Red Mosquito

stip wrote:

Lament wrote: Anyways, I happen to be in the "I don't like Sirens crowd." I don't like the music. I'm not sure what everyone thinks is so great about Ed's vocal take on it; It sounds strained and almost unpleasant to me. The sentiment/message is something I can't relate to at all, and it doesn't do a good job of making me want to feel any empathy for the protagonist in the song. Wishlist is pretty mundane, but I can relate to the simple longing of it, and the sweetness and simplicity of the track make it work for me when I'm in the right mood. The pain and confusion of the protagonist in Light Years pulls me in by my heartstrings and sucks me into his plight. Parachutes has what amounts to some interesting/unique melodic/vocal approaches (by Pearl Jam standards) that transcend my lack of any connection to what the narrator is singing about. Sirens doesn't have a single one of those things for me. Maybe someday I'll feel differently about the sentiment because either a. I'll be able to relate to it or b. Someone will frame it in a way that allows me to at least empathize with it, but short of one of those two things, I don't see myself ever liking this song.

Obviously you may just never like the song. I know it took a few listens for me to approach it the right way, and to sort of get under my superficial but still real resistance to the song. Actually I think that ESPN bit probably speaks volumes for what's powerful about that song--what it says about how tenuous our happiness is. How fragile, precious, and even arbitrary it can be. And if you're fortunate enough to have something you really wanted to last forever, and then have to confront the reality that you can't, and that you will lose it, that will be very powerful.

The lyrics have some clunky moments. There are places where this song could use an editor. But there are also more than a few moments that really capture that feeling. Its made even more powerful by the fact that Eddie is singing it since for so many people his voice, when it's on, makes the world seem realer, makes true things seem truer. It is taking a powerful emotion and heightening it. In the context of the catalog (this was an insight from the Gleason piece) it is perhaps even more moving because it's being sung by someone you know always wanted to feel this way, and finally does. Contrast it with something like the end of Breath. This is the place he was looking for. How lucky he is that he has it. How unfair that he can't keep it. The scenes of Gleason and his son were a really visceral reminder of this.

Of course this does not necessarily explain the musical choices. I think in some respects the familiarity of the music, the way it is grounded in a style that has a reach that usually goes pretty far beyond what Pearl Jam is reaching for in terms of the target audience and how it aims to touch them, makes a lot of sense for this song. It heightens the message because it is so easy, takes no real steps to alienate, doesn't make you work for anything. It draws attention to the message and meaning, and makes it easy to take in. A more traditional pearl jam format would have made the song more private in a way. Something easier for the more narrow fan community to accept, perhaps, but I think this is a song that aims to reach beyond that.


None of this may make the music any better for you. But Sirens is a song I came to really like despite being quite reluctant to like it. I think this explains both why I do and why I was so reluctant to admit it.

evenslow wrote:

theplatypus wrote:

evenslow wrote:

dkfan9 wrote:

Dr. Van Nostrand wrote:

dkfan9 wrote:i don't really like this song.

Just the overall style or are there specific parts you don't like?

overall style. it's like taking the worst parts of backspacer and making a song out of them. the vocals grind on me, the music is no good. the vocals really bother me.

but what about the vocals?

They grind on and bother him

oh, thanks.

stip wrote:what's powerful about that song--what it says about how tenuous our happiness is. How fragile, precious, and even arbitrary it can be. And if you're fortunate enough to have something you really wanted to last forever, and then have to confront the reality that you can't, and that you will lose it, that will be very powerful.

stip wrote:One of the things I think sirens does which is interesting is situate the song in the present worrying about a future loss. The real emotional weight of the song comes from the relief that everything is okay now but it won't always be. And to be honest I think that's a much harder sentiment to explore than existing loss (light years or long road)

Lament wrote:

stip wrote:One of the things I think sirens does which is interesting is situate the song in the present worrying about a future loss. The real emotional weight of the song comes from the relief that everything is okay now but it won't always be. And to be honest I think that's a much harder sentiment to explore than existing loss (light years or long road)

This very well may be true, but it still doesn't change the fact that for me (and from what I can gather, for others as well) it fails to build that bridge to make any of the sentiment feel like it matters to someone who can't draw a parallel between themselves and the narrator. Alive is another great example of this. The protagonist in that song is in the middle of a situation that is as completely foreign to me as anything in the world, but the song pulls me in and makes me feel like I'm right there with him. I'm moved and captivated by what's going on. Sirens just doesn't accomplish that for me. That's one of my problems with latter day Pearl Jam; I feel like the songs are "good enough" if you can make a really obvious connection to them, but otherwise just kinda exist there. At the strength of their powers, Pearl Jam's best material demanded your empathy and emotional participation, even if the sentiment/message was completely foreign to you.

stip wrote:oh i agree. I really like this song but it's not some of their best material for precisely that reason. If you need to really relate to the song to feel it your personal experience of the song could be quite powerful, but that is a mark against the song. When i played this for two non pearl jam fan friends the one with kids loved the song and the one without thought 'eh',

stip wrote:In that respect it's oddly akin to some of the anti-bush screeds/political songs from the Bush era. The target is so big, and so immediate, and so pasionatley felt that some of the work you might need to do to bring in someone who doesn't start from the same place just doesn't get done.

mastaflatch wrote:tl;dr

Lament wrote:

mastaflatch wrote:tl;dr

Sirens is a song by Pearl Jam.

dkfan9 wrote:

Dr. Van Nostrand wrote:

dkfan9 wrote:i don't really like this song.

Just the overall style or are there specific parts you don't like?

overall style. it's like taking the worst parts of backspacer and making a song out of them. the vocals grind on me, the music is no good. the vocals really bother me.

harmless wrote:

dkfan9 wrote:

Dr. Van Nostrand wrote:

dkfan9 wrote:i don't really like this song.

Just the overall style or are there specific parts you don't like?

overall style. it's like taking the worst parts of backspacer and making a song out of them. the vocals grind on me, the music is no good. the vocals really bother me.

Come on. If you don't like the song, there are other, far more immediately obvious things to say about it than this. The song has very little in common with Backspacer at all.