Red Mosquito

stip wrote: when we say something is good or bad, when we praise or critique a performance, we are referencing our opinions and personal tastes, but is that really all?

Kevin Davis wrote:Your point that some of us have been here for 10+ years strikes a chord with me. I've found myself less compelled to contribute to March Madness this year just because I feel like we've had these same conversations so many times; I feel like I'm just regurgitating the same things I've said about these songs in years past, and I feel like by now I more or less already know everyone else's take on them as well. I am sure there is some collective sense of this, and no doubt it lowers the level of discourse a bit.

I also agree that RM probably overdramatizes the weaknesses of PJ's recent records, though I think this is pretty common in fan communities; fans tend to speak of their chosen artists' lesser works as though they represent the nadir of all recorded sound since the beginning of time (this of course of exempting the delusional few who say things like, "Well, it's PJ's worst album, but even their worst is still better than everyone else's best!"). We simply speak louder about the things which are meaningful to us, and it goes both ways -- just as we hold "LB" to a harsher standard than your average less-invested listener does, so too do we elevate records like "No Code" and "Binaural" to a level that would likely seem absurd to that same listener. I do agree that there is a lot of reflexive cynicism in regards to present-day Pearl Jam music; RM definitely has a tendency toward gratuitous cheap shots, toward employing flippant criticism of zero substance, toward nitpicking every little insignificant extramusical detail, in regards to this era of the band's career. People who claim this doesn't exist at all are being willfully obtuse. That said, it's not fair to dismiss the opinions as ill-gotten or misinformed simply because of what ultimately amounts to peer pressure (if we're doing that, it's equally fair to say that many of us have positive feelings from our early days of fandom which were possibly driven by similar environmental factors and are therefore equally inauthentic). It's just not a verifiable enough assertion on which to hinge any credible argument.

Lastly, I think we live in a culture where the kind of reappraisal that "Binaural" and "Riot Act" experienced is becoming less and less likely (and believe me, I remember how much people hated those records). Those two albums were arguably PJ's last albums of the physical media age, where immersive reappraisal was simply more common in general; Napster had fired its first shots, but there was still investment in the physical product, which I believe made consumers less eager to so flippantly write an album off as a result of initial misgivings. By the time of "S/T," the way people explored and consumed music had changed considerably, more so still by the time of "Backspacer," and so on, to the point where now there is no instinctive reason to continually subject yourself to an album that doesn't hit the spot the first few times. The environment is competitive and people have easy access to endless alternatives, and albums like "LB" end up falling victim to basic Darwinism. This bodes poorly for these albums receiving the same kind of retroactive revisionism enjoyed by "Binaural" and "Riot Act," I think, however well (or poorly) these albums may hold up to such scrutiny. That, and there is no new music coming out to recontextualize everything else; when an artist is active, they're putting out material that is constantly causing the relationship between the artist and the listener to evolve. When the current becomes still, everything settles. That's pretty much where we are now.

stip wrote: I don't think there is any such thing as whether or not something is objectively good or bad

Kevin Davis wrote:Your point that some of us have been here for 10+ years strikes a chord with me. I've found myself less compelled to contribute to March Madness this year just because I feel like we've had these same conversations so many times; I feel like I'm just regurgitating the same things I've said about these songs in years past, and I feel like by now I more or less already know everyone else's take on them as well. I am sure there is some collective sense of this, and no doubt it lowers the level of discourse a bit.

Kevin Davis wrote:
Lastly, I think we live in a culture where the kind of reappraisal that "Binaural" and "Riot Act" experienced is becoming less and less likely (and believe me, I remember how much people hated those records). Those two albums were arguably PJ's last albums of the physical media age, where immersive reappraisal was simply more common in general; Napster had fired its first shots, but there was still investment in the physical product, which I believe made consumers less eager to so flippantly write an album off as a result of initial misgivings. By the time of "S/T," the way people explored and consumed music had changed considerably, more so still by the time of "Backspacer," and so on, to the point where now there is no instinctive reason to continually subject yourself to an album that doesn't hit the spot the first few times. The environment is competitive and people have easy access to endless alternatives, and albums like "LB" end up falling victim to basic Darwinism. This bodes poorly for these albums receiving the same kind of retroactive revisionism enjoyed by "Binaural" and "Riot Act," I think, however well (or poorly) these albums may hold up to such scrutiny. That, and there is no new music coming out to recontextualize everything else; when an artist is active, they're putting out material that is constantly causing the relationship between the artist and the listener to evolve. When the current becomes still, everything settles. That's pretty much where we are now.

