Red Mosquito

Chain75 wrote:Tchad Blake's Binaural
1."Breakerfall"
2."Insignificance"
3."Evacuation"
4."Letter to the Dead" Later renamed to "Sad"
5."Rival"
6."Grievance"
7."Light Years"
8."Of the Girl"
9."Thin Air"
10."Nothing as It Seems"
11."Fatal"
12."Sleight of Hand"
13."Soon Forget"
14."In the Moonlight"
15."Parting Ways"
16."Education"

O'Brien's Binaural
1. Breakerfall
2. God's Dice
3. Evacuation
4. Light Years
5. Nothing as it seems
6. Thin Air
7. Insignificance
8. Of the Girl
9. Grievance
10. Rival
11. Sleight of Hand
12. Soon Forget
13. Parting Ways

So O'Brien and PJ tought the heavier songs where not mixed right... then O'Brien made the final sequencing different....

I have to say that i listenned to both track listing and my opinion on this is : "Chad you nailed it good man!!!" Don't get me wrong i love Binaural... on of my best... but with Blake's track listing this is a masterpiece!!!! So listenning again to Binaural made me change the album back to Chad Blake's Binaural on my ipod... Sooo good!!!

Parting Ways should of been the final song on Blake's list... sorry Chad Education is awesome... but not placed last....

Has there ever been official documentation of the Blake mix? Education seems the strangest way to end the album. How could have Parting Ways second last?

The strength of song writing in the era is supreme. Arguably their most fertile period.

I wonder if versions of thunderclap/harmony/foldback exist. I really love those instrumentals.

I also thought anything in between had potential and I’d love to hear a cleaned up version of puzzles and games

I think it may be better than light years

michaeldarren79 wrote:

Chain75 wrote:Tchad Blake's Binaural
1."Breakerfall"
2."Insignificance"
3."Evacuation"
4."Letter to the Dead" Later renamed to "Sad"
5."Rival"
6."Grievance"
7."Light Years"
8."Of the Girl"
9."Thin Air"
10."Nothing as It Seems"
11."Fatal"
12."Sleight of Hand"
13."Soon Forget"
14."In the Moonlight"
15."Parting Ways"
16."Education"

O'Brien's Binaural
1. Breakerfall
2. God's Dice
3. Evacuation
4. Light Years
5. Nothing as it seems
6. Thin Air
7. Insignificance
8. Of the Girl
9. Grievance
10. Rival
11. Sleight of Hand
12. Soon Forget
13. Parting Ways

So O'Brien and PJ tought the heavier songs where not mixed right... then O'Brien made the final sequencing different....

I have to say that i listenned to both track listing and my opinion on this is : "Chad you nailed it good man!!!" Don't get me wrong i love Binaural... on of my best... but with Blake's track listing this is a masterpiece!!!! So listenning again to Binaural made me change the album back to Chad Blake's Binaural on my ipod... Sooo good!!!

Parting Ways should of been the final song on Blake's list... sorry Chad Education is awesome... but not placed last....

Has there ever been official documentation of the Blake mix? Education seems the strangest way to end the album. How could have Parting Ways second last?

I always picture Education as part of the hidden track. Parting Ways, long pause, Writer's Block > Education. Sounds perfect to me.

The more I listen to this album the more I'm positive.

This is by far the worst recorded album in the whole discography.

It DESPERATELY needs a remix.

I touched on it in the major flaw topic but I'll do more in depth here - every song on this album is better live than on the studio album. The album is BEGGING for more. Noisier, louder, bigger. They have these songs that experiment more with noise rock than they did before...Except they forgot the noise. The songs just...die. They have these scorching rockers and they come off as tepid on the album.

SO many of them are killed by this. Grievance on the album is a whimper compared to live. Nothing as it Seems sounds nice when it starts, but it is BEGGING for more when it gets loud in the second half but isn't given it.

I get it. They were going for that tension - holding back instead of driving forward. The problem is that doesn't work with the songs they wrote. Riot Act would make a nice effect with that (Can't Keep is a good example). But these songs NEED MORE.

Thin Air is one of the only ones that I think has a great vibe and that pulled back vibe works very well there, I LOVE the beginning of that song, Eddie's voice sounds great and the band perfectly matches him. And it ends well too.

