Pearl Jam - C or D?

"Off He Goes" sounds to me like Vedder attempting to write his own version of this, written by one of his idols:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfjNRz-ZoBM

always sounded like a Neil pastiche to me but that's perceptive, hadn't heard that song before. Eddie's Finn fandom is definitely one of the coolest underestimated influences of his.

I was the big Crowded House fan in my crew, so hearing Eddie and the boys do other Finn Bros stuff like "I See Red" persuaded a couple to check out the House comp..

btw PJ has been killing it with ballads for at least fifteen years.

at first i thought i agreed with ship but i guess my favorite songs off their records are almost always ballads or ballad-ish. "low light," "light years" (albeit this one fights mightily with ultimate pj barnburner "insignificance"), "thumbing my way," "nothingman," etc.

you like "Come Back"?

i have been thinking about a PJ trax poll for a long time, it would be good

Come Back is great, imo

you like "Come Back"?

haven't heard the self titled or backspacer yet

oh man! You should!

urgent and key!!!

i guess i've always meant to but my pj phase passed a long time ago, a product of having listened to them a ton in high school to the point of memorizing the records. will still visit them

xpost I consider Out of Time and Automatic paradigm shifters in that they redefined REM as a chamber pop group rather than a rock band. And this is what totally broke them into the mainstream, no less.

If someone does a tracks poll, please don't limit to studio albums. There are some great tunes that were not on their proper albums. Just a heads up.

Just finally watched PJ20. For some reason, I always thought it was more of a live document with some interview bits. Didn't realize it was a full-on interview/archival footage fest. A+

PJ are the one band where I prefer the live recordings to the studio albums - ill never BJ another traditional batch of new songs by these dudes, onstage even the lamest material finds full voice and gets scuffed nicely by the audience

PJ20 is great, yeah. Seriously, 15 year old me PEED her pants at some of the early footage

Josh, we disagree. R.E.M. were never a rock band in the sense that your binary defines them.

on Murmur they were recording chamber pop albeit more rhythmically interesting than the usual.

I get that. And R.E.M. was pretty all over the place. But if I had never heard the band and you told me they were a rock and roll act, then played me Out of Time or Automatic, I wouldn't get it. While REM was always more, rock pretty much gets at the first several records: guys with guitars over drums. The fact that those two albums turned out to be the biggest sellers, by far, gets at something even more unusual about them. And regardless, PJ has never come close to putting out something similarly divergent, however much it might at times share a similar vocabulary.

Echoing previous comments, the self-titled is really good for the most part. "Parachutes" is easily my favorite Gossard tune. Only track I could do totally without is "Gone."

Yeah Parachutes is beautiful. I actually really like Gone. I dunno if I could cull anything off that album, it's one I can easily repeat-listen

While REM was always more, rock pretty much gets at the first several records: guys with guitars over drums.

I just can't get with this at all. Like, that's some really vague defining going on there, to make this theorem work. And really, the last thing Pearl Jam need to do is to be more like U2 or Radiohead (fuck me please no).

And REM, up to and including Automatic, were always critics faves, Pearl Jam have *never really been so. They're coming from different sides of the binary you're trying to set up. And Eddie, from my experience, is pretty much the antithesis of Stipe, and thank fucking god much as I love a fair chunk of REM.

Anyway, they're announcing a new LP soon, aren't they?

there's a countdown clock, supposedly to that announcement and/or a new single in a couple days: http://pearljam.com/countdown#PearlJam2013

I was using "like" as it should be used: Pearl Jam could have been like REM or U2 or Radiohead, which is not the same as Pearl Jam should sound like. They're all very different, very popular bands. But from my perspective, the others have done more to shake up their sound than Pearl Jam has, which is not to say that Pearl Jam has not shaken up its sound, just that it defaults pretty safe. Which is perhaps why PJ in theory is a little better than PJ in practice. I've gone through phases of listening to the band a lot, and phases of nada, but I've seen the band live a bunch, which appears to be its milieu.

Anyway, you can definitely hear how REM has been an influence on both PJ and Radiohead, even though neither sounds much like REM. You're right that PJ was never a critic fave, but they've also been pretty comfortable in their little niche. I've never heard the radical searching and shifting that the aforementioned acts have done (esp. U2, like them or not), and maybe PJ doesn't want or need to do that. But then, I've never liked "Yellow Ledbetter," which for some is the ultimate PJ song but for me is the band at its most safe and generic.

Still thinking out loud here - I have no grand "theorem" - but in many ways I do think PJ has pushed itself politically as a means of challenging its fans. The music may not veer far, but the band has been pretty in your face about its interests, maybe even more than Radiohead and certainly more than U2. I saw a Vote for Change show in Grand Rapids, MI, and when Vedder thanked the Dixie Chicks for playing a show the same night in Ohio, some fans booed, and he, to his credit, paused the show and chastised the haters. I was struck by the reaction, since PJ does not disguise its politics, yet still attracts the odd meathead or two. I mean, I've seen Springsteen booed a few times, too, for similar reasons, but he's much more subtle than PJ with on-stage politics.

(I do think it's revisionism to think REM was received as much more than a really good rock band for the first half of its career, though.)

