Red Mosquito

All Those Yesterdays vs. Bee Girl vs. Dance of the Clairvoyants

Dance

Is it possible? It's that good it may and should go a long way.

It's no All Those Yesterdays, that's for sure.

DOTC is the best one here, but I love Bee Girl without remorse so I'm tossing it a vote

Dance

i love All Those Yesterdays so much, but I can't vote against Dance unless it goes up against Porch or something.

Dance all the way baby.

Dance is gonna win so I'm giving some love to ATY.

epilogue wrote:Dance is gonna win so I'm giving some love to ATY.

Don’t be so certain, Joey.

There is a crew of cranky RMers who wouldn’t dare vote for modern day pj

Strat wrote:

epilogue wrote:Dance is gonna win so I'm giving some love to ATY.

Don’t be so certain, Joey.

There is a crew of cranky RMers who wouldn’t dare vote for modern day pj

Well if it swings the wrong way, I'll change my vote.

Dance deserves to win this match.

This is the surprise tough call for me. I'm going ATY for now, but might change my mind if I have a listen to both.

ATY regularly places in the top 32, with its best performance a top 16 loss against Hail, Hail.

Dance made the top 32 last year, taking down Severed Hand, Let It Ride and Nothingman before coming up against In My Tree.

Bee Girl felt weirdly subversive at the time, but it's hard to do anything but shrug at it now.

I do like All Those Yesterdays. It's towards the top of Pearl Jam's mid tier closers for me (I maybe have it at 5. 4 on a good day). It's also a great end to its particular record.

But Dance is a revelation - the music and vocal is unlike anything we've ever gotten from them before, the lyrics and themes are powerful. Everything about this works impossibly well. For this to be their first attempt at a song like this and to hit it out of the park is remarkable. It's a singular moment in the catalog, and while I wouldn't say it's Pearl Jam's best song, it is the first time since Yield they released a song that unequivocally could hang with their very best. I've listened to this constantly in the two years since its release and it's never gotten stale.

Tough one, but probably DOTC. I do love ATY.

Two years later, "Dance of the Clairvoyants" remains an unexpected treat, a major late-career milestone, and a revelation as to what constitutes a meaningful creative future for the band. I spent most of the 2010's lamenting the disappearance of songs like "Sleight of Hand," "NAIS," etc. from the band's catalog in favor of the more straight-ahead, concert-friendly rock they embraced on S/T and Backspacer, only to find that when they'd flirt with those ideals again (ex: "Pendulum"), it wasn't really a natural space for them anymore. "Dance" proved that great songs and creative surprises could still coexist in modern PJ music, and man what a shot in the arm that was, and still is. I'm so happy we have it.

But "ATY" is a matter of the heart for me. It would be difficult for any Gigaton song to unseat it.

And, I've always thought "Bee Girl" was a sweet, touching song -- simple words of guidance and compassion to a complete stranger. The passage, "Anxious is the present/Unwrap your gifts, take your time/Everything you've imagined/Needn't be stuck in your mind," still chokes me up. But, it's a minor player here -- which, of course, it needs to be in order to be affecting in the way it intends.

I'll go with Dance but dammit I don't feel good about abandoning ATY.