But that song was designed to work in this stripped down sound with just a bit of tension in the background. Of the Girl works for the same reason (though I think the chorus is a bit meh after a really cool beginning).

Insignificance, Grievance, Breakerfall...they want more. A LOT more.

And in general I think Eddie's voice sounds frail and tinny in a way that doesn't suit the songs. Rival sounds great but Eddie sounds off. I don't know if it's the effect on his voice or the mixing or what, but it's a mistake.

As much as some songs still sound PRETTY good despite these issues, I feel like almost ALL of them would be greatly improved by a remix, and even better if they had re-recorded them. I think only God's Dice and Thin Air reach their full potential. I guess Light Years/Soon Forget/Parting Ways too don't need to be changed.

This album sounds very cold and distant, and maybe that's what he was going for (Riot Act, again, a good example) but I feel like some of that distance is because the songs just sound 'off' or wrong or a shadow of themselves.

Basically this album just sounds like a WHOLE lot of wasted potential because you can see what could be a good album inside of it but it just doesn't rise to the challenge.

mikejasond wrote:The more I listen to this album the more I'm positive.

This is by far the worst recorded album in the whole discography.

It DESPERATELY needs a remix.

I touched on it in the major flaw topic but I'll do more in depth here - every song on this album is better live than on the studio album. The album is BEGGING for more. Noisier, louder, bigger. They have these songs that experiment more with noise rock than they did before...Except they forgot the noise. The songs just...die. They have these scorching rockers and they come off as tepid on the album.

SO many of them are killed by this. Grievance on the album is a whimper compared to live. Nothing as it Seems sounds nice when it starts, but it is BEGGING for more when it gets loud in the second half but isn't given it.

I get it. They were going for that tension - holding back instead of driving forward. The problem is that doesn't work with the songs they wrote. Riot Act would make a nice effect with that (Can't Keep is a good example). But these songs NEED MORE.

Thin Air is one of the only ones that I think has a great vibe and that pulled back vibe works very well there, I LOVE the beginning of that song, Eddie's voice sounds great and the band perfectly matches him. And it ends well too.

But that song was designed to work in this stripped down sound with just a bit of tension in the background. Of the Girl works for the same reason (though I think the chorus is a bit meh after a really cool beginning).

Insignificance, Grievance, Breakerfall...they want more. A LOT more.

And in general I think Eddie's voice sounds frail and tinny in a way that doesn't suit the songs. Rival sounds great but Eddie sounds off. I don't know if it's the effect on his voice or the mixing or what, but it's a mistake.

As much as some songs still sound PRETTY good despite these issues, I feel like almost ALL of them would be greatly improved by a remix, and even better if they had re-recorded them. I think only God's Dice and Thin Air reach their full potential. I guess Light Years/Soon Forget/Parting Ways too don't need to be changed.

This album sounds very cold and distant, and maybe that's what he was going for (Riot Act, again, a good example) but I feel like some of that distance is because the songs just sound 'off' or wrong or a shadow of themselves.

Basically this album just sounds like a WHOLE lot of wasted potential because you can see what could be a good album inside of it but it just doesn't rise to the challenge.

Nah

Monkey_Driven wrote:

mikejasond wrote:The more I listen to this album the more I'm positive.

This is by far the worst recorded album in the whole discography.

It DESPERATELY needs a remix.

I touched on it in the major flaw topic but I'll do more in depth here - every song on this album is better live than on the studio album. The album is BEGGING for more. Noisier, louder, bigger. They have these songs that experiment more with noise rock than they did before...Except they forgot the noise. The songs just...die. They have these scorching rockers and they come off as tepid on the album.

SO many of them are killed by this. Grievance on the album is a whimper compared to live. Nothing as it Seems sounds nice when it starts, but it is BEGGING for more when it gets loud in the second half but isn't given it.

I get it. They were going for that tension - holding back instead of driving forward. The problem is that doesn't work with the songs they wrote. Riot Act would make a nice effect with that (Can't Keep is a good example). But these songs NEED MORE.

Thin Air is one of the only ones that I think has a great vibe and that pulled back vibe works very well there, I LOVE the beginning of that song, Eddie's voice sounds great and the band perfectly matches him. And it ends well too.

