Red Mosquito

spike wrote:Try is the best track.

Agree 100%. What a blast of a song! It reminds me a bit of the Nirvana track "Ain't It a Shame" (from the With the Lights Out box), but more polished of course.

There are at least half a dozen tracks here I really enjoyed. Better than I was expecting for sure.

spike wrote:Try is the best track.

Can't say it isn't.

I simply cannot get over how much I enjoy Power of Right

I mean, we have a bunch of songs here that are absolutely PJ worthy.

On My Way
Rose of Jericho
Try
Fallout Today
Mrs. Mills
The Dark
Invincible

I'm really digging these at the moment.

DeeDee wrote:I mean, we have a bunch of songs here that are absolutely PJ worthy.

I think a bunch of these songs, in terms of quality, are pretty close to the quality of some Pearl Jam songs, and I’d say early on I like this better than Backspacer and Lightning Bolt, but to me it sounds nothing like Pearl Jam except of course for Eddie’s voice. It has a retro 80s easy rock vibe to a lot of it, intermixed with loud punchy numbers that to me still recall an 80s sort of pop punk/ post punk thing going. I hear Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Clash, The Cure, etc. but I don’t hear Pearl Jam in these.

DeeDee wrote:I mean, we have a bunch of songs here that are absolutely PJ worthy.

What's interesting to me is how effortlessly he seems to break free of his "PJ mold" on this album, where in PJ he seems the opposite -- tethered to tested ideas/formulas, while the other guys kind of tentatively stretch the boundaries. Makes me wonder how the songwriting dynamic worked on this album -- are they essentially Eddie songs with a bunch of courtesy credits for his buddies, or are these more novel musical ideas coming from Klinghoffer, Watt, etc., with Eddie adding words and vocals?

Either way, I found this album extremely easy on the ears -- Eddie is clearly having a good time, not taking himself too seriously, and when it works it really works. I'm happy with it.

liebzz wrote:

DeeDee wrote:I mean, we have a bunch of songs here that are absolutely PJ worthy.

I think a bunch of these songs, in terms of quality, are pretty close to the quality of some Pearl Jam songs, and I’d say early on I like this better than Backspacer and Lightning Bolt, but to me it sounds nothing like Pearl Jam except of course for Eddie’s voice. It has a retro 80s easy rock vibe to a lot of it, intermixed with loud punchy numbers that to me still recall an 80s sort of pop punk/ post punk thing going. I hear Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Clash, The Cure, etc. but I don’t hear Pearl Jam in these.

After hearing things like Dotc, You are, Unemployable or The Fixer, I think we can put any of this Earthling songs on a PJ album without any hesitance. A producer twist here, a Mike solo there, less synth and you got it.

Power of Right would rock on a PJ album, and Try would, too. They take left turns very often, it woudn't be an issue.

DeeDee wrote:This is way better than I expected.

Power of Right is amazing.

Oh, and I don't know who chooses the singles in Eddie's camp, but he/she should be fired inmediately.

This 100 percent. I think The Dark was the clear choice as a lead single. What an awesome track. If this was the lead single fans would be drooling.

The have's is in no way representative of the quality of this album. It's grown on me a little but the production is too much.

I like how they left in little bits like Stevie saying "again" at the end of Try and Ringo laughing towards the end of Mrs. Mills.

For all the shiny pop sheen, there's still a "rough around the edges" quality to this.

liebzz wrote:

DeeDee wrote:I mean, we have a bunch of songs here that are absolutely PJ worthy.

I think a bunch of these songs, in terms of quality, are pretty close to the quality of some Pearl Jam songs, and I’d say early on I like this better than Backspacer and Lightning Bolt, but to me it sounds nothing like Pearl Jam except of course for Eddie’s voice. It has a retro 80s easy rock vibe to a lot of it, intermixed with loud punchy numbers that to me still recall an 80s sort of pop punk/ post punk thing going. I hear Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Clash, The Cure, etc. but I don’t hear Pearl Jam in these.

I can appreciate the sentiment that it is more successful than Backspacer or Lightning Bolt, while at the same time knowing full well that if this album had been presented as is in place of either of those albums it would have been received just as poorly if not even worse. I agree it's best to just process it as its own thing, and bask in the fact that the album tracks are about 100x better than the singles would have led us to believe.

Farmer John wrote:I like how they left in little bits like Stevie saying "again" at the end of Try and Ringo laughing towards the end of Mrs. Mills.

For all the shiny pop sheen, there's still a "rough around the edges" quality to this.

I love that again. It reminded me something Ed told about that session; that Stevie kinda came , played the track a few times and went away

Kevin Davis wrote:Makes me wonder how the songwriting dynamic worked on this album -- are they essentially Eddie songs with a bunch of courtesy credits for his buddies, or are these more novel musical ideas coming from Klinghoffer, Watt, etc., with Eddie adding words and vocals?

Sounds pretty collaborative from this excerpt in the Variety interview; in particular, “Watt” wrote the riffy bits of Power of Right:

Says Watt: “Ed started playing this cool melody on my Juno and I joined him on an ARP-2600 -[analog synthesizer] that Ozzy gave to me, that they actually used on all the [Black] Sabbath albums. We recorded this loop and started playing over it, very naturally, and that became ‘Invincible.’ Then he was like, ‘Can I check out your drums?’ While he was playing them, the riff for ‘Power of Right’ just fell out of me.”

Today’s the day; maybe Amazon will drop off my physical copy today.

during the spoken word parts of Invincible at the start, even though i know he won't say it, i'm waiting for Ed to say, "per my last email!"

Listening for the second time now. There are some clear highlights, but also a few songs I struggled not to skip the first time.

Love hearing Elton John playing piano with the older rock bands of today but he should leave off the singing. Do they really play that back and think it’s great?

Fallout Today gets better and better to my ears (3 total listens).

Good and Evil is always very nice.

Monkey_Driven wrote:Fallout Today gets better and better to my ears (3 total listens).

On this one again right now and totally agree. This one, "Try," and "Mrs. Mills" are the major keepers for me here. But, lots of other lesser pleasures as well. Based on the singles I thought I'd be more or less taking a pass on this whole album, but with apologies to Simple Torture, I enthusiastically ordered the CD this morning after my first listen through.

Huell wrote:Love hearing Elton John playing piano with the older rock bands of today but he should leave off the singing. Do they really play that back and think it’s great?

Agree, unfortunately -- song is super catchy, but Elton sounds really rough, like Alan Jackson after a night of rough drinking or something. Really garbly and drawly. Apart from "The Haves," probably the low point of the album for me.

Elton John is an old dude and a legend, his voice is fine