Red Mosquito

stip wrote:

durdencommatyler wrote:

Sgt. Crackpot wrote:In light of Backspacer's birthday, I've made stip a new avatar to celebrate:

Also,... Stip.

You only have like 30 hours left to make this your avatar or we ban you for life.

it's too big. How do I shrink it?!

Monkey_Driven wrote:I'm ready to announce I love The Fixer. It took a long while to full come to grasp with it, but now I'm here. I do wish he skipped the final chorus and let the music get weird though.

stip wrote:

durdencommatyler wrote:

VinylGuy wrote:

durdencommatyler wrote:I've heard so many arguments and none of them hold water. There's nothing embarrassing about Amongst the Waves. There is no "failure" or reach for former glory or any of that nonsense. If that's why a listener doesn't like the song, then that's on the listener. That's the listeners own bullshit baggage that they're bringing to the experience.

Which is not to say that it's impossible to hate the song. I totally get why a person would hate it. There are legitimate reasons to dislike it. But "Reaching for and falling far short of a former brilliant place" just isn't one of them.

To be fair, sometimes its impossible not to put our own bullshit baggage to a song or a piece of art.

Very true. Good point.

I like Amongst the Waves a lot, but I think there is something to that broad critique as a style of critique. If you write a song or create any art that calls to mind similar works crafted in the past you do invite the audience to draw comparisons. It's probably impossible not to. And while it is absolutely its own song, Amongst the Wave does share a lineage with triumphant mid tempo anthems of pearl jam past. And then if you don't like the song as much as its peers it will influence how you think and talk about the song. I don't like this song, and I DO like songs on that part of the family tree, therefore there is something deficient in this particular performance.


I apply the same logic to a song like In Hiding or Faithful, rather than Amongst the Waves. Here is a mid tempo anthem in the classic pearl jam style (talky verses, soaring chorus, etc), but when I listened to them they didn't move me like Jeremy or Alive or Betterman or Given to Fly on the same album, and my enjoyment of faithful or in hiding suffered because I was reminded of other songs I like better. I'm not sure that I LIKE push me/pull me more than faithful, but I feel more warmly disposed towards it in part because it stands alone and I'm not comparing it to other songs I enjoy more.


I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing as much as it is just likely inevitable.

VinylGuy wrote:Stip has been dissing Faithful for a long time.

Monkey_Driven wrote:I'm ready to announce I love The Fixer. It took a long while to full come to grasp with it, but now I'm here. I do wish he skipped the final chorus and let the music get weird though.

dimejinky99 wrote:Does nobody else but me remember how excited RM was and we all were when we got the bootleg of the recording of fixer from outside the video shoot a month or so before the album came out?

We were all fuckin ecstatic cos it sounded so good. Soon as the single dropped it was like the same bunch of guys had been caught jerking off their nephew and trying to deny it and its entire existence.

It was and still is a great fucking song. Especially for a band at that point in its career

dimejinky99 wrote:Does nobody else but me remember how excited RM was and we all were when we got the bootleg of the recording of fixer from outside the video shoot a month or so before the album came out?

We were all fuckin ecstatic cos it sounded so good. Soon as the single dropped it was like the same bunch of guys had been caught jerking off their nephew and trying to deny it and its entire existence.

It was and still is a great fucking song. Especially for a band at that point in its career

Birds in Hell wrote:It's very hard to listen past the production.