I just love this album. I couldn't tell you where it will stack up years from now (and it needs to not be the 'new' one and songs need time to age before I can be sure, but it is entirely possible when all is said and done this will be my 4th (probably where I rank it now) or even 3rd favorite Pearl Jam record. I can't even imagine them ever producing an album at this point I like more than Ten or Vitalogy but this still remains, 3 and a half years after the fact, the pearl jam album I listen to the most these days.


GSMF, Johnny Guitar, The Fixer, Just Breathe, Force of Nature, and The End are all just below the very top tier of pearl jam songs for me (I might even put Force of Nature in there). There are days I think Got Some is just as good as those songs. While Unthought Known and Amongst the Waves are not great, there are parts of both songs I love (the verses in Amongst the Waves, which I think are top notch, and the way UK starts to build after the first two verses, the gems and rhinestones verse, the 'no one's rival' verse. I was not super enamored with the demo of speed of sound (although I think it's probably better) but I think there is a good song underneath an overly busy presentation. Really supersonic is the only song I could care less about.



4-5 Star songs on every album


Vitalogy: 10/10 (every one of the formal 'songs')
Ten: 9/11 (everything but deep and release)

Vs 6/12: go, animal, daughter, rearview mirror, small town, indifference
No Code: 5/13 (hail hail, in my tree, red mosquito, present tense, who you are--that's a new one for me. it's grown on me in the last few years)
Yield: 4/13 (Brain of J, Given To Fly, Wishlist, Do the Evolution)--some days I'd put ATY in there
Binaural: 5/13 (NAIS, Insignificance, Grievance, Rival, Parting Ways)--but the songs I don't care for on this album drag it down
Riot Act: 3/15 (Can't Keep, Save You, I am Mine)
S/T: 