Re: What is Each Album's Major Flaw?: Yield
Posted: Mon August 21, 2017 3:11 pm
correctcutuphalfdead wrote:There's literally nothing wrong with Yield.
correctcutuphalfdead wrote:There's literally nothing wrong with Yield.
yeahEJ wrote:correctcutuphalfdead wrote:There's literally nothing wrong with Yield.
Seriously. Wtf, trag.cutuphalfdead wrote:I love Happy When I'm Crying but this is fucking madness.tragabigzanda wrote:The sequencing on side B is off. They should have lost In Hiding and included Happy When I'm Crying.
VinylGuy wrote:Happy When Im Crying should have been a pretty cool B side.
Thats it.
It may not be my favorite PJ album, but I agree that there is nothing wrong with it.EJ wrote:correctcutuphalfdead wrote:There's literally nothing wrong with Yield.
I disagree with most of this except the production.PryTo wrote:Yield is a good album, but not a great one. For most bands, this would be a high water mark, but for PJ it was a step backwards, their first. Whereas the previous three albums had, in some regards, topped each other (or at least spoke to one another), this was the first album where PJ seemed to be out of new ideas. In some ways it’s the more logical follow-up to Ten. But given that it was sandwiched between two of the group’s more experimental, boundary-pushing albums, it’s a head scratcher.
The production is pretty big and commercial. Not to the extremes of Ten, but a tasteful variation on that style. Lots of echo, big choruses, and songs that went down easy on the first listen. It’s a much more satisfying blueprint of the kind of records they make today. The two big rockers (Brain of J, DTE) were lesser versions of the type of thing the band did so easily on Vitalogy. The two chest-beating anthems (Faithfull, In Hiding) were lesser versions of the Ten era. The two quasi-experimental numbers (Pilate, Push Me, Pull Me) harkened to the weirder moments of No Code/Vitalogy, but should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Wishlist was a meandering track that collapsed under the weight of Vedder’s worst lyrics to date. Low Light was pleasant but forgettable. All Those Yesterdays and MFC are the two songs that sounded somewhat fresh but they weren’t centerpiece material. Which leaves us with the album’s fatal flaw: Given to Fly.
When your leadoff single is a blatant Zeppelin ripoff, folks, you’ve run out of ideas. I know people like this song, and it’s an okay live number (and better be because they play it at basically every show), but it’s the sound of a band that’s run out of creative gas. And ultimately that’s the fatal flaw of the album. There’s really nothing new here. It’s the sound of a band retreating. After three albums that doggedly pushed in new directions, even when that meant alienating fans, PJ blinked.
I think the idea of Yield being an amalgamation of all their previous work has merit, but disagree that is somehow a muted version. There isn’t much new here, instead it’s a record where they perfectly executed all the ideas that the first four albums conveyed. As I often note, it is the most Pearl Jam album. To see an album where they tried to do that again, but with a touch less success would be the self-titled album, which I love, but is the same idea less perfectly executed.Leatherhead wrote:I disagree with most of this except the production.PryTo wrote:Yield is a good album, but not a great one. For most bands, this would be a high water mark, but for PJ it was a step backwards, their first. Whereas the previous three albums had, in some regards, topped each other (or at least spoke to one another), this was the first album where PJ seemed to be out of new ideas. In some ways it’s the more logical follow-up to Ten. But given that it was sandwiched between two of the group’s more experimental, boundary-pushing albums, it’s a head scratcher.
The production is pretty big and commercial. Not to the extremes of Ten, but a tasteful variation on that style. Lots of echo, big choruses, and songs that went down easy on the first listen. It’s a much more satisfying blueprint of the kind of records they make today. The two big rockers (Brain of J, DTE) were lesser versions of the type of thing the band did so easily on Vitalogy. The two chest-beating anthems (Faithfull, In Hiding) were lesser versions of the Ten era. The two quasi-experimental numbers (Pilate, Push Me, Pull Me) harkened to the weirder moments of No Code/Vitalogy, but should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Wishlist was a meandering track that collapsed under the weight of Vedder’s worst lyrics to date. Low Light was pleasant but forgettable. All Those Yesterdays and MFC are the two songs that sounded somewhat fresh but they weren’t centerpiece material. Which leaves us with the album’s fatal flaw: Given to Fly.
When your leadoff single is a blatant Zeppelin ripoff, folks, you’ve run out of ideas. I know people like this song, and it’s an okay live number (and better be because they play it at basically every show), but it’s the sound of a band that’s run out of creative gas. And ultimately that’s the fatal flaw of the album. There’s really nothing new here. It’s the sound of a band retreating. After three albums that doggedly pushed in new directions, even when that meant alienating fans, PJ blinked.