Red Mosquito

I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Its pearl jam and i can't help but love it. There are some great tracks on there and fun melodies. Some minor new things sprinkled throughout.

But overall, it does feel like "oh hey this is pearl jam and we've covered all of our bases here for you as to not offend anyone". After 10 years in between backspacer, i was hoping for something a little more unique.

Its not bad. its not great. Its Pearl Jam, which is alright by Strat. Im ready for something a little more challenging. More artistic, and less cementing their status as classic rock icons of the grunge era. They still have it in them to give us something beautiful. No question. They just need a fire under their asses.

I guess, to me, Backspacer sounds much more like the legacy maintaining "hey erry body it's pearl jaaaaaaaaaam!" album.

There's stuff on LB that, while generic pop/rock in general, is different for them.

Yes. Those are two Pearl Jam songs.

Meh

They're certainly similar, though I don't know that they're the same. It is interesting, though, to note that they also chart pretty much the same progression over a sixteen-second span.

Porch - Severed Hand
Indiference - Immortality
Life Wasted - Amongst The Waves


Its some kind of pattern

durdencommatyler wrote:Mind Your Manners, Sirens, Pendulum, Infallible, Sleeping by Myself and Yellow Moon are all mainstay PJ tracks for me. I listen to them all the fucking time.

you are a gentleman and a scholar. Those are all very solid songs. I still listen to Lighting Bolt and Mind Your Manners all the time. MYM may be a top 20 song for me. And i don't think this was this thread, but I think Ed sounds pretty great across pretty much the whole album.

There are a few songs that don't excite me very much, but every pearl jam album post Vitalogy has songs that don't excite me very much. And the whole thing is just an enjoyable listen. It doesn't set the world on fire, and with a few years under each I think Backspacer is firmly in my 4 spot and L-Bolt hangs out in the middle with Yield and S/T.


If Pearl Jam could continue to put out records I enjoy from start to finish and come up with a handful of songs I really love, I'll be a happy man.

durdencommatyler wrote:I guess, to me, Backspacer sounds much more like the legacy maintaining "hey erry body it's pearl jaaaaaaaaaam!" album.

There's stuff on LB that, while generic pop/rock in general, is different for them.

MFS, Infallible, Pendulum, Sleeping By Myself, even Sirens (kind of) are all fairly new directions or takes on a familiar sound. I mean, say what you want about the individual quality of the songs and how much they mean to you, but Pearl Jam's most PJ by numbers album may very well be Yield - a self conscious attempt to write songs that (for the most part) sound like what we've heard before. And that was only 5 albums in. 10 albums into your career, you're pretty likely to start sounding like yourself.

tragabigzanda wrote:With the exact same riff.

they have a pretty similar feel to them with the bounce ,but I don't know that they're the same.


I love World Wide Suicide so fucking much. No pearl jam song ever made me that happy.

that's probably the most I've posted in PJ chat since march madness ended (granted, that was probably only a week ago)

KurtLeon wrote:Porch - Severed Hand
Indiference - Immortality
Life Wasted - Amongst The Waves


Its some kind of pattern

"Porch" and "Severed Hand" are similar, but you lose me with the other two. What do those progressions have in common?

yeah I don't hear those two either. The only two pj songs that ever struck me as very similar are Long Road/Parting Ways and Severed Hand/Porch, and since those songs all have their own identity I have a hard time caring.

stip wrote:

durdencommatyler wrote:I guess, to me, Backspacer sounds much more like the legacy maintaining "hey erry body it's pearl jaaaaaaaaaam!" album.

There's stuff on LB that, while generic pop/rock in general, is different for them.

MFS, Infallible, Pendulum, Sleeping By Myself, even Sirens (kind of) are all fairly new directions or takes on a familiar sound. I mean, say what you want about the individual quality of the songs and how much they mean to you, but Pearl Jam's most PJ by numbers album may very well be Yield - a self conscious attempt to write songs that (for the most part) sound like what we've heard before. And that was only 5 albums in. 10 albums into your career, you're pretty likely to start sounding like yourself.

I'd say that distinction belongs to S/T. They don't necessarily sound like Ten, but that album definitely has a whiff of "see, we do still rock!" to it.

Lightning Bolt is fine, it's okay. I don't think it's issue is it sounds 'like Pearl Jam;' It just sounds fairly perfunctory. It sounds like an "I guess we should make another record" kind of thing that really stemming from strong inspiration. However, I still think it's a fair bit better than the previous record.

Perhaps my threshold with respect to these things is set differently but I don't think the band have ever really repeated themselves in the specific way meant here.

The similarities between Porch and Severed Hand really aren't terribly striking, they're distinctly their own musical idea.

I go back and forth on liking LB and BS so much. Right now I'm thinking they're both alright, even pretty good in spots.

Songs I always enjoy:
Mind Your Manners
My Father's Son
Lightning Bolt
Pendulum
Gonna See My Friend
Got Some
Johnny Guitar

Songs I usually enjoy:
Speed of Sound
Force of Nature
The End
Sirens
Swallowed Whole
Yellow Moon

Songs where my opinion is always changing:
Getaway
Infallible
Let the Records Play
Sleeping by Myself
Future Days
The Fixer
Just Breathe
Amongst the Waves
Unthought Known
Supersonic

Birds in Hell wrote:Perhaps my threshold with respect to these things is set differently but I don't think the band have ever really repeated themselves in the specific way meant here.

The similarities between Porch and Severed Hand really aren't terribly striking, they're distinctly their own musical idea.

I agree.

stip wrote:yeah I don't hear those two either. The only two pj songs that ever struck me as very similar are Long Road/Parting Ways and Severed Hand/Porch, and since those songs all have their own identity I have a hard time caring.

Indifference and Immortality are exactly the same chords and almost the same rithm, if you strip it to the basics
The "Gotta say it now" from Amongst the Waves is half a tone down from the main riff of Life Wasted (or a whole tone, im not sure).





Or maybe im just wrong.