The instrumentals are fine; End of the Road doesn't quite hit, but it's ok. The length of the songs isn't really an issue either; there's plenty of great songs that begin and resolve perfectly within the span of a minute or two. Some of them just feel half-finished, regardless of length. And no doubt that Eddie was slightly handicapped by writing to film, but I do get the impression he thought and hoped the record would work independent of the film. Like I said, it's not a disaster or anything. Just didn't bowl me over.

This soundtrack has such great sound and atmosphere, I wish like hell he'd written more pieces to fill it in.

Yep. The 2 best songs are covers. Woo.

and I like that the projects he takes on aren't just Pearl Jam-less versions of Pearl Jam.

I don't really agree with this. I easily prefer "No Ceiling" and "Rise" to "Hard Sun," and "Society" is one of my least favorite songs on the album, though not because of EV's performance. I have certainly been guilty of tagging this album with the "collection of half-done sketches" criticism before, but after "Backspacer" and especially "Lightning Bolt," I have come to appreciate the lack of overwork in it -- the album strikes me as a very natural flow of ideas not unlike "Riot Act," albeit with a different prevailing aesthetic. Maybe it's an Adam Kasper thing.

For all the shit it gets, Rodlease sounded pretty good. Unnecessary for sure, but pretty good

yeah, he sounded great in that one.

Those Out Of Furnance songs....im still waiting on them. It took ed more than 10 years to release Uke Songs so...

I wouldn't mind his PJ acoustic tracks (JB, The End, FD) being on a solo album. Those songs are Eddie tracks and not PJ tracks in my mind. For all the crap that SoSound gets at least the band had some input and tried something new.

Man, I couldn't agree less. His voice was fine, but the production was strangled and the delivery couldn't have felt more detached from any feeling in the song.

The original may be full of moo, but when he cries out "release me" it sounds as genuine as any feeling ever put to tape.

I think the record's main purpose was to help promote the movie. If there was more ambition behind it i suppose the songs would have been evolved further as it often happens with soundtracks. This was actually done with Tuolumne that was later reworked into Just Breath.
I think Ed, for whatever reason, doesn't want to do a proper solo project like ITW could have been if it evolved beyond what was written for the movie in those 2 weeks. There's been Ukulele Songs which is a modest project by definition plus that soundtrack that never ended up materialising. It's like if he was reluctant to pursue serious projects outside of PJ without a decent excuse.

Maybe this is true, but I find it hard to say an album is good because if all these things were different it would have been better. The record is what it is; Ed put out the album so I'm sure he wants us to hear it on its own terms.

He often pointed to the Harold and Maude soundtrack as an inspiration, and though that was different in the sense that it was primarily made up of material that had already been released, it certainly has a life and a reputation outside of that movie. I feel that ITW is kind of the same.

Into the wild is 9 years old today. Time flies