i think i shit on this record more than i should b/c i lump it in with backsapcer and i'll never get over whatever the fuck "the fixer" is supposed to be. getaway is underrated, i love the lyrics but the whole song is great. and ive loved 'pendulum' since i first heard it. 'yellow moon' is great, 'inallible' is almost there. 'sirens' is terrible. 'mind your manners' is fun. it's really a better record than i give credit for.

Sirens is the only song off LB I still listen to

its just too bon jovi for me. i feel like i need to wash sap out of ears listening to it. the guitar tones are kinda floyd-ish, but thats it.

Have listened to this off and on the last couple weeks, just 1-2 songs at a time while running out for errands. With the exception of MFS and LTRP, it is complete and utter dogshit.

I havent listened in a long time, but the last time i was so turned off by the production, how the guitars and drums sound...im not feeling like coming back to it.

MYM, Father´s Son, Sirens and Yellow Moon might be the only three i could listen to these days.

Yeah there's just no escaping it. It's horrid. It's like the whole mixing board caught a cold.

I think its insulting to Matt Cameron to have his drums sound like that.

Ugh, ive listened to it twice in the past couple of days and I actually enjoyed it more than I used to.

Production certainly sucks any life out of it on most tracks but it certainly helps a song like Infallible which is just not a very interesting song musically. That song only works with the shiny production and if Ed can hit the notes. Otherwise its a sludge/bore fest. its great on the record though. Same can be said for Getaway.

Sleeping by myself and Yellow Moon as well. Everything else is neutered. The songs would benefit from a far more raw/garage rock type of production.

That being said, i enjoyed the actual songs much more than i remembered. I still love Yellow Moon and i think MYM is a pretty great rocker. Fathers Son is excellent as well.

+1 to strat


This is album isn’t bad. It’s not memorable but it’s not Backspacer either

Lightning Bolt is fun as hell to play on guitar. So thats something.

to be fair, the whole album production is insulting to the band

yeah, i agree but i would say the drums are the worst thing on the album followed closely the guitar tones, Ed´s voice in the mix and the lack of groove in pretty much every song. Then the fadeouts. Then clean poppy arrangements.

fuckkkk you breeendan

Getaway/MFS/swallowed whole/yellow moon..whilst being flawed, are OK songs, although I get nothing out of listening to the studio versions. I'm also not really interested in digging through live versions to find good sounding performances of the songs either, because I haven't enjoyed the sound of the bootlegs since 2006.

Some of these songs seem to fit in well live. Pendulum, Manners, and the title track all sound absolutely great on that 2014 St Paul show.

But almost none of this material sounds like it’s worth a shit on the album. It can’t just be the production, because the production is barely doing anything at all. Sure it’s flat, thin and dry…but far worst sounding records have still managed to shine through it all.

I don’t know…I think the problem is the band. Aside from Manners, they often play like talented, detached professionals. At least on Backspacer they sometimes sound like they’re having fun. Lightning Bolt is a song about the absolute rapture of musical inspiration, and you hear none of that rapture in the studio performance. There’s no looseness, no risk. It’s got that same “I’ve done this so many times and set my guard rails so clearly that I don’t question my choices any more” problem that later Springsteen records sometimes have. You can’t blame that on BoB.

In a recent performance of Never Destination, Ed changes the lines to “I was a singer in a rock and roll band. Had command of all my voices. Now I don’t know who I am. It all came down to choices.” Those lines might as well be his review of this album.

Wow, that lyric change is really something.
Had to hear it. That's some look Jeff gives Ed there at the end. This seems like a significant moment to me.

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say I'm having trouble even thinking of worse sounding big money records that aren't from the hair metal era. The EQ on this thing is so bizarre.


I agree strongly on the first part. But I think it's more than fair to blame it on BOB. Imagine that the album was tracked in fits and starts, with presumably very little live/full band takes. What they're hearing in the monitors is likely very different from the lifeless turd that BOB mixed for them.

Oh, I agree. But “big money records” is an unnecessary qualifier. Big money music doesn’t have special requirements for outperforming its production…especially when the whole foundation of the music is so human and simple.


Very, very fair. But the thing about that is, I don’t think it changes my answer. All of the clinical aspects of production, they can have a pass on. Eddie Vedder doesn’t know what a fucking compressor is, for crying out loud. But production choices that are purely about the circumstances of recording…choices that detach them from the music and make spontaneous combustions like the end of Quick Escape impossible…they have no reason to accept or to not recognize as harmful to their performances. If you believe in these songs, and in your ability to elevate them, you have every impetus to shut that down.

Sure, sure. I just meant that I can think of a ton of shitty sounding DIY records, and they get a pass within the context of this conversation.

Sounds like a band that never became attached to their own songs they were writing. Both for backspacer and lightning bolt.

I remember in those lightning bolt celebrity interviews Steve Gleason rubbed them for taking so long since backspacer. Ed remarked “the next one will probably be even longer”.

I think they just took a break for awhile. The songs never had a chance to grow during inception and certainly not love. Bob perhaps produced what the band brought him.

But much of Riot Act feels similarly thrown together, and excels because of it. The opening drum hit to Ghost makes it sound like it's the second take. The tentative playing on TMW makes it sound like they got a chord chart and then just tried a couple passes. Help, Help and Half Full both feel like they got a general sense of the structure down then just let 'er rip.

LB has none of that. And that's what BOB should have been keeping his eye on. How do you take one of the all-time best live rock bands and make them sound dead?