Red Mosquito

In 2023 Iggy Pop released Every Loser, an album championed as a return to his rough and ready garage rock roots. Every Loser was mastered by Matt Colton, mixed by Alan Moulder and produced by Andrew Watt who also played multiple instruments. "This album was created to be played as loud as your stereo will go," boasted Watt at the time. Even if Pop was as prone as ever to rhyme "bucket" with "fuck it", the songs themselves weren't bad but they sounded dreadful, harking back less to the scuzzy heyday of The Stooges than Jane's Addiction's disappointing comeback album, Strays, from two thousand and bloody three.

So guess which hot producer was hired for The Rolling Stones' first album of original material since Top Of The Pops was still being broadcast and the Crazy Frog ringtone was a hit? This man needs to be stopped before he curtails The Cure, bungs Neil Young and erodes Depeche Mode.

Fattie_Vedder wrote:

stip wrote:but the backspacer - gigaton run of records is my second favorite 3 record sequence so i wouldnt say no to more of that.

I am genuinely happy that there are fans out there that enjoy lightning bolt, even though I don’t. I would not want to yuck your yum.

How do you tend to group their 3 (or 2) record sequences? I tend to group them based on their connections to each other, influenced by what they were dealing with at the time. To your point, in some cases specific records took shape based on how they wanted to respond to previous records. I tend to see them like this:

Ten > Vs: sophomore album building off the momentum and sound they established

Vitalogy > No Code > Yield: Vitalogy has a lot more in common with no code and yield. It was the thrashing before turning away from society and then coming back to it having tired of the fight.

Binaural > Riot Act: the ‘lost’ and dark period, a sense of hopelessness

Pearl Jam > Backspacer > Lightning Bolt: trying to get back in touch with youthful energy and celebration of lives not wasted, leads the way to a full embrace of hopefulness, joy, and not taking themselves too seriously. Which then leads to less playfulness but more settling into earnest security in their place in life (aka more dad rock territory)

Gigaton > TBD: Gigaton has a lot more in common with LB than appears on the surface, despite the fact that LB is my least favorite record, and I really like gigaton. Gigaton is a more mature and introspectively oriented Lightning bolt, what LB could have been if given the chance to breathe and not be squashed by how it was mixed.

liebzz wrote:I don’t group them in order:

Ten > Vs.

Vitalogy > No Code

Yield/Avocado/Gigaton

Binaural > Riot Act

Backspacer > Lightning Bolt

The ones out of order always seemed to me like an attempt at course correction while the ones in order seem to serve as continuing themes from album to album.

igotworms wrote:With the exception of Backspacer > Lightning Bolt I'm not sure I'd group any of the other albums together. They each have a very separate identity both musically and thematically. I think that's part of the reason I was so disappointed with LB as it was "Backspacer but longer". Unambitious and it also harmed Backspacer's legacy as I think as a one-off experiment it was a worthy addition to the catalogue. But once it becomes a period of the band it gets dragged down.

stip wrote:

liebzz wrote:I don’t group them in order:

Ten > Vs.

Vitalogy > No Code

Yield/Avocado/Gigaton

Binaural > Riot Act

Backspacer > Lightning Bolt

The ones out of order always seemed to me like an attempt at course correction while the ones in order seem to serve as continuing themes from album to album.

what connection do you see between Yield, Avocado, and Gigaton? That's not a grouping that immediately springs to mind

stip wrote:

Fattie_Vedder wrote:

stip wrote:but the backspacer - gigaton run of records is my second favorite 3 record sequence so i wouldnt say no to more of that.

I am genuinely happy that there are fans out there that enjoy lightning bolt, even though I don’t. I would not want to yuck your yum.

How do you tend to group their 3 (or 2) record sequences? I tend to group them based on their connections to each other, influenced by what they were dealing with at the time. To your point, in some cases specific records took shape based on how they wanted to respond to previous records. I tend to see them like this:

Ten > Vs: sophomore album building off the momentum and sound they established

Vitalogy > No Code > Yield: Vitalogy has a lot more in common with no code and yield. It was the thrashing before turning away from society and then coming back to it having tired of the fight.

Binaural > Riot Act: the ‘lost’ and dark period, a sense of hopelessness

Pearl Jam > Backspacer > Lightning Bolt: trying to get back in touch with youthful energy and celebration of lives not wasted, leads the way to a full embrace of hopefulness, joy, and not taking themselves too seriously. Which then leads to less playfulness but more settling into earnest security in their place in life (aka more dad rock territory)

Gigaton > TBD: Gigaton has a lot more in common with LB than appears on the surface, despite the fact that LB is my least favorite record, and I really like gigaton. Gigaton is a more mature and introspectively oriented Lightning bolt, what LB could have been if given the chance to breathe and not be squashed by how it was mixed.

Delayed response - the way I tend to group the albums in my head is thematically. Each PJ record musically, for better or worse, tends to feel like it is something of a response to the sound of the album before it - occasionally reactionary (Vs or S/T, maybe Gigaton), sometimes evolutionary, and usually a reflection of the themes of the record (which isn't surprising)


To that end, I tend to lump Ten -> Vs together. In different ways, the sound of a band railing against the lack of meaning they find in the world, and their hunger for it. These are pearl jam's most grasping and needy records.

No Code to Binaural are their first stabs at trying to articulate what they were looking to find in those first albums in ways that don't stick. What is offered No Code and Yield has a darker undercurrent (especially Yield) that really comes to the surface in Binaural

Riot Act to Backspacer are 100% records that grapple with George Bush's america. Backspacer is a pivot record that puts the cap (by its intentional absence) on those Bush years, and pivots into the next run of albums

Lightning Bolt and Gigaton - the thematic transition starts in Backspacer (and L-Bolt CAN be seen as a logical extension of it) - middle aged records of a band of people that achieved everything they ever wanted and are now worried about losing it and confronting the legacy they will leave behind for the people they care about.

Ms Harmless wrote:what if Why Can't They See? sounds like Save You?

Fattie_Vedder wrote:

Ms Harmless wrote:what if Why Can't They See? sounds like Save You?

That would mostly be amazing, except for the dampened sound of Save You. And it would be so much better if it weren’t called “Why Can’t You See?”