Red Mosquito

stip wrote:(i really hate backspacer and lightning bolt. I am just terrified someone will dig up old posts so I need to maintain the illusion of consistency)

consistency will never be your problem, stip.

stip wrote:This sounds like their most cohesive record to me in forever. I think we tend to assume a record is cohesive when we like all the songs on them. For me No Code has a terrible flow and feels like a collection of songs.

evenslow wrote:so what have we learned from this journey through the archives?
1. recency bias is a helluva drug.
2. everyone is full of shit.
3. i am being unfair.
4. we've been here far too long.
5. it's fun to get a new pearl jam record!
6. what's the truest reaction to a new album - the first bright-eyed, open-hearted look or a few months later when some would pull a near 180 and cynically trash what they had only months ago exalted???

important lessons for us all, folks. see you in 11 years when i do this for the gigaton thread. the internet is watching.

Likewise, I'd be curious to know if there's ever been a PJ album whose response has followed this trajectory, i.e. tongue-wagging enthusiasm turning to outright hatred within the course of...a year? Two years? Understanding that this perception is limited by the communities, friend circles, etc. I've been a part of, the albums from No Code through Riot Act mostly seemed to elicit fairly lukewarm knee-jerk reactions (with the possible exception of Yield, which was a little warmer, but still colored by many fans' lingering hopes for Ten Pt. 2) followed by varying degrees of growing appreciation. Lightning Bolt felt relatively unloved from the start and seems to remain so. I was pretty detached from PJ world when S/T came out, so I don't remember much about the fan reaction to that, though I remember the "return to form" machine running full steam ahead in the press.

My initial reaction to Backspacer was very much like the ones you quoted -- gushing praise, at one point thinking it was their 3rd or 4th best album, this despite the fact that there were a few songs that I always kind of felt like I was forcing myself to like (S/T had a few of these too), and no songs (other than "The Fixer") that I singularly enjoyed as much as songs from previous records. In reality, I think I just found it extremely difficult to think critically and honestly about PJ in any way from 1995-2010 or so (2010 was the year I joined RM; the jury is out on the correlation between these two things).

I still think Backspacer is a pretty decent album; there are a good 5-6 songs on it I really enjoy, and the few that really sink the album only do so (for me) because they come all in a row, right at the point in the sequence when the record needs to do something to keep your attention. For as little as the Backspacer songs were developed live, I found many of even its weaker songs more enjoyable in that context -- sandwiched between other songs that were built to do heavy lifting, they could kind of breeze by in a way that highlighted their minor virtues, rather than saddling them all with the impossible task of collective self-sustenance. The lack of BO'B production on the live versions didn't hurt either.

your point about Ten, pt. 2 is so true. every album post vs. suffered with the public at large (at least initially) b/c it didn't have a giant, soaring anthem with an accessible chorus ready for wembley. yield was the true outlier because of Given To Fly. every other album was fighting an uphill battle from the start b/c of this dynamic.

RM opinion is another story, of course.

backspacer has suffered the steepest decline from early esteem, followed closely by S/T, at least on RM. Riot Act and Binaural have had, by far, the most striking reappraisal

evenslow wrote:

Monkey Driven wrote:This album is a fantastic example of how versatile the band is. I also think it's a great sign when a lot of us have different favorite songs. That's when you know there's not a dud on it.

I don't hate Backspacer by any means, but I think I was still riding a little too high from the Obama inauguration or something.

stip wrote:backspacer has suffered the steepest decline from early esteem, followed closely by S/T, at least on RM. Riot Act and Binaural have had, by far, the most striking reappraisal

yep yep yep and yep.

Monkey_Driven wrote:

evenslow wrote:

Monkey Driven wrote:This album is a fantastic example of how versatile the band is. I also think it's a great sign when a lot of us have different favorite songs. That's when you know there's not a dud on it.

I don't hate Backspacer by any means, but I think I was still riding a little too high from the Obama inauguration or something.

thanks, obama.

evenslow wrote:

Monkey_Driven wrote:

evenslow wrote:

Monkey Driven wrote:This album is a fantastic example of how versatile the band is. I also think it's a great sign when a lot of us have different favorite songs. That's when you know there's not a dud on it.

I don't hate Backspacer by any means, but I think I was still riding a little too high from the Obama inauguration or something.

thanks, obama.

AL

There's definitely a recency bias for PJ, no doubt. S/T was the same way; it was absolutely beloved at the outset. I think LB was the only time it was a bit more muted from the start (perhaps because people had felt that albums they loved initially had little staying power for them), but even then at the release it was pretty positive compared to how the album came to be viewed over time.

Leatherhead wrote:My new BS/LB mix. Listening to it now, at Speed of Sound.

Lightspacer
Pendulum
Gonna See My Friend
My Father's Son
Speed of Sound
Johnny Guitar
Yellow Moon
Lightning Bolt
Force of Nature
Got Some
The End

I hope I'm not extending this mix with Gigaton songs in the future. I hope Gigaton is an album I mostly listen to in full.

that's fair.

Ed sounds horrible throughout the album.

The album as a whole seems very deliberate too - Like the band set out to make a commercial sounding, safe record.

There's a few really good songs - but just too many mediocre songs that bring the album down

The last 3 songs kill the album

I miss Ed's classical low register in this record. The last time he did this well was in Into the Wild.

Just Breathe has his lower registers, but was not as good as lets see... Strangest Tribe (ok, I know almost nothing can be this perfect)

Johnny Turner wrote:I miss Ed's classical low register in this record. The last time he did this well was in Into the Wild.

Just Breathe has his lower registers, but was not as good as lets see... Strangest Tribe (ok, I know almost nothing can be this perfect)

Hoping he uses the lower register of his voice more on Gigaton

Clem Halibut wrote:

Johnny Turner wrote:I miss Ed's classical low register in this record. The last time he did this well was in Into the Wild.

Just Breathe has his lower registers, but was not as good as lets see... Strangest Tribe (ok, I know almost nothing can be this perfect)

Hoping he uses the lower register of his voice more on Gigaton

yup yup

Strangest Tribe like low register would be great.

Love the way that one sounds on vinyl

Backspacer is mindnumbingly boring.

PHATJ wrote:Backspacer is mindnumbingly boring.

The second half of it, sure.

dad wrote:

PHATJ wrote:Backspacer is mindnumbingly boring.

The second half of it, sure.

The first half is annoying and dumb.