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Yield Riot Act No Code Binaural (roughly in this order, but interchangeable depending on the day -- the whole era is very special to me)
Vitalogy Vs. Ten (kind of a three-way tie here too -- also very special to me, but some diminished relevance as well)
S/T Gigaton Backspacer (roughly in this order, but again, fluid depending on what I'm in the mood for)
Lightning Bolt (just not a fan of this)
I hate to say it since it's different from my own, but I think this might be the correct ranking? Ruddo, can you confirm?
Even if I were to accept this grouping as the most logical one, I would say No Code and Binaural over Riot Act, Gigaton over S/T, and simply put LB at the end of that group.
In all honesty it would take a new record a long time to get into one of those upper-tiers -- albums that have been with me for (most of) a lifetime and have continued to be special are hard to dethrone.
In all honesty it would take a new record a long time to get into one of those upper-tiers -- albums that have been with me for (most of) a lifetime and have continued to be special are hard to dethrone.
This is true. Pearl Jam albums have a way of coming out in such a way that their sounds are weaved into my life, helping me through life cycle changes. Though even Lightning Bolt, which is my least favorite came in the lead up to the birth of my first child, and the theme of mortality resonated with me - I think pretty much all of them have that sort of connection.
In all honesty it would take a new record a long time to get into one of those upper-tiers -- albums that have been with me for (most of) a lifetime and have continued to be special are hard to dethrone.
This is true. Pearl Jam albums have a way of coming out in such a way that their sounds are weaved into my life, helping me through life cycle changes. Though even Lightning Bolt, which is my least favorite came in the lead up to the birth of my first child, and the theme of mortality resonated with me - I think pretty much all of them have that sort of connection.
I have an unreasonable connection to Bruce Springsteen's Working On a Dream for the same reason -- not for the same thematic reasons necessarily, just because it came out a week or two after my oldest daughter was born and I listened to it a lot around that same time.
S/T and Lightning Bolt are the two PJ albums that I don't really have that kind of connection to. I've said this elsewhere but S/T came out at a time when I really wasn't listening to PJ much, so my time/place memories from that era belong to other records. I do however have some deeply resonant memories tied to getting back into PJ by way of the 2006 tour boots the following summer.
Backspacer was similarly tied to my daughter being born (similar timeframe to Working on a Dream), and then my twins being born a year later -- and with that record there was definitely some thematic relevance in addition to the more sensory time/place memories. The 2009-2010 live shows are in the background of all that too. Lots of PJ in my life at that time. My lingering feelings about that era are definitely bolstered as a result of that.
Lightning Bolt I just didn't like well enough, and therefore didn't play often enough, to really connect to in that kind of defining-life-moment way. Honestly most of my memories surrounding LB involve talking about it on RM. And then Gigaton of course will always be connected to those first, utterly strange weeks of the COVID pandemic.
Ten, Vs., and. Vitalogy I connected to in those tumultuous teenage years as a release and mental and emotional home base for me. No Code came just as I went off to college, a sort of newly discovered independence that goes with that album. Yield came as I experienced my first serious breakup and while I met someone new. Binaural was transitioning out of undergraduate school and ties also to a friend who it was their first album he enjoyed (he later passed away and I have some connections in that space), Riot Act came as I was changing career trajectory and getting set to go to law school over graduate studies I had started. S/T came as I was taking the bar exam and I have clear memories of having that on repeat, with Gone playing just as the city skyline faded from view on the bus back home daily. Backspacer came as I got engaged and the shows just before I got married. Lightning Bolt I noted was the birth of my son. Gigaton like a lot of other folks was COVID. And now Dark Matter coming as I lost my mother.
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39932
One of the reasons why pearl jam albums feel rooted to moments and carry that history with me in a way that other artists I love almost as much don't is (I think) that every Pearl Jam album is really about how the band/eddie understands the world around him and his place in it in that moment. That never changes, and is not a way that you could describe, say REM. So even though I love Automatic for the People as album more than almost any pearl jam album, it is not rooted in my life experiences in the way even the pearl jam albums on the bottom of my list are. I am constantly trying to process what the world around me means at every stage of my life (as any reflective human being would), and every Pearl Jam album is doing the same thing at that same historical moment.