Pearl Jam could have been Grand Funk Railroad

Pearl Jam shaking up their sound is exactly where they fucked up - this is a band that lost their mainstream audience to Creed.

They were a sensitive hard rock group in tune with the times with a singer who sounded like Cher and an audience young enough to hear that as "passion" rather than Cher. They screamed "don't look at us!" long enough that the fans stopped identifying with the "us" and when they brought out the bongos many a yarling monotheist was happy to take the heartland they weren't comfortable with.

U2 and REM were iconic cult bands who grew more pop with each album. Pearl Jam's debut went 10x platinum and everything since has sold less. REM had nothing to teach them ("alternative" commercial instincts fucked them both over commercially from 96 on) and all U2 could have taught them is to "flaunt it."

and if anything Radiohead learned from Pearl Jam - as long as your emotive singer stays recognizable and you keep your cred, you'll still be a big draw even after your sales taper.

But if I had never heard the band and you told me they were a rock and roll act, then played me Out of Time or Automatic, I wouldn't get it.

not even by the time you got to "ignoreland"?

this is wayyyy too much time to spend on discussing an ill-considered false binary, bring on the new PJ single already

A considerable chunk of its fanbase -- maybe its entire fanbase -- is meatheads though who, as croup says, also like Creed.

i think the "not for you" memo did successfully push the circle apart a bit between those bands on the venn diagram. There a lot of grad students with PJ, Foo, Coldplay and Kings Of Leon but no Creed.

Pearl Jam nurtured the cult and left the casual fans to Creed the same way Radiohead did for Coldplay. or how Kanye seems to be doing now for J. Cole.

This thread's been prompting some relistens. I like Backspacer less than I remember - I dig the S-K vibe of "Got Some," actually I like the whole opening trio. But it's really hit-or-miss after that. Miss the heftier production of the s/t.

in many ways I do think PJ has pushed itself politically as a means of challenging its fans. The music may not veer far, but the band has been pretty in your face about its interests

totally agree about this.

also, out of time is a pretty patchy album imo. it was Losing My Religion that made them mainstream, not the rest of the tracks on the album.

Don't forget "The One I Love" and "Stand."

Pearl Jam nurtured the cult and left the casual fans to Creed the same way Radiohead did for Coldplay.

also otm.

a considerable chunk of pj's fans might be meatheads, but i struggle to think of artists of their stature for whom that's not true. you can't blame a band for their fans (not that i'm saying you were, alfred).

personally, i'm not bothered about whether pj get experimental or not. for me they've always been more Springsteen-esque heart-on-sleeve, right on stadium rock than REM or U2, and they do it very well - i don't think they need to reinvent their wheel especially. That Eddie's never quite gotten entirely comfortable with being a stadium-size frontman - especially post-Roskilde tragedy - kind of makes them a better big-venue experience, also.

listened to Vs. on the way to work the other day for the first time in ages, and it blew me away. such a taut, powerful record. and jesus, someone show me the modern young band of according stature writing about the kind of stuff vedder was writing about - if anything, lyrics like WMA and Glorified G seem even more controversial today than they were in 1993.

agreed, alfred - i was talking more specifically in the sense of Out Of Time breaking the group "mainstream", though as you say, they were at least half of the way there by the time of Green.

REM def. was on the way there - heck, Green is as varied and chamber rocky as Automatic - but the point stands that after the stuff of Document and Green gave the guys a foothold, it was the sensitive chamber-y stuff - Religion, Everybody Hurts, Man on the Moon, etc, - that broke the band big, which is an odd trajectory.

for me they've always been more Springsteen-esque heart-on-sleeve

What got me/us on this road is the fact that for all their Springsteen-esque heart on sleeve bigness, PJ has long fallen a little short on the anthem front. Ten, of course, is packed with them. The other albums, slightly less so. I have no idea if that's been by design or a product of limitation. And I certainly don't mean that this is a bad thing, either. Just talking.

tbf they only averaged like 3-6 giant anthems on the rest of their 90s albums, which is pretty good for any band that didn't make Ten

i think PJ purposefully evaded anthemicism to a certain extent, once eddie began to become uncomfortable with the trajectory of his fame. their - to my mind - most experimental and least-anthemic album, no code, is also my favourite of theirs.

quick question: who prefers the remaster of Ten, with a lot of the rick parashar reverb excise, that came with the deluxe reissue a few years back? i think i do.

to the original, i mean.

i was excited about that when it came out, because i prefer the sound of the Brendan O'Brien albums so much that that album feels like a sore thumb in their catalog now, but actually listening to it there was a little bit of an uncanny valley effect going on. it served some songs well, but for the most part i had no desire to replace the originals in my iPod like i hoped to.

I have no idea if that's been by design or a product of limitation

The last two albums have their share of anthems, including the lead singles of each. Def a conscious move.

can't blame a band for their fans (not that i'm saying you were, alfred).

otherwise I'd loathe Dylan.

i definitely wouldn't replace them. but i feel a lot of that airy sound made the album sound dated, like it had aged quite badly. i don't know, maybe i'm just over familiar with the album and it made it seem a little fresh again, for a bit.

i dig the remaster a lot. I love being able to hear them sound like, I dunno, like a band playing in a room together. the effects were really unneccessary given how good those songs were, and made the songs colder somehow