Again Today

[Bammer]

that's my point I guess......why do you still get on here then. Just to show your disgust with what pearl jam is doing now? Do these other bands that you claim are light years ahead of pearl jam (which is funny) have websites you can go praise them at? Just want to hate?

10) Emotional Bro

[joostone]

[E.H. Ruddock]

I really like it.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Monkey_Driven]

A relaxed approach yes, but Jesus, Ed's voice is gone.

[VinylGuy]

for a first listen it was alright.

Yeah, not a fan of eddie´s voice here...

[bodysnatcher]

These guys only know one speed now, eh?

[dprival78]

we're in trouble if eddie can't even be made to sound good on a studio reccording

[E.H. Ruddock]

You guys don't think he intentionally did that for the song? I don't know why, but I liked what they did here.

[Strat]

Well they put a lot of thought and effort into that one :/

Geezes.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Jorge]

I'm not sure I like Matt's snare sound here.

But I like the song. If the original didn't exist and this was a new Pearl Jam song, I think I'd be pretty impressed.

But yeah Ed doesn't sound great

[Jorge]

we're in trouble if eddie can't even be made to sound good on a studio reccording

This has been an issue since Avocado

[Strat]

Ed sounds like ole modern day ed but that sounds fine to me

[Kevin Davis]

Seriously, there are at least four recent PJ songs that are fairly indistinguishable from each other, and would all sounds great while shopping at Hot Topic:

Supersonic
Ole
Mind Your Manners
Again Today

You'd have to be listening pretty inattentively not to be able to distinguish those songs from each other, this one especially, though the Hot Topic criticism is a point well-taken. I think this is pretty decent, actually; Eddie is obviously diminished in his capacity, but I don't get the sense that he's inappropriately overreaching. Not a top shelf cover, but I would delete "Pendulumorphosis" from my B-sides mix to make space for it.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Jorge]

we're in trouble if eddie can't even be made to sound good on a studio reccording

This has been an issue since Avocado

Eddie's the best part about Avocado. From my brilliant and defining MVP by Album thread:

S/T: Ed. This is not to say it's his best collection of vocal performances, but on the first album to sound somewhat predictable, Ed manages to stand out by delivering lyrics that, despite being sometimes clunky (and for the first time since Vs, decidedly at the front of the mix), are sung with passion for the content, and with an embrace of the wear and tear that was starting to show on his vocal chords. The songwriting ranges on this album from amazing to pretty bad, but Ed always sounds engaged and, for the most part, very inspired.

I think he sounds screechy, quavering and bad.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Kevin Davis]

Come on. Of course I can hear the melodic and lyrics differences. But for a band with a deep and diverse catalog, they are starting to settle into an obvious format.

Because they've made four songs (one a cover for a charity compilation, and one a non-album throwaway) over eight years which have recurring aesthetic themes? I agree that PJ aren't exactly firing on all cylinders these days, but I don't think lack of diversity is the problem; "Lightning Bolt," apart from the across-the-board plastic production, is a pretty musically diverse record. The short-n-punky thing has been part of their repertoire since well before "Supersonic," and while perhaps the consistent production values of late cause recent occurrences of it to sound more similar than they really are, it's hardly fair to count it as some kind of crutch that they only began leaning on in later years.