But that song was designed to work in this stripped down sound with just a bit of tension in the background. Of the Girl works for the same reason (though I think the chorus is a bit meh after a really cool beginning).

Insignificance, Grievance, Breakerfall...they want more. A LOT more.

And in general I think Eddie's voice sounds frail and tinny in a way that doesn't suit the songs. Rival sounds great but Eddie sounds off. I don't know if it's the effect on his voice or the mixing or what, but it's a mistake.

As much as some songs still sound PRETTY good despite these issues, I feel like almost ALL of them would be greatly improved by a remix, and even better if they had re-recorded them. I think only God's Dice and Thin Air reach their full potential. I guess Light Years/Soon Forget/Parting Ways too don't need to be changed.

This album sounds very cold and distant, and maybe that's what he was going for (Riot Act, again, a good example) but I feel like some of that distance is because the songs just sound 'off' or wrong or a shadow of themselves.

Basically this album just sounds like a WHOLE lot of wasted potential because you can see what could be a good album inside of it but it just doesn't rise to the challenge.

Nah

I think the whole album sounds like a band really tired of the rock act and that’s what the songs lack for me—spirit, intensity, fire, passion. With the exception of Light Years and Of the Girl, most of the songs sound forced with a lot of annoying lyrics —so, i dont think it’s necessarily the sound.

Here was a chance to go deeper and experiment yet we wind up with the same type of songs that we would hear in the following 12 years. Pearl Jam has been a band content to rely on their musical template: 2 fast songs, 2 ballads, anthemic song, 1 hard song,1 weird song, a filler or two and a closer. We've gotten this every album. I felt at the very least they had a chance to include a long instrumental song like Thunderclap—one of my fav songs—or maybe have some nebulous musical intermission or album concept, a vision of some kind...Something that would’ve made us go wtf in a good way, at the very least. I dont undertsand where they were at this stage. Weren't they having lots of internal issues??? They didn't include Fatal nor Sad but were okay with leaving Breakerfall, soon forget and sleight of hand (yawnnn!!) on the album, questionable choices in restrospect. Binaural feels like it was one of those—“Well, a couple more before we fulfill our contract with Epic/Sony.” It is always low on my list, next to Lightning Bolt and Backspacer

Royalearth wrote:sleight of hand (yawnnn!!)

I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

Royalearth wrote:

Monkey_Driven wrote:

mikejasond wrote:The more I listen to this album the more I'm positive.

This is by far the worst recorded album in the whole discography.

It DESPERATELY needs a remix.

I touched on it in the major flaw topic but I'll do more in depth here - every song on this album is better live than on the studio album. The album is BEGGING for more. Noisier, louder, bigger. They have these songs that experiment more with noise rock than they did before...Except they forgot the noise. The songs just...die. They have these scorching rockers and they come off as tepid on the album.

SO many of them are killed by this. Grievance on the album is a whimper compared to live. Nothing as it Seems sounds nice when it starts, but it is BEGGING for more when it gets loud in the second half but isn't given it.

I get it. They were going for that tension - holding back instead of driving forward. The problem is that doesn't work with the songs they wrote. Riot Act would make a nice effect with that (Can't Keep is a good example). But these songs NEED MORE.

Thin Air is one of the only ones that I think has a great vibe and that pulled back vibe works very well there, I LOVE the beginning of that song, Eddie's voice sounds great and the band perfectly matches him. And it ends well too.

But that song was designed to work in this stripped down sound with just a bit of tension in the background. Of the Girl works for the same reason (though I think the chorus is a bit meh after a really cool beginning).

Insignificance, Grievance, Breakerfall...they want more. A LOT more.

And in general I think Eddie's voice sounds frail and tinny in a way that doesn't suit the songs. Rival sounds great but Eddie sounds off. I don't know if it's the effect on his voice or the mixing or what, but it's a mistake.

As much as some songs still sound PRETTY good despite these issues, I feel like almost ALL of them would be greatly improved by a remix, and even better if they had re-recorded them. I think only God's Dice and Thin Air reach their full potential. I guess Light Years/Soon Forget/Parting Ways too don't need to be changed.

