Kaius wrote:I really hope digster finds the time to comment on why Insignificance is one of, if not, the very best Pearl Jam songs.
Ok, soooo...Insignificance. I’m gonna split it up into music and lyrics just to make it easier, and I'm warning this may be a ramble.
The music is epic, scary and pummeling, an amalgamation of their best anthemic and punk instincts. The opening progression sounds like the intro to the performance, and Matt’s first snare crack into the verse is the curtain opening. Ed's guitar line throughout is great; play the song solo and despite the simplicity of certain parts it’s remarkably well-constructed. Everyone’s doing great work in the song, and the guitar tones in the studio are some of my favorite the band ever put down. The pre-chorus sounds vicious, all the more so when contrasted against the sinewy, claustrophobic tension of the verse. In a way, the song's a maturation of the push-pull dynamics of Corduroy; it maintains the scope and epic feel of the early work while removing the bombast and anything that sounds dated. And the last instrumental bridge into that final chorus is my favorite moment PJ has put down to date. It’s rare that the conclusion of a song can sound like the end of the world and earn it (Sleater-Kinney’s “Entertain” comes to mind as another example of this), but PJ earn it here.
As for the lyrics, they’re some of Ed’s best. To me, the song portrays the perspective of two sides of a town's civil war; those who build bombers and weapons of war to keep a roof over their families' heads, and those who can’t stomach the concept (although the song never denies that these two groups can be one and the same). That second verse;
“Turn the jukebox up,” he said
Dancing in irreverence
“Play C3, let the song protest”
is maybe my favorite thing Eddie's written. It’s only three lines, but despite that brevity you know exactly where you are, who you’re seeing and what they’re feeling.
When you get to the chorus, I feel it from the perspective of the people who need the factories and industries of war to survive, pleading to maintain their innocence despite their work. I feel it from those who hate what that industry does to their town and to the world at large and feel powerless to stop it. But you can also see the chorus from another perspective altogether; those of the bombed, pleading to be forgiven for their insignificance as the bombs drop down. Everyone remains ignorant of the horror that town goes through. But despite all this, Ed strikes upon a point of connection between the towns, an optimistic and bittersweet realization; for everyone, it’s instilled to wanna live.
As I said, it's a ramble, but I could go on about this song. TLDR: Insignificance is fucking amazing.
