I am listening to this right now and am absolutely loving Amongst The Waves and Unthought Known. I'm starting to feel that I like modern Pearl Jam as earnest as possible. (It's a bit weird calling a 15 year old album modern... But it still feels like the current Pearl Jam era somehow)

The older I get the higher my tolerance for cheese becomes

Supersonic is fun - Really stupid but fun

Wow

I'm reading this as you're very impressed by my unashamed honesty

What they did to Speed Of Sound is still very baffling.

but great, imo

In my head "Betterman (live)" is always just a joke and then I listen to Backspacer on Spotify

same

I'm onboard for what this album set out to achieve, though they strayed from the mission and got a bit too ponderous and self-aware, as usual.
Call me a hussy, but, this album needed more songs like Da Fixxa & Got Some, not less.

Yeah, I think this is the issue with it. In theory, PJ-does-new wave could be a fun approach for an album, and they kind of stick to it for the first few songs. I'm not sure the songwriting sticks with me in the way most of their other albums do, but I see what they were going for. The problem for me is it completely loses the plot after that, both in terms of that focus as well as the strength of the songs, and it never recovers.

Yep. Would have been cool to see what would've happened if they followed through on sustaining the mood for an entire record.

and I think this lack of focus on a mood is my biggest issue with Backspacer and Lightning Bolt, even more than the songs; I might not think every S/T song is great individually, but it remains a consistently "moody" record throughout (the sun to Riot Act's moon, maybe); Gigaton has good and great songs, and maintains a mood

This is probably something that we could continue in a thread outside of the album-specific topics, but, I think it's proven difficult for them to sustain a mood over the course of an entire record for the past twenty or so years because each album is filled with songs that make a conscious attempt, to varying degrees, of course, to cover approximations of various eras throughout their history.

That's not a necessarily a knock from where I'm sitting, either. I don't mind that about them as much as some here.

that's a point, so maintaining a mood gets harder and harder to do

Whoa. I'd never dug up the demo. Matt Cameron needs to be charged with murder. I thought he moonlit as like a jazz drummer. Why did he Boyz II Men this up?

Given Backspacer a listen - first pearl jam I've heard since Dark Matter. I wondered if Dark Matter would change how I think about it. Still a great album, but it certainly feels a bit more sedate. You can feel the livewire energy in the Dark Matter performances is missing. It would have really helped blow up a few of these songs, which I've always really liked (or loved) but feel like they are editing themselves

they were, they wanted to cut out a lot of what they did in ST right? a more direct and pop album. Its been a while since i listened to it and after DM i dont really want to, specially because i really dont like what Brendan did with the production and mix.

I truly believe part of this is due to keeping the integrity of demo ideas and essentially polishing turds that had the potential to be diamonds if they could have just been fucked with a bit.