This album sounds very cold and distant, and maybe that's what he was going for (Riot Act, again, a good example) but I feel like some of that distance is because the songs just sound 'off' or wrong or a shadow of themselves.

Basically this album just sounds like a WHOLE lot of wasted potential because you can see what could be a good album inside of it but it just doesn't rise to the challenge.

Nah

I think the whole album sounds like a band really tired of the rock act and that’s what the songs lack for me—spirit, intensity, fire, passion. With the exception of Light Years and Of the Girl, most of the songs sound forced with a lot of annoying lyrics —so, i dont think it’s necessarily the sound.

Here was a chance to go deeper and experiment yet we wind up with the same type of songs that we would hear in the following 12 years. Pearl Jam has been a band content to rely on their musical template: 2 fast songs, 2 ballads, anthemic song, 1 hard song,1 weird song, a filler or two and a closer. We've gotten this every album. I felt at the very least they had a chance to include a long instrumental song like Thunderclap—one of my fav songs—or maybe have some nebulous musical intermission or album concept, a vision of some kind...Something that would’ve made us go wtf in a good way, at the very least. I dont undertsand where they were at this stage. Weren't they having lots of internal issues??? They didn't include Fatal nor Sad but were okay with leaving Breakerfall, soon forget and sleight of hand (yawnnn!!) on the album, questionable choices in restrospect. Binaural feels like it was one of those—“Well, a couple more before we fulfill our contract with Epic/Sony.” It is always low on my list, next to Lightning Bolt and Backspacer

Mods?!

Royalearth wrote:

Monkey_Driven wrote:

mikejasond wrote:The more I listen to this album the more I'm positive.

This is by far the worst recorded album in the whole discography.

It DESPERATELY needs a remix.

I touched on it in the major flaw topic but I'll do more in depth here - every song on this album is better live than on the studio album. The album is BEGGING for more. Noisier, louder, bigger. They have these songs that experiment more with noise rock than they did before...Except they forgot the noise. The songs just...die. They have these scorching rockers and they come off as tepid on the album.

SO many of them are killed by this. Grievance on the album is a whimper compared to live. Nothing as it Seems sounds nice when it starts, but it is BEGGING for more when it gets loud in the second half but isn't given it.

I get it. They were going for that tension - holding back instead of driving forward. The problem is that doesn't work with the songs they wrote. Riot Act would make a nice effect with that (Can't Keep is a good example). But these songs NEED MORE.

Thin Air is one of the only ones that I think has a great vibe and that pulled back vibe works very well there, I LOVE the beginning of that song, Eddie's voice sounds great and the band perfectly matches him. And it ends well too.

But that song was designed to work in this stripped down sound with just a bit of tension in the background. Of the Girl works for the same reason (though I think the chorus is a bit meh after a really cool beginning).

Insignificance, Grievance, Breakerfall...they want more. A LOT more.

And in general I think Eddie's voice sounds frail and tinny in a way that doesn't suit the songs. Rival sounds great but Eddie sounds off. I don't know if it's the effect on his voice or the mixing or what, but it's a mistake.

As much as some songs still sound PRETTY good despite these issues, I feel like almost ALL of them would be greatly improved by a remix, and even better if they had re-recorded them. I think only God's Dice and Thin Air reach their full potential. I guess Light Years/Soon Forget/Parting Ways too don't need to be changed.

This album sounds very cold and distant, and maybe that's what he was going for (Riot Act, again, a good example) but I feel like some of that distance is because the songs just sound 'off' or wrong or a shadow of themselves.

Basically this album just sounds like a WHOLE lot of wasted potential because you can see what could be a good album inside of it but it just doesn't rise to the challenge.

Nah

I think the whole album sounds like a band really tired of the rock act and that’s what the songs lack for me—spirit, intensity, fire, passion. With the exception of Light Years and Of the Girl, most of the songs sound forced with a lot of annoying lyrics —so, i dont think it’s necessarily the sound.

