RANK THE ALBUMS

[BurtReynolds]

BurtReynold's hurts, though

I retract my statement.

[stip]

[Kaius]

Burt is just a class act guy

[tommymtcom]

after giving LB some time to sink in -

Vitalogy
Binaural
Riot Act
No Code
Yield

Ten

LB
VS


BS


Avocado

[aurynsdad]

Aside from the obvious sound quality issues, I will never understand all the Avocado hate.

[Thejambi]

Aside from the obvious sound quality issues, I will never understand all the Avocado hate.

I don't personally find it terrible but I completely accept the criticism of it being an overall generic swing and miss.
Apart from the top 4 and Parachutes i don't find myself wanting to give it a spin at all.

[Brett]

Aside from the obvious sound quality issues, I will never understand all the Avocado hate.

It's got a lot of really bland, lifeless songs? They suffer worse from poor production, recording, mixing, and mastering choices more than a set of good songs would, too. Backspacer and Lightning Bolt aren't particularly good albums, either, but at least there's some interesting stuff going on at times.

Anyway, here's my current ranking, with Lightning Bolt slotted in:

1. Binaural
2. Vitalogy
3. No Code
4. Riot Act
5. Yield
6. Vs.
7. Ten
8. Lightning Bolt
9. Backspacer
10. Pearl Jam

[stip]

Aside from the obvious sound quality issues, I will never understand all the Avocado hate.

It's got a lot of really bland, lifeless songs? They suffer worse from poor production, recording, mixing, and mastering choices more than a set of good songs would, too. Backspacer and Lightning Bolt aren't particularly good albums, either, but at least there's some interesting stuff going on at times.

Anyway, here's my current ranking, with Lightning Bolt slotted in:

1. Binaural
2. Vitalogy
3. No Code
4. Riot Act
5. Yield
6. Vs.
7. Ten
8. Lightning Bolt
9. Backspacer
10. Pearl Jam

except for vitalogy our lists are practically inverted. My 1-6 are your 6-10.

[Brett]

Yeah, I think you pointed out something similar last time I bothered to rank, before Lightning Bolt came out. My rankings haven't changed much since then. Vitalogy overtook No Code and Riot Act to fit into the second slot, and I switched Backspacer and Avocado, but it's still pretty much the same, with the new album added in.

One through seven are all good albums, though I enjoy some to a lesser degree than others, obviously. The last three records happened in my post-PJ-fandom period, so, realistically, I could never see them eclipsing any of the first seven albums.

[beat]

1. Binaural
2. Yield
3. Vitalogy
4. Vs.
5. Riot Act
6. Ten
7. Lightning Bolt
8. Pearl Jam
9. Backspacer
10. No Code

[Kaius]

1. Binaural
2. Yield
3. Vitalogy
4. Vs.
5. Riot Act
6. Ten
7. Lightning Bolt
8. Pearl Jam
9. Backspacer
10. No Code

It is strange to see No Code at the bottom, I must say.

[Norah]

1. Binaural
2. Yield
3. Vitalogy
4. Vs.
5. Riot Act
6. Ten
7. Lightning Bolt
8. Pearl Jam
9. Backspacer
10. No Code

It is strange to see No Code at the bottom, I must say.

It's even stranger when that same list has Binaural and Yield at the top.

[Kaius]

How do you feel about Merkinball, beat?

[mastaflatch]

my list has changed quite a bit recently...

Vitalogy
Yield
No Code
Riot Act
Pearl Jam
Binaural
Ten
Lightning Bolt
Vs
Backspacer

[McParadigm]

We need to embrace our nerdiness more. This place is all dead air.

Someone make a gradient chart or a t-graph, or something.

[Birds in Hell]

I think I'd rank Lightning Bolt below Backspacer now but I've compartmentalised both of them as "post-Pearl Jam Pearl Jam albums" at his point so it's all kind of a wash, really.

[McParadigm]

I guess if you want a thing done right, I guess.

It's not like I have anything to do at work today, anyway.

Spoiler: show

Some points:

I'm not saying that records leaning right are absent of conceptual focus. I'm talking about what drove the decision to make the record.

So while Lightning Bolt does have a running set of clear lyrical themes, for example, those themes have the feel more of "this is what's on my mind these days" than an underlying NEED or DRIVE to express them. It also opts to run the musical gamut from late-80's hardcore influenced punk to bombastic pop to folky fatherhood, and has the general feel of a record whose creation was inspired by the desire to have a new record. I don't mean that in a jaded sense, either. I think Ten and, to a large extent, Vs, were also both genesis'd out of an intense desire to make a record.

Lightning Bolt, unlike those two records, is getting built on top of a lot of history. It wants to try and capture at least a hint of every extreme or personality the band has ever been or wanted to believe that it was. Compare this to No Code, which is also varied but where that imbalance is directly tied to at least one of the album's big lyrical thematic pushes (being disoriented and drawn in opposite directions. "If I had known then what I know now" / "If only he knew now, what he had known then," etc.), and where that variety is used to create a feeling of disorientation or imbalance.

Or put it next to Backspacer, which had songs about all sorts of shit but had a pretty focused musical direction within which to place them.

What I'm saying is, I'm using imperfect terminology, but I think the intent should be clear.

I think this could be said to illustrate why there are such clear breaks in the fanbase, beyond what an exploration of basic album sounds would achieve. You can see why the middle records might appeal to people to whom the earliest works or the newest ones don't. Some other things that strike me:

1. S/T wanted to be reactionary and cathartic the way early records were, but it also wanted to be the smartest dude in the room, which is why it seems to be doing everything right but still leaves a lot of people feeling ambivalent or uninterested.

2. Vitalogy and No Code are the only records that I feel embraced their need to express so thoroughly as to become insular. They allow message to guide decision, right to the point of choosing expression over audience. They also happen to be my favorites. You could almost give S/T credit for being just as thematic as those two, I suppose, but that want to both capture the explosive and animalistic empathy of the early records and still be super wordy and clever introduces a kind of personality-absent experience which is totally inappropriate to the record's aims. Thematic and unsure of what you want to be when you grow up is not a good combination. Binaural and Riot Act could have so easily nudged a little farther in that direction, but the former was practically abandoned as an embryo and the latter is reserved and unwilling to risk that oh-so-crucial polarizing step.

3. This chart illustrates why early Pearl Jam can sometimes feel like a totally different band from 1994-2002, and maybe a bit of why the last two records might feel like Pearl Jam (even have some qualities in common with Ten) but still be polarizing to the fanbase. It probably sums up why some Backspacer fans drew a connection to Yield when it came out (and why some Yield fans couldn't see it), and the way that Vitalogy bridged us from the early records into the wilderness era without quite feeling like one of those albums. One thing I notice is that the need to express seems to lead to musical choices that disconnect the general listening public, but the absence of that need seems to disengage a lot of the fanbase. The one exception might be Vs, which seems to come from a bit of both ends of the spectrum and which probably benefits from being the purest representation of that reactionary desire to strike back that they did so well early on.

4. I'd say, if you're making a record that is reflective but whose creation wasn't inspired primarily by the need to say or achieve something in particular, I'm not likely to be interested. In general, though not always, I prefer Pearl Jam records made because of the want to say or accomplish something to records made for the love of playing music. A lot of the records I like are huddled close together in that regard, although both Vs and Vitalogy get a lot of love for managing to match visceral response to concentrated intent, which is incredibly hard to do well (see again: S/T).

[Kaius]

Great post, McP

[LetMeSleep]

Great post, McP

I concur.

[stip]

Occasional posts like that help make up for weeks of predictable trolling