Gigaton: Official album thread

General Pearl Jam discussion.

Early Impressions

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96583UP
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by 96583UP »

the early Ed solo live organ-only performance was better
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Matters
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Matters »

1 star.
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by spike »

more bad takes by the matters account
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Matters »

I like Gigaton a lot but River Cross doesn’t do anything for me. I hope it does someday. I’ll be very willing to admit that if it does.
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stip
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by stip »

I don't know what the alternative is - Comes Than Goes isn't meant to be a closer, and has to go somewhere, and Retrograde and River Cross are meant to be paired together. But there is something to be said for closer fatigue. I don't think they ever piled on that many songs that felt like they could be stopping points in a row.
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Tj »

I can't listen to RiverCross. It really greats on my ears. Musically I really like it a good bit. The lyrics are a little high school poetry. The big problem is the melody over the rhythm. The chord of the melody are wrong. There actually could have maybe been two pretty ok songs .
I wish they would have broken the magic formula with and done something like this
Retrograde
Dance
Who Ever Said
7 o'clock
Comes the Goes
Take the longway
Never Destination
Get it Back
Alright
Quick Escape
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Tj »

I can't listen to RiverCross. It really greats on my ears. Musically I really like it a good bit. The lyrics are a little high school poetry. The big problem is the melody over the rhythm. The chord of the melody are wrong. There actually could have maybe been two pretty ok songs .
I wish they would have broken the magic formula with and done something like this
Retrograde
Dance
Who Ever Said
7 o'clock
Comes the Goes
Take the longway
Never Destination
Get it Back
Alright
Quick Escape
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stip
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by stip »

I love the River Cross lyrics - there are a few moments that are a little obvious, but these are all great moments

Wide awake through this deepest night
Still waiting on the sun
As the hours seem to multiply
Find a star to soldier on
Living beneath a lion's paw
Knowing nothing can be tamed,...
Can be tamed


I want this dream to last forever
A wish denied to lengthen our time
I wish this moment was neverending
Let it be a lie that all futures die

Folded over, forced in a choke hold
Outnumbered and held down
All of this talk of rapture
Look around at the promise now
Here and now
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Tj »

Ok I changed my the lyrics are great. I'm glad he got Stevie Nick's to work with him.
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Tj »

I'm not being funny the lyrics are good it the topic I dislike. Cry cry cry we all run out of time. No biggie
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Tj »

It does remind me of Mrs Nick's though.
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Tj »

Ms.
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igotworms
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by igotworms »

96583UP wrote:the early Ed solo live organ-only performance was better
Hugely. The unnecessary percussion/drums on the studio version irritate the crap out of me.
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Monkey_Driven »

I like River Cross. It's similar to Indifference to me, but is more about a collective fight/resistance.
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Ms Harmless »

igotworms wrote:
96583UP wrote:the early Ed solo live organ-only performance was better
Hugely. The unnecessary percussion/drums on the studio version irritate the crap out of me.
they remind me of a lot of 80s "overplaying" that has a charm to it, like on Paul Simon's Graceland or some Genesis / Peter Gabriel stuff; it's a bold choice but (like once in a blue moon at this point) it's a bold choice that sounds like a choice to me instead of a mistake
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by tragabigzanda »

pearl jam sucks now
Last edited by tragabigzanda on Thu January 01, 2026 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kevin Davis
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by Kevin Davis »

stip wrote:I don't know what the alternative is - Comes Than Goes isn't meant to be a closer, and has to go somewhere, and Retrograde and River Cross are meant to be paired together. But there is something to be said for closer fatigue. I don't think they ever piled on that many songs that felt like they could be stopping points in a row.
PJ have a lot of great album closers (which we all agree, without any variation, means "the last listed track on the record"), but I think they have a lot of records where the wind-down sequence feels a bit cobbled together, even when the songs themselves are good. The albums that don't feel that way to me to some extent are Ten, Vs., and Backspacer, and they all share the feature of their closing two songs being (a) a rock song that generally matches the intensity of the other rock songs on the record, and (b) one slow/quiet song to end on. It's not surprising that these records are also their most concise. I think, especially, Vitalogy, No Code, Binaural, S/T, Lightning Bolt, and Gigaton all lose some pace in the back half, not in the quality of songs necessarily but just in the way they flow into each other, to the point where it feels like some songs are just being grouped at the end because they don't logically make sense anywhere else. (This is mainly speaking just about the way the songs work sonically, not necessarily about the continuity of any lyrical themes.)
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by tragabigzanda »

pearl jam sucks now
Last edited by tragabigzanda on Thu January 01, 2026 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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stip
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by stip »

that’s well observed. It is particularly noteworthy, I think, on No Code, especially because Present Tense FEELS like an album closer. Present Tense into Mankind into Im Open is three jarring transitions (though its an album full of them) and Around the Bend (a song I like a lot more than I used to thanks in no small part to Mr. Kevin Davis) doesnt have a strong enough identity to give coherence to everything that came befoee
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Re: Gigaton: Official album thread

Post by VinylGuy »

I love pretty much all of their closers but Future Days, a song i despise in the studio version.
BONE FUCKIN´ TOMAHAWK.
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