It also helps that I'm a few years behind the band with a lot of life milestones around family, so there is an anticipatory element to the later albums as well - that the music is both experiential in the moment but also has a sense of having been there. Themes I care about with a sense that there is something we are both figuring out together and that i have something to learn.
I got a little emotional listening to backspacer yesterday. Actually had a lot of fun with it.
That album came out the tail end of my first full summer living in the mountains. I was in a very very good place and having the time of my life. It was the perfect companion piece at the time.
Now this mountain dream is coming to an end and as i was listening to it while skiing around the mountain....got super nostalgic.
Anywho. I actually do like this album quite a bit more than i lead on me thinks.
Some of this may be recency bias; I listened to Vs. yesterday for the first time in a long time and it really knocked me out.
This happens to me all the time with respective PJ albums. Haven't listened to ___ for a while, put it on, and it's better than I remember. Makes ranking impossible.
I am asking this without sarcasm because I know the reaction here but I am looking for someone to sell me on what they love about Riot Act. When I rank the albums I have an emotional take and then I do a rank the songs scale and compare for data and in both cases Riot Act has never worked for me.
I ask for the argument though because I had a similar reaction to No Code when it came out and it may now be my #2. Similarly Binaural disappointed me originally but I really appreciate it now. That retrospective afterglow has not happened for me with Riot Act yet but I always see people here rank it high.
I am asking this without sarcasm because I know the reaction here but I am looking for someone to sell me on what they love about Riot Act. When I rank the albums I have an emotional take and then I do a rank the songs scale and compare for data and in both cases Riot Act has never worked for me.
I ask for the argument though because I had a similar reaction to No Code when it came out and it may now be my #2. Similarly Binaural disappointed me originally but I really appreciate it now. That retrospective afterglow has not happened for me with Riot Act yet but I always see people here rank it high.
For those who love it what am I missing?
I love the album despite it running low on my list as well.
What Riot Act does is take some of the more sonically adventurous elements of Binaural, and provide it with the warmth of a No Code. Songs like Love Boat Captain and Thumbing My Way have Eddie wearing his broken heart on his sleeve and searching for answers, one in a Beatles cliche, and the other in a line that could be cliche but has a heartfelt exhaustion in it despite the line being hopeful (“No matter how cold the winter there’s a springtime ahead”) - does he believe his own homemade mantra or is he going through the motions of the character in his song? I Am Mine seems more self-convincing of his agency. That sense of agency is part of the story in their approach to political conflict from the direct aim of Green Disease to the satire of Bu$hleaguer. The plea in Half Full could have served as a closer, or even Arc, but they went with All or None, a more somber note. And Can’t Keep and You Are haven’t even been mentioned yet, or the challenging but amazing Help Help and Cropduster.
On top of that, pay attention on how the songs bring together multiple threads of Roskilde, politics and one’s self agency, and sometimes speak to other eras in the band. The perfect example again is Half Full. Its plea for someone to save the world speaks directly to politics, but as Eddie’s echoing on woooooorrrrllddd, is he perhaps also reaching into his own sense of agency on I Am Mine and Thumbing My Way, and screaming out to the Roskilde tragedy as well - I have felt this moment ties the whole album together in that way and could have closed this thing out with multiple impacts at once. And its line about the middle even calls back to a more frantic 1991 Vedder from the line in Porch.
Beyond that, Pearl Jam’s sonic textures and limits expand, even if just slightly, in their handling of You Are, Help Help, and even the slight uneasiness in Cropduster. Cameron also does excellent work on this album that is a subtle game changer. Binaural might be the atmospheric winner, but Riot Act lives in a warmer, albeit more depressing space.
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