Red Mosquito

(As a title track)

Around the Sun > Lightning Bolt

I think I'd enjoy around the sun more if the chorus soared a bit more and it didn't have that flat outro.

stip wrote:I think I'd enjoy around the sun more if the chorus soared a bit more and it didn't have that flat outro.

so the question is:

Flat outro vs Fadeout

If we settle this we can settle anything!

I don't like how the drums were mixed throughout the album. There was too much space given to the bass that is overbearing often and "eats" the bottom of the drums. This is something that bothers me a lot. The drumming to me sounds exaggeratedly unobtrusive. It's a weird coincidence that this is also how the drums were mixed. I really think favouring the bass that much over the drums was a huge mistake. The kick sounds like if it was made of cardboard. The vocals don't sound particularly good either. To much was eq-ed out which renders the vocals lifeless. The guitars are "blurry" and "muddy" most of the time. Some songs would sound better if the guitars were more "abrasive". The mix sounds as if whoever was doing it wasn't actually listening but merely looking at the waveforms and spectrum analysers etc. I mean It seems like the isolated tracks were compressed and eq-ed without considering how they actually end up sounding in the mix but how the graphs look like. On the other hand i wonder if certain "fattening" choices were made to give the impression that the songs are fuller because the arrangements are hardly brilliant. It's actually hard to find something interesting to say about a lot of the songs here. Ed covers a decent variety of styles vocally and does it very well i just wish the songs he's singing were better and the vocals sounded more natural.
One thing that i found interesting is how different this record sounds to Ed's Better Days. The latter sounds much less polished, very obvious in the vocals. You'd expect that a Julia Roberts led movie would demand a more polished product than Pearl Jam.

Mine, a lot of your analysis begs the question, on what equipment were you listening?

McParadigm wrote:

Mine wrote:The lyrics are abstract enough to make irrelevant what they are about, i know he stated what they are about but it's trivia more than something the lyrics insist on. Most reviews interpret it as "about a woman".

They seem pretty direct to me.

There is one single line that hints at it being about what it is Flipping through the worn out pages. Otherwise they could have easily be interpreted as being about an overbearing mother in law.

McParadigm wrote: He didn't really do all that much different with it. It's not a terrible song, and his version is certainly more emotionally engaging (and better produced) than the original, but I don't hear how his version's arrangement is anything other than "the closest he could get to the original without doing more work than he'd already done."

And it isn't because of the vocal. He achieved that with minor changes which is impressive.
Speed of Sound is maybe a better example of what I'm trying to say. The demo has a very simple arrangement that at least IMO gives the song far more justice than what they did with it on BS. I really like the melancholy there i like how delicate every single thing that happens there is. PJ however turned it into a generic pop rock thing without a hint of a good taste.

digster wrote:It's still bizarre to me that, after all their records, THAT song is PJ's first title track.

Yeah this has bothered me as well.

aurynsdad wrote:

I don't like how the drums were mixed throughout the album. There was too much space given to the bass that is overbearing often and "eats" the bottom of the drums. This is something that bothers me a lot. The drumming to me sounds exaggeratedly unobtrusive. It's a weird coincidence that this is also how the drums were mixed. I really think favouring the bass that much over the drums was a huge mistake. The kick sounds like if it was made of cardboard. The vocals don't sound particularly good either. To much was eq-ed out which renders the vocals lifeless. The guitars are "blurry" and "muddy" most of the time. Some songs would sound better if the guitars were more "abrasive". The mix sounds as if whoever was doing it wasn't actually listening but merely looking at the waveforms and spectrum analysers etc. I mean It seems like the isolated tracks were compressed and eq-ed without considering how they actually end up sounding in the mix but how the graphs look like. On the other hand i wonder if certain "fattening" choices were made to give the impression that the songs are fuller because the arrangements are hardly brilliant. It's actually hard to find something interesting to say about a lot of the songs here. Ed covers a decent variety of styles vocally and does it very well i just wish the songs he's singing were better and the vocals sounded more natural.
One thing that i found interesting is how different this record sounds to Ed's Better Days. The latter sounds much less polished, very obvious in the vocals. You'd expect that a Julia Roberts led movie would demand a more polished product than Pearl Jam.

