Red Mosquito

With the solo ukulele record you put out in 2011, and Pearl Jam's hit "Just Breathe," it seems like you've opened the door for a bit of, not softness, but. . .

Sentimentality. For years, it was playing word games and expressing those emotions, but doing it in such a way that was cryptic and where Mark Arm from Mudhoney would still have some modicum of respect for me. But nowadays, it's more like sitting down and writing a song, and whatever comes out, comes out.

The new album also has the power ballad "Sirens," which sounds big – dare I say "commercial"?

You've already said it! You want to say something else? You want me to double-dare you? [Laughs] You know, a lot of these songs were written in the middle of the night, and you're the only one awake, it seems, for miles. There's no one criticizing what you're writing.

dimejinky99 wrote:Platys a fifth dan hipster.

His avatar is 'the' batman

mastaflatch wrote:

stip wrote:

mastaflatch wrote:also, there's got to be a major difference between a ramshackle 60s cover that was recorded live on a soundcheck then released as a fan club single then off to the airwaves and became a hit by popular demand then put on a benefit album for Kosovar refugees and a song that uses the very musical stereotypes and idiosycrasies that PJ tried to shack off for most of their career. those hair metal mannerisms were what the Seattle scene stood against in the beginning and that stance surely appealed to me.

i'm not going to diss the song's lyrics or overall musical performance of the band but it's a clear and conscious choice from this band and BO'B and it's some kind of artistic u-turn that can't go unnoticed.

It's a song that probably wouldn't have appeared on earlier records, although pj deteactors in the early years considered pj one small remove from hair metal anyway.

My larger point was that I see no reason to think that the existence of stuff like red dot, soon forget, or wasted reprise were somehow keeping songs like sirens off the record, or that they are incompatible

i get what you're saying and you may be right. that being said, Ed claimed, when promoting LB and to ackowledge the corporate rock/hair metal roots of Sirens, that they'd stop caring what Mark Arm thought about their songs. so there's that stance that may (or may not) signify that current PJ doesn't care either about what they used to be. there's got to be something to think about when the band you used to love is now recording a power-ballad single that the singer can barely handle live just weeks after its release.

VinylGuy wrote:I still dont get the hatred Backspacer gets. Maybe because of the fixer video or the Target thing? Because even if you dont like it musically or lyrically, it was a very different approach for the band.

And yes, they gained a lot of new fans with this one.

VinylGuy wrote:which ones ??

VinylGuy wrote:Is it wrong to try to have a radio hit?

Lament wrote:

VinylGuy wrote:which ones ??

I'd say The Fixer is in the same lineage (in terms of no frills, straight ahead, non-dramatic upbeat pop-rock) as stuff like World Wide Suicide, Big Wave, Undone, Ghost, Breakerfall, Sad, Leatherman, Mankind, etc.

VinylGuy wrote:Is it wrong to try to have a radio hit?

No. I probably love more songs that are/have been radio hits than anyone else on this board. But a song I don't like is a song I don't like, regardless of what it's trying to be. There should be a level of pop transcendence with a song that is trying to be a radio hit, and The Fixer doesn't achieve it.

stip wrote:

mastaflatch wrote:

stip wrote:

mastaflatch wrote:also, there's got to be a major difference between a ramshackle 60s cover that was recorded live on a soundcheck then released as a fan club single then off to the airwaves and became a hit by popular demand then put on a benefit album for Kosovar refugees and a song that uses the very musical stereotypes and idiosycrasies that PJ tried to shack off for most of their career. those hair metal mannerisms were what the Seattle scene stood against in the beginning and that stance surely appealed to me.

i'm not going to diss the song's lyrics or overall musical performance of the band but it's a clear and conscious choice from this band and BO'B and it's some kind of artistic u-turn that can't go unnoticed.

It's a song that probably wouldn't have appeared on earlier records, although pj deteactors in the early years considered pj one small remove from hair metal anyway.

My larger point was that I see no reason to think that the existence of stuff like red dot, soon forget, or wasted reprise were somehow keeping songs like sirens off the record, or that they are incompatible

i get what you're saying and you may be right. that being said, Ed claimed, when promoting LB and to ackowledge the corporate rock/hair metal roots of Sirens, that they'd stop caring what Mark Arm thought about their songs. so there's that stance that may (or may not) signify that current PJ doesn't care either about what they used to be. there's got to be something to think about when the band you used to love is now recording a power-ballad single that the singer can barely handle live just weeks after its release.

I think the fact that they aren't letting their sound be determined by what some random guy thinks is cool is great. They've been out of high school for a long time. What that has to do with whether or not Eddie can handle a song live don't know.

theplatypus wrote:Backspacer is Pearl Jam with a tan, and a shitty goatee, and frosted tips.