Here was a chance to go deeper and experiment yet we wind up with the same type of songs that we would hear in the following 12 years. Pearl Jam has been a band content to rely on their musical template: 2 fast songs, 2 ballads, anthemic song, 1 hard song,1 weird song, a filler or two and a closer. We've gotten this every album. I felt at the very least they had a chance to include a long instrumental song like Thunderclap—one of my fav songs—or maybe have some nebulous musical intermission or album concept, a vision of some kind...Something that would’ve made us go wtf in a good way, at the very least. I dont undertsand where they were at this stage. Weren't they having lots of internal issues??? They didn't include Fatal nor Sad but were okay with leaving Breakerfall, soon forget and sleight of hand (yawnnn!!) on the album, questionable choices in restrospect. Binaural feels like it was one of those—“Well, a couple more before we fulfill our contract with Epic/Sony.” It is always low on my list, next to Lightning Bolt and Backspacer

Sad also feels like a half-done song to me too. I like it but it seems like it can be something much more.

I really like Fatal though.

I feel the exact opposite of this.

Instead, I would have loved to get a second album consisting of the b-sides that didn’t make this album.

Otherwise, this album is phenomenal and might be the one album where they utilized Matt Cameron perfectly. I do think they did pull back from the full experiment, well documented on RM, but the songs are tremendous. It also generally holds that the songs on every Pearl Jam album sound better live at least during the time period where the album was released.

liebzz wrote:I feel the exact opposite of this.

Instead, I would have loved to get a second album consisting of the b-sides that didn’t make this album.

Otherwise, this album is phenomenal and might be the one album where they utilized Matt Cameron perfectly. I do think they did pull back from the full experiment, well documented on RM, but the songs are tremendous. It also generally holds that the songs on every Pearl Jam album sound better live at least during the time period where the album was released.

While sometimes true, I don't think that's ever MORE true than Binaural. Songs that are standouts live like Grievance make no impact on the album at all. If you compare the live versions of an album to the studio versions, NO album would benefit more than Binaural.

Birds in Hell wrote:

Royalearth wrote:sleight of hand (yawnnn!!)

I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

Lol. Sleight of Hand is the best song they’ve even written.

Love Sleight Of Hand.

there are pearl jam songs i like less, but i dont know that there are any I skip
faster.

mikejasond wrote:

liebzz wrote:I feel the exact opposite of this.

Instead, I would have loved to get a second album consisting of the b-sides that didn’t make this album.

Otherwise, this album is phenomenal and might be the one album where they utilized Matt Cameron perfectly. I do think they did pull back from the full experiment, well documented on RM, but the songs are tremendous. It also generally holds that the songs on every Pearl Jam album sound better live at least during the time period where the album was released.

While sometimes true, I don't think that's ever MORE true than Binaural. Songs that are standouts live like Grievance make no impact on the album at all. If you compare the live versions of an album to the studio versions, NO album would benefit more than Binaural.

Binaural's sound is a more arty take on the standard rock song. Like the opposite to the foo fighters standard at the time. I love the textured guitars, the big toms and the natural vocals. Imagine a Lightning bolt version of grievance.. yuck. I want to hear more original mixes though.

Side note: does anyone know if the Tchad Blake mixes that we have were actually mastered? and if they were it was probably a rush job to make them level with the B'OB mix of whatever release they were on. If the band actually used the Tchad Blake mixes, I'm sure there would have been more time spent on the mastering to give them even more impact.

Sleight of hand is possibly my favourite also.

I don't think Matt's drums have ever sounded as good as they do on Binaural (and Riot Act, but Binaural comes to mind right away; the snare and toms on "Grievance" are perfect)

Ms Harmless wrote:I don't think Matt's drums have ever sounded as good as they do on Binaural (and Riot Act, but Binaural comes to mind right away; the snare and toms on "Grievance" are perfect)

Drum sound is probably the most important to me, and that's why I like no code > riot act the most.

Ive got my binaural issues but I think most of the songs lose to much atmosphere live. Light Years and Grievance are maybe the exceptions. I think this is the pj album that suffers the most out of the studio

Rival has always interested me. You can see it coming, with its pimply face and awkward gait. Those eyes though...

It’s the type of song who looks up “average penis length” in Google and winces. It wants to give the cheerleader 3.5 inches of wriggling fury, but high school politics and chagrinning biology has seen to that pipe dream. It’s been doused in pig blood. It reeks of sorrowful retribution.

This one is PJ at their finest. I love everything about it.