Mine, a lot of your analysis begs the question, on what equipment were you listening?

I actually checked if something was wrong with it (sennheiser hd650 with fiio e17 and e09k) because it sounded suspicious to me. I guess i was more sensible to the lower frequencies that day. I still dislike how LB sounds though.

I seem to remember some people saying O'Brien does a great job with Ed's vocals but i think Adam Kasper does a much much better job. He keeps more of the low end in and uses some light reverb. It's on ITW, US and Better Days (also produced by Ed and Kasper). Better Days is probably the best example being the most recent and the busiest mix. The vocals are also mixed lower there. If they ended up mixing the vocals so high the mix they may have as well made them sound good.

This album is still such an enjoyable listen for me from top to bottom. It lacks a bunch of clear top tier songs (quite a few come close) but since the record never flags they are less critical

I love the actual sound of the album. I think BoB is a big douche, but I like him as far as performance. I wish they'd just leave him out of any songwriting decisions and then bring him in for the actual performance of the songs. But he's a sneaky little motherfucker .....

listened to the backend of this on the way into work this morning. I do enjoy the Infallible > Pendulum > Swallowed Whole run, it's actually really solid.

I mentioned it in the Infallible march madness matchup thread, but it feels like two song ideas mashed into one. I was listening to it today, and it hit me that - with that idea in mind - it reminds me a lot of Marker In The Sand. Kind of off-kilter, overwrought verses that lead into a very melodic, sideways chorus. Marker definitely does it better in those regards. But I still enjoy Infallible... love the verses. I think it could do without the last chorus after the harmonizing when Ed goes to the next level in vocals, before it crashes back to the end.

But LtRP just feels like a b-side. It's not that I don't like it, it's actually alright in the dirty-dive-bar-in-the-bayou sort of way. And I appreciate them doing something totally different, but I don't like this type of "experimentation" from PJ... it's this album's Come Back. Sorta out of place.

Sleeping By Myself is probably the song that has grown the most on me. But maybe it's just bc it's between LtRP and Future Days, so it feels like a goddamn godsend compared to those.

Mike should be given a humanitarian award for campaigning to have Yellow Moon added to this record. I love the feeling of this song. Generally like the way Ed sings it... minus all the 'the's that sound like 'DUHHH's.. "Ohhhh oooo, yellow moon on DUHH riiiiise"

Future Days is still an embarrassment. I can't listen to it. Every time, I try. And every time, I stop it about a minute in. If Ed collected an album's worth of techno songs and shelved them out, I wish he'd do the same with these type of songs... just get them on tape and out of his system, and shelve it.

I don't think I've listened to this album this year. I don't really feel like revisiting anytime soon. Sleeping By Myself came up on shuffle though, and I still enjoy that one. I know people don't like it b/c it was a Uke song, but I think the LB version is better. I'd like for PJ to dabble with a little less polished alt. country (the songs to me sounds more pop rock with a dash of country). Both Sleeping By Myself and SOS could have gone down a little more country-ish road and would have been better for it.

darth_vedder wrote:I'd like for PJ to dabble with a little less polished alt. country (the songs to me sounds more pop rock with a dash of country). Both Sleeping By Myself and SOS could have gone down a little more country-ish road and would have been better for it.

And it would have been a less embarrassing way to age than trying to keep doing all the things you can't do anymore.

After watching Water on the Road today, I still think Ed has plenty to offer as a great songwriter... but it may come during his post-PJ solo years. It just seems that ever since S/T he is trying too hard to write classic PJ songs that will work great in a live setting (Severed Hand, Unthought Known, Lightning Bolt). Although I like these songs, I feel like his new focus on writing "stadium anthems" has dampered his creativity a bit. The driving force that was there from Vitalogy to Riot Act has changed drastically, but it's still in there.

