Red Mosquito

Breakerfall = Scared of Fear

Gods' Dice < React, Respond

Evacuation < Wreckage

Light Years > Dark Matter

Nothing as It Seems > Won't Tell

Thin Air < Upper Hand

Insignificance > Waiting for Stevie

Of the Girl > Running

Grievance > Something Special

Rival > Got to Give

Sleight of Hand > Setting Sun

Soon Forget |

Parting Ways |

That's without relistening to anything...

NAIS -> Won't Tell
Grievance -> Something Special
Rival -> Got To Give


Those are the only instances where I prefer the Binaural song. And none of those others are particularly close.

Measuring albums song by song misses the point.

Those two albums are interesting though, because their strengths and weaknesses are almost polar opposite.

Binaural is more creative and daring, but the band clearly felt that the project failed on its own terms. It did not do what they set out for it to do, but in their failure they made interesting things.

Dark Matter’s musical ambitions are much less daring (specifically: they are not daring). It simply wants to weaponize a musical comfort zone in order to deliver whatever the opposite of mass destruction is. But it achieves its own ambition on a level that Binaural does not.

Whether or not you like Binaural comes down to whether or not you like watching an artist at the peak of their powers run headfirst into an unexpected brick wall. And even then, Binaural might frustrate you….because it doesn’t hit the wall with the sort of opera or drama that tends to make creative crashes hard to look away from. It’s a muted experience. A meditative crash.

Whether or not you like Dark Matter comes down to whether or not you like music that achieves emotional depth through mostly shallow means. It’s a lot like squatting down in the 3 foot area of a hotel pool and walking around on your hands, having the best time of the whole vacation by playing Octonauts with your kid for an hour.

Some people can’t listen to binaural and not hear what they think could have been, buried there in the muffled din. It’s mostly a frustrating experience for them, because they basically just want it to have a little pinch of that mystical dark matter stirred in. I assume these people universally like gigaton, because it’s as close as they’ll ever get to having that version of Binaural.

Some people find Dark Matter’s ambitions unrewarding, because it aims to win by being great at the fundamentals. I assume these people are just gonna tell me I’m wrong, and actually it sucks at everything, because the one nice thing about a band you like releasing an album you hate is that you get to make fun of it with other people on the internet…so by comparing it favorably, I’m taking away one of the only joys left to them on this sad bitch of an earth.

excellent post all around. especially like the gigaton comparison

McParadigm wrote:Measuring albums song by song misses the point.

fun, though

Team Binaural/Gigaton here

Binaural > Dark Matter > Gigaton.

McParadigm wrote:.

Whether or not you like Binaural comes down to whether or not you like watching an artist at the peak of their powers run headfirst into an unexpected brick wall. And even then, Binaural might frustrate you….because it doesn’t hit the wall with the sort of opera or drama that tends to make creative crashes hard to look away from. It’s a muted experience. A meditative crash.

this is why binaural has been st the bottom of my lists after recency wore off

McParadigm wrote:.

Whether or not you like Binaural comes down to whether or not you like watching an artist at the peak of their powers run headfirst into an unexpected brick wall. And even then, Binaural might frustrate you….because it doesn’t hit the wall with the sort of opera or drama that tends to make creative crashes hard to look away from. It’s a muted experience. A meditative crash.

this is why binaural has been st the bottom of my lists after recency wore off

LOL

Of the Girl
Insignificance
NAIS
Sleight of Hand
Parting Ways

all fantastic

Breakerfall
Evacuation
Light Years
Insignificance
Of the Girl
Grievance
Rival
Sleight of Hand
Parting Ways

all fantastic

Breakerfall
Gods' Dice
Evacuation
Thin Air
Insignificance
Of the Girl
Grievance
Rival
Sleight of Hand

all fantastic

It’s now safe to assume that Insignificance, Of the Girl and Sleight of Hand are all fantastic.

yessss

"sad bitch of an earth"

I need to find a way to use that in my everyday vocabulary.

https://www.loudersound.com/features/pe ... ult-record

“It was my own personal hell”: the story of Pearl Jam’s most difficult record as it turns 25

The Seattle rockers’ trickiest album was fraught with writer’s block and drug addiction and it’s not one guitarist Stone Gossard is in a hurry to listen to again.

I didn’t know that about Mike.

We’re never going to remember that record as one of the greats.

Stone pretty much poo-poos any chance of anything being played from it. I’m still hoping for Light Years, tho. It at least gets played every now and then.