Kevin Davis wrote:"Aye Davanita" is a nice little groove-jam, nothing more, and "Pry To" is no more consequential on its own than the little feedback loop between "Satan's Bed" and "Better Man." Plus if P-R-I-V-A-C-Y was so priceless to him, why include this candid little snippet of slurred nonsense as a standalone track? Weird how in so many ways their hatred-of-fame album seems to contain more stupid rock star excess wankery than anything else they ever made.
"Nothingman" seems to have found its fair share of detractors of late, but I rate it pretty highly among early PJ tunes. Easy vote.
Bummed to hear you're not a fan of the experimentation. It's part of what makes this my favorite album of all time.
Those few minor tracks have never been enough to cause "Vitalogy" to feel experimental to me; the bulk of the songwriting either hangs comfortably in familiar territory, or inches forward slightly from previous works, but overall, it's not PJ's visionary breaking point. I enjoy "Aye Davanita," but think people overstate its artistic ambition, and "Bugs" always makes me laugh. But to me "No Code" is much more in line with what I think of when I think of musical experimentation -- a questioning of how to grow and evolve the music within a form, as part of the overall artistic movement of the band, not just brashly cluttering your record with self-conscious one-off indulgences.
Responding to the parts in bold: I never took the odd tracks on Vitalogy as an ambitious attempt at art, nor as any more self conscious than Corduroy or Not For You, nor as indulgent. My impression in 1994 is more or less the same as it is now: They were a band learning to use the studio as a new instrument, and the level of experimentation we get in Bugs, Aye Davinita, etc are the sort we'd expect of any band hitting their stride and feeling somewhat uncomfortable with all the pressure that was being placed on them. I think you're supposed to laugh at Bugs. I think those odd tracks were captured off-the-cuff, in the moment, and the band decided to include them because it gave a sort of snapshot into their creative process when they weren't aiming for the rafters.
