Red Mosquito

I think it really reiterated to me that Backspacer is the real sore spot in the catalog. Songs from LB like Yellow Moon, Pendulum and the title track almost made my top 10 but I think the only other Backspacer song that comes close besides The End is Johnny Guitar.

Marker
Parachutes
Unemployable
Big Wave
Army Reserve
The Fixer
Johnny Guitar
Swallowed Whole
Let It Ride
Cold Confession

These 2 are among the better things of the last 12 years too.
Again Today
Better Things

I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.

Life Wasted
Severed Hand
Inside Job
Got Some
Unthought Known
Let It Ride
Of the Earth
Pendulum
Lightning Bolt
Yellow Moon

Birds in Hell wrote:I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.

fair enough, and there are definitely some songs on Lightning Bolt that feel constructed in the way you're describing (Pendulum and Infallible come to mind, though I quite like both of those). I definitely don't hear that on Backspacer. Almost all those songs are roaring with energy (if not always intensity) and feel very much of the moment - like 5 guys came together to document this moment in time (which it very much is. I gave Backspacer a listen last night and it is totally an attempt to capture how liberating the end of the bush years/start of Obama's term felt).

Backspacer is a tricky record - it is, I think, the most challenging pearl jam record to unlock without context (it is the coda to that run of the first 9 albums, thematically, as well as being in direct conversation with Riot Act and S/T) while paradoxically being a record full of songs that, even if their darker/weightier moments, are intended to be lighter, carefree, more immediately digestible after a career full of heavier, denser, weightier records. It is an anti-statement album (by design) which is itself, for a band like pearl jam, a statement.

Lightning Bolt, for all its superficial similarities to Backspacer (which are really just similarities in that they were later albums featuring Eddie's diminished vocal capacity), is a very different beast. It's a middle aged record with middle aged themes. It's a cautious record, where backspacer is carefree - concerned about legacy (not really musical legacy as much as something more personal), inheritance, loss, obligation - motivated not by what it hopes to gain but by what it hopes to retain, and the fear that what this is is not good enough. The songs do explore these themes in interesting and interconnected ways, and the songwriting on the record is generally pretty strong. It's just that the antiseptic production flattens all the character out of the performances

i never did finish the lightning bolt tour, that post reminds me

Most of this is going to come from Avocado and the leaks...

Parachutes
Marker In The Sand
Big Wave
Army Reserve
Severed Hand
Unemployable
10 Billion Years
Let It Ride
Got Some
Sleeping By Myself

Speed of Sound
Comatose
Life Wasted
Inside Job
10 Billion Years
Getaway
Mind Your Manners
Let The Records Play
Sleeping by Myself
Better Things

Man of the Hour/Sirens
Life Wasted
Unemployable
Parachutes
Let It Ride
Johnny Guitar
The Fixer
Force of Nature
Pendulum
Sleeping By Myself

Looking at the lists, I realized I forgot 10 Billion Years. It's possible that could bump The End or Comatose. That was really the gem of that leak of songs (and I guess the only complete thing we hadn't already heard).

Like I said in a different thread, I like "Ten Billion Years" quite a bit but I am not convinced it's a Pearl Jam song. I don't think that sounds like Matt on drums.

theplatypus wrote:Like I said in a different thread, I like "Ten Billion Years" quite a bit but I am not convinced it's a Pearl Jam song. I don't think that sounds like Matt on drums.

Let them have this

HeyGuys wrote:

theplatypus wrote:Like I said in a different thread, I like "Ten Billion Years" quite a bit but I am not convinced it's a Pearl Jam song. I don't think that sounds like Matt on drums.

Let them have this

thank you

I feel like I hear Ed doing some of the backing vocals, though I could be far off on that assessment. Maybe I'll also just making the assumption since it came out in concert with the other material that was definitely PJ.

Birds in Hell wrote:I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.

yes this, but i'd replace your self titled examples with my own

Life Wasted
Marker
Unemployable
Army Reserve
Got Some
Just Breathe
Unthought Known
Swallowed Whole
Yellow Moon
Let It Ride

stip wrote:

Birds in Hell wrote:I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.

fair enough, and there are definitely some songs on Lightning Bolt that feel constructed in the way you're describing (Pendulum and Infallible come to mind, though I quite like both of those).

I don't care for the production on Infallible but it's one of the songs on LB I think is least suggestive of what I’m talking about, it has an internal logic and flow that feels quite genuine.

Parachutes
army reserve
Severed Hand
My Fathers Son
Sirens
Johnny Guitar
Speed of Sound
WWS
Unemployable
The Fixer

*list subject to change

In no particular order:

Parachutes
WWS
Sirens
Pendulum
Lightning Bolt
Life Wasted
Sleeping By Myself
Johnny Guitar
Come Back
Army Reserve