With that said, I'm still content with Lightning Bolt. I think it's still very solid considering the band's current stage in their career. Swallowed Whole is probably Ed's best songwriting contribution since RA. Speaking of songwriting, 15 years ago Mike wrote Brain of J, Faithfull, and Given to Fly, Stone wrote No Way, Do the Evolution, In Hiding, and All Those Yesterdays. Ed gets most of the blame for writing stuff like Future Days, but his bandmates have really lost an edge as well. Did Stone forget how to write a kickass riff?

bluestate wrote:(Severed Hand, Unthought Known, Lightning Bolt). Although I like these songs, I feel like his new focus on writing "stadium anthems" has dampered his creativity a bit.

Those are the minority of his songs though. I think his new focus is making PJ happy and they all do anthems or similar now. I don't think he has any ambition with/for PJ and i think soundtracks are a convenient excuse to do something without the band.

Having lived with the album for a while now, I think Lightning Bolt is a good, solid record for a band 20+ years into their career. Eddie's vocals sound a lot better here than they did on Backspacer and the songwriting, in general, is strong

The Good:
1. Mind Your Manners - great, great song. Detonates live too.
2. Pendulum - nice to see the band revisit the haunting/drone song territory. Moody show opener.
3. Lightning Bolt & Swallowed Whole - strong EV songs
4. MFS & Infallible - props for trying something different, even if these songs don't work completely. Infallible sounds like PJ's version of a QOTSA song.


The Bad:
1. The overall production/recording of the album - BoB needs to lay off the compression and everything is too bright, whatever that means. Let's hear the space of the recording room, some natural reverb, etc. Let's hear the band actually playing together in a room. Quit worrying about bleeds or how it's going to sound as a shitty mp3 file. Get a producer to knock them out of their comfort zone.
2. Sirens - the soundtrack to every Grey's Anatomy montage. Listening to the band talk about how great this song is makes me gag.
3. Future Days - Hallmark called, they want their shitty dad-rock song back
4. Sleeping By Myself - a decent band rendition that is ruined by a cheesy solo.
5. The PJ "formula" for an album - Fast opener, semi-ballad/ballad by song 4 or 5, spooky/experimental mid-section and then some overly-sentimental dad rock songs to close out the album.

Lightning Bolt has its moments for sure, and I still play the album, but this album feels "safe". Stop writing for the arenas, and show us your musical muscles. After all these years, this is a band that should be able to play together in a room and knock out a song. I want to smell the amp buzz like I did on Vitalogy. I want to hear the warmth of the room like we did on No Code, AND I want the band to get experimental like they did on Binaural. They are too ensconced in their little kingdom they have built for themselves. What protected them in the late 90s/early 00's is now their Achilles heel.

I really like this album and I like alot of the songs and what they are trying to do.

The songs themselves just need more space. The all feel kind of to polished.

The fade outs on LB LTRP and infallible are cringeworthy

I like what BOB has done with Getaway Pendulum Sirens & Yellow Moon.

Outside of that Every other song could of been recorded better.

Matts drums sound terrible (Apart from sirens/pendulum)

A very good album badly produced/mixed IMHO.

Please leave BOB out of album No.11 please and get a butch Vig/josh Homme to take over.

Nothing much has changed for me when it comes to LB. It still sits at number 4 on my list. Infallible, Getaway, Pendulum, My Father's Son and Yellow Moon are the best songs, all top tier.

I probably like Getaway even more than I did when I first heard it. Their best rock song since Yield, possibly Vitalogy. Infallible is still my number 1 on the album though. And an overall top ten PJ song.

Chest Rockwell wrote:5. The PJ "formula" for an album - Fast opener, semi-ballad/ballad by song 4 or 5, spooky/experimental mid-section and then some overly-sentimental dad rock songs to close out the album.

Nothing grates me more than the fact that the band is so enamored of templated norms that they even have one for how to track their goddamn records.

Release_Me wrote:I probably like Getaway even more than I did when I first heard it. Their best rock song since Yield, possibly Vitalogy.

Agreed. Getaway is incredible.

Top 10 song for me!!!


Lightning Bolt infallible Pendulum Yellow Moon are all 5 stars for me