Kevin Davis wrote:That, and there is no new music coming out to recontextualize everything else; when an artist is active, they're putting out material that is constantly causing the relationship between the artist and the listener to evolve. When the current becomes still, everything settles. That's pretty much where we are now.

stip wrote:Perhaps good is not the right word to use (in which case that is on me). Perhaps the word I am looking for here is successful, broadly understood. That there are ways to measure whether or not a work has struck a chord or accomplished what it set out to do.

--- wrote:

stip wrote: I don't think there is any such thing as whether or not something is objectively good or bad

Of course there can be subjective takes on music. That's why there's no clear answer to who the best band of all time is, or even which song is a band's best work, because each person responds to a piece of music differently and each piece plays on different emotions within the listener, not to mention the fact that the idea of "cliche" is temporal in nature and that technical invention doesn't impress some people the way it impresses others. Yes, I'll give you that willingly. You could say that you get more "emotion" out of Life Wasted than you do out of Faithfull, and that's fine, but at a certain level, Faithfull is just technically better than the other. It comes down to levels--the objective level and the subjective levels.

And really, anytime you say something like "you can't judge art," you make yourself sound like a huge tool. It's that kind of egalitarianism that really defines who has anything worthwhile to say about art and who doesn't, because if you can't separate an Eliot poem from a high school diary, you really shouldn't be talking about poetry at all. Same goes for music, same goes for visual art, same goes for cinematography. The objective elements are what allow the emotion to take body in the work of art. You can't appreciate a good scene in a movie if it isn't shot in an artistic manner, and you can't really feel the emotion in a poem if the poet writes about time going "at a snail's pace." And I take this personally as well. I'm trying to be a writer. I'm working very hard at trying to be a writer, and for you to come in here and imply that there's no objective level on which I can improve my writing and that nothing separates me from people who aren't studying poetry and who aren't writing poetry and who aren't making a concerted effort to find their own voices and to write in an authentic and fresh manner? That basically discredits the entirety of what I'm trying to do. Fuck you.

VinylGuy wrote:The wave of revisionism with these two in rm you say? Because they are really popular outside here.

Pitchfork wrote: Backspacer - Rating 4.6/10
It's an extremely odd thing to say about a band that for three or four years was the biggest rock megalith on the planet, but nowadays Pearl Jam are the very definition of anonymously workmanlike, seemingly plugging along with their heads down from one colorlessly unimaginative album to the next. Once upon a time this was a group that was on top of the world and yet still took all kinds of bizarre chances, recording shit like lengthy tape experiments and songs about bugs-- often ridiculously self-indulgent, sure, yet always surprising. Now, paradoxically, with the spotlights long since extinguished, Pearl Jam seem content to do things by the book.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13480-backspacer/

Pitchfork wrote: Lightning Bolt - Rating 5/10
Despite their punk-schooled principles, Pearl Jam have never been shy about their debt to classic rock, but it’s usually good classic rock: The Who, Crazy Horse, the Stones. And while the upward-arced anthemery of the title track and “Swallowed Whole” continue to dutifully honor this holy trinity, Lightning Bolt also betrays the long-term diluting effects of spending too much time hanging on the right of the dial. “Let the Records Play” is boilerplate, bad-to-the-bone blooze, while the album’s centerpiece ballads tread on odious Lite-FM territory and forcefully tip the scales from poignant to maudlin, whether it’s the Goo Goo Dolls sheen of “Sirens” or the Hornsby-esque piano rolls of the closing “Future Days” (definitely not a Can cover) that made the song a natural fit for the closing sequence of last week’s "Grey’s Anatomy". (By contrast, the countrified lament “Sleeping By Myself” benefits from a lighter touch, thanks to a gleaming George Harrison-style guitar refrain that draws the cheekiness out of the song’s woe-is-me sentiments.) The Pearl Jam mythos as it exists today is undeniably wrapped up in their notoriously epic live shows, wherein the band is famous for loosening up and stretching out, but for whatever reason, that adventurous ethos rarely translates to their increasingly mannered albums. Pearl Jam on record have essentially been reduced to the rock ‘n’ roll version of wearing sweatpants: they’ve given up trying to impress anyone, so they may as well be comfortable.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/186 ... ning-bolt/

VinylGuy wrote:Yeah, i wasnt even referring to media outlets but casual music fans...They loved Backspacer and LB, and the band gained a lot of fans because of them.