10th album rumors and speculation

[Strat]

I think we need to discuss "Pj Fans"

so we can figure out how to further speculate on the first single


PJ Fans and and your various stereotypes:

Slightly over weight
Boston and/or Philly locales
Backwards Ball caps
Cargo Shorts
Sweaty
listen to no other music


Now, rank your stereotypes:

1- Sweaty
2- Listen to no other music
3 - Backwards ball caps
4- Boston/Philly bred
5- Cargo shorts

[Norah]

Moderately cretin.

[stip]

aren't these all subsets of Boston/Philly

[Strat]

aren't these all subsets of Boston/Philly

I didnt want to see it since Chud has been known to frequent the board.

[lvc]

I wouldn't listen too much to what a radio personality had to say, personally. He's speaking in superlatives because he wants attention for his station. He's a promotional arm, so he speaks promotion-ese.

And doesn't cracking just mean 'great' in Australian slang? It's just one of those meaningless adjectives that doesn't connect to any specific quality of the object described.

[dimejinky99]

That's exactly what cracking means both in antipodean and Britannic English.

It says nothing really other than it seems to be a rock song that's fairly thumping.

[epilogue]

Yeah, like someone else already mentioned, I think the most telling thing about what this radio person said is the mention of Spin the Black Circle. At least this person was reminded of that while listening to this. That's the only substantial fragment of the thing.

[dimejinky99]

And that's no bad thing really, other than these guys are way too old to be trying to pull that sort of thing, lets be honest.

If they're following a template it's a shame. They really should be mellowing and going deeper into what they're about musically. I don't think songs like STBC are representative of that. Especially not at this point.

[E.H. Ruddock]

[E.H. Ruddock]

jk oops wrong thread lol

[Tuolumne]

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.

A great point and very well articulated. My takeaway is some people around here want the following: atmospheric, expansive, layered rock ( I pessimistically think alot of folks think this means the rock is more valid whereas I don't believe it necessarily should mean that). Preferably of the double album variety. (See how I said "some people"? - I said this to hopefully fend off the obligatory "how do you know what all of us are thinking? we're not all the same" retort). I highly doubt they will get this. I think the common trjectory of older artists in rock history has been to get more complex, sing about about being old and not fitting into the young person's world, etc,etc. Or, the other route, the Aerosmith route, team with the hitmakers of the day and target the "youth" audience. The PJ guys are very clearly to me students of the rock genre. They've studied everyone and they build upon what they like. They are an 'evolutionary' rock band (building upon what has worked well in rock and discarding what has not) versus a 'revolutionary' band (trashing the past and breaking present ground (this they are not as much). As students of all kinds of rock, I think they want to go down the path of building upon what they think works (instead of getting all expansive double-album mature complex on everyone, get simple, be innocent, and retain the joy of making rock music and be able to jump around and rock out to it). I think as a result we got Backspacer. It was a very specific direction, I think. And anything that is sort of focused and streamlined like that is likely going to turn off those who want something different (and who knows they may want to go down the old man expansive rock route at some point). If they take the next step from backspacer, where they really focused on hooks and the tightness of their sound (ie. going into a chorus faster, shortening bridges, go into song build ups faster, up the tempo, and have a short outro, etc), they may try to add a little weirdness to the already hooky streamlined song structures they acheived on BS. For me, that would put them closer to like an early QOTSA sound, which I would be ecstatic about. But all in all, who really knows what we're going to get? I personally like picking an artist and riding with them. After that fact, I'll decide how much I dug the ride or not.

Only thing we can predict for certain is that some people will like the new stuff and some will not.

[digster]

I'm just not seeing what they did on BS as being some sort of "Dylan goes electric" move, thumbing their nose at their most hardcore fans cause nobody's gonna tell them what to do. It's not that big a move (there was plenty of stuff on S/T that pointed towards what Backspacer was going to do), nor do I think they're really taking much of a stand but just trying to make glossier versions of what, overall, sound like PJ songs.

[dimejinky99]

Some people hit the lode in one paragraph where it takes some others pages to find a point.

[harmless]

Some people hit the lode in one paragraph where it takes some others pages to find a point.

I'm assuming you think you've done it in a sentence here?

[tommymtcom]

next step: sentence fragment.

[Heathen]

next step: sentence fragment.

I thought that post above kind of summed it up with:

the Aerosmith route

[evenslow]

Yeah, like someone else already mentioned, I think the most telling thing about what this radio person said is the mention of Spin the Black Circle. At least this person was reminded of that while listening to this. That's the only substantial fragment of the thing.

[warehouse]

who's the radio dj who heard the song?

[@SkitchP]

who's the radio dj who heard the song?

Peter N. Clarke.

[LetMeSleep]

I feel it's important to note that Triple MMM and their DJs are generally idiots. Classic RAWK is the meat and potatoes. Music for the bogans. This endorsement doesn't fill me with excitement.

I hope this album is called Schrodinger's Cat but that wouldn't work once it was released.