Red Mosquito

As predicted

Upper Hand vs. Setting Sun was the real final matchup (SS won by 1 vote), and the winner would also win a close one against WFS, playing out as expected.

if I had to guess the overall board top 4 one week in Id say

Setting Sun
Upper Hand
Scared of Fear
Waiting For Stevie

Agreed

then R/R, Wreckage, Won't Tell, Got to Give

which leaves DM, Running, Something Special

Agreed, and still DM is the lead single, name of the album, and a pretty good song.

Running is a decent rocker.

Something Special has several good musical qualities, and especially warm and sincere lyrics.

It's close but WFS is the better song overall. The Setting Sun outro is one of the highest peaks in the catalogue, though.

The board's weighted average scores for the top 3 songs look like this, as of now:

Setting Sun: 4.67
WFS: 4.62
Upper Hand: 4.56

It's a pretty narrow range of scores, meaning all 3 songs are almost equally loved.

Interestingly, the next 3 are also pretty close:

SOF: 4.40
Wreckage: 4.32
Won't Tell: 4.29

There's a slight gap to the next 2:

R/R: 4.17
GTG: 4.11

A bit of a gap, then:

DM: 3.68

The bottom 2 are pretty close together:

Running: 3.03
Something Special: 2.93

It's amazing that we got an album with 3 songs that are rated 4.5-5 stars, 3 more that are rated 4.25-4.5 stars and 2 rated 4-4.25. 8/11 songs are between 4-5 stars. And almost nothing below 3 stars (no real clunker).

My own rankings/ratings of the songs look pretty similar to the board's, with some minor differences.

5 stars:
WFS
Setting Sun
Upper Hand
SOF
Won't Tell

4.5 stars:
Wreckage
React, Respond
Dark Matter
Got to Give

3.75 stars:
Running

3.5 stars:
Something Special:

I put Wreckage, Something Special, and DM much closer to Upper Hand, Setting Sun, and Waiting For Stevie than the rest of y'all, but I'm okay with that and love you all.

Enjoy the weekend.

dark matter is in my top 4. a month from now it could be top 3. its a terrific song

GTG is underrated

Has to go with Setting Sun. This album is so great Upper Hand vs Setting Sun no way I could pick. Really there will be 5 5 star song always and forever on this. Almost 8. Upper Hand and Setting Sun are the two best songs to appear together on a album since GTF and Evolution. Got to Give and Setting Sun set up the best 2 song sequence to end any pearl jam album. I think at this point there are 5 classic all timers on this thing.

Anders wrote:GTG is underrated

It is it would be my 2nd favorite on Fig my favorite on LB my 2 favorite on Backspacer. 1sr on S/t 1st on Riot maybe 4th on Binaural. It ranks 6 on this

Waiting for Stevie is great but Setting Sun is an all time great. It takes elements from every era of Pearl Jam and condenses it down into a cohesive 6 minute package.

Tj wrote:

Anders wrote:GTG is underrated

It is it would be my 2nd favorite on Fig my favorite on LB my 2 favorite on Backspacer. 1sr on S/t 1st on Riot maybe 4th on Binaural. It ranks 6 on this

This is about as good a summary of the miracle of Dark Matter as I’ve read anywhere

Setting Sun

Setting Sun

predicting a huge comeback for WFS tomorrow!

Once again confirmed Pearl Jam is most popular when theyre doing mid tempo and soaring

Anders wrote:GTG is underrated

Its amazing that GTG would be an album highlight on any of the last 4-5 albums yet here its like the 7th or 8th best song on the album.