life. Suddenly, sound was the most important thing going...it was a part of how I defined myself. Through the No Code and Yield years, they continued to open my previously-incurious ears to what music could do and, along the way, introduced me to a lot of acts I might otherwise never have bothered with or even heard of.

Then, the process sort of started to work against them. Around the turn of the century, all these other acts I had been pointed towards or otherwise found (and continued to find) were putting out these amazing records...quite a few of which hit me harder than any Pearl Jam record ever had. And, as this band ultimately began to reduce its aims and lessen its output, I continued getting lost in other things.

Basically, the earlier records have become smaller and smaller parts of my musical world. I'm not really one for nostalgia. And the new ones either feel like retreads of ideas I've already put behind me, or like typical middle aged rocker stuff: artistically directionless commercial pandering. Not bad records at all, if you ask me...just insignificant ones.

Mostly, I don't have anything of note invested in this band anymore, but this is the only message board I've frequented in the last ten years, and I enjoy it here. There's an internal culture and oddness about this place that other boards I've seen lack. Additionally, I think a lot of Pearl Jam fans ended up exploring the same musical paths I did. Thank the band for that. It makes for a shared vocabulary that can be useful.

But there is always that little part of you that kind of wishes you could fall in love for the first time, again. So while I'm no longer invested in the music that is, or perhaps was, I can't help but find myself forever fantasizing about the music that could be...hoping that the next step will be the one that surprises me, the one that makes it all really matter again.

[dimejinky99]

I see this going two ways simultaneously over the next few weeks(and hundred or so pages)

We could just let pearl jam be pearl jam.

Or

We beg someone to save them from themselves.

The latter will win out here no doubt:)

[Dr. Van Nostrand]

They really botched up Speed of Sound. Really shouldn't have been modified to fit into the album's "sound." A shame, really.

i will agree, i finally listened to the demo version yesterday, and it is a pretty good song, but its really bad on the album, though my opinion on a song could and has changed many times through the years

[Jorge]

Backspacer was a challenging record, for people who wanted challenging music. Challenging does not mean complex (although it can). Something is challenging (in this context) if it plays against type or expectations--if it forces the listener to engage the music in a different way. Backspacer did that. They took the optimism, even innocence, that was underneath almost everything they've ever written, and decided to punch it up to the fore of the music, for the first time making something implicit explicit. In that way it is far more of an outlier in their catalog than 'challenging' albums like Binaural or Riot Act.

Stip, I think you're going way overboard in regards to how "challenging" Backspacer is. They didn't release an album's worth of Carly Rae Jepsen singles. It was just a sleeker, more polished album-- but still very much a rock album, and still very much a Pearl Jam album. Also, to Strat's point, band members have stated that they were consciously striving for a hit single with "The Fixer". I'll find the interviews if you want.

[nomorecrackpipes]

Ole is short and cracking.

[broken iris]

The assumption (once again) that you're making is that Backspacer was a crass cash grab

No

or mid life crisis attempt to be popular.

Maybe


or maybe it was a bit of both mixed in with a disconnected and disinterested approach to song writing within the group by making something with mass appeal disguised as artistic evolution. Fuck if I know. And for the record, I think Backspacer is better than Riot Act, but not as good as Avocado.

Backspacer was a challenging record, for people who wanted challenging music. Challenging does not mean complex (although it can). Something is challenging (in this context) if it plays against type or expectations--if it forces the listener to engage the music in a different way. Backspacer did that. They took the optimism, even innocence, that was underneath almost everything they've ever written, and decided to punch it up to the fore of the music, for the first time making something implicit explicit. In that way it is far more of an outlier in their catalog than 'challenging' albums like Binaural or Riot Act.

I don't disagree with you here, and based on your excellent front pages posts your ability to analyze the lyrics and music far exceeds my own, but I don't see what you have described as challenging. I see it as lazy, or maybe more accurately striving to just achieve a "meets expectations" level of work. Like a kid who has already been accepted to her first choice college and stopped doing homework knowing she needs nothing more than D. Pearl Jam has an amazing ability to take the anthems and optimism of arena rock and merge it with the more introspective and personal emotions of 90's area complaint-rock (yes, I think they still have it, Ole be damned). Backspacer feels like they didn't want to bother will all that and made a record by committee. It pains me a bit to say that because, and I am sure I am in the minority here on this, I prefer the back half of BS to any other side of of a post-Binaural PJ record. But solely in my opinion, even the songs I like lack the depth of their previous work including songs I don't like. That feeling is present, for me, in all of BS.


I remain optimistic about the new album mostly because of that first OTE performance in Dublin 2010. It's a half-song work-in-progress type thing, but it's also aggressive and challenging in a way that they last came close to with Comatose.

[dimejinky99]

It was ground they'd been over a ton of times before and certainly didn't challenge me. They even failed at doing it right.

[dimejinky99]

If this record is another 35 minute long 3 minute song thing, ugh.

[Heathen]

If this record is another 35 minute long 3 minute song thing, ugh.

well if Backspacer was challenging then by doing Backspacer part 2 they're definitely pushing it to avant-garde territory

[dimejinky99]

They're a lot of things but I'd never call them avant garde. God forbid.

[stip]

Backspacer was a challenging record, for people who wanted challenging music. Challenging does not mean complex (although it can). Something is challenging (in this context) if it plays against type or expectations--if it forces the listener to engage the music in a different way. Backspacer did that. They took the optimism, even innocence, that was underneath almost everything they've ever written, and decided to punch it up to the fore of the music, for the first time making something implicit explicit. In that way it is far more of an outlier in their catalog than 'challenging' albums like Binaural or Riot Act.

Stip, I think you're going way overboard in regards to how "challenging" Backspacer is. They didn't release an album's worth of Carly Rae Jepsen singles. It was just a sleeker, more polished album-- but still very much a rock album, and still very much a Pearl Jam album. Also, to Strat's point, band members have stated that they were consciously striving for a hit single with "The Fixer". I'll find the interviews if you want.

No need. I believe you. I'm not sure that invalidates what I'm saying.

And insofar as backspacer being challenging, I do think it played against expectations of what Pearl Jam should sound like but WITHIN the confines of what pearl jam is. In that respect I don't think pearl jam has ever really been challenging (which is fine) compared to bands like U2 or REM that they might consider peers. Pearl Jam has always mapped out nuance within a particular corner of the music globe, rather than pushing any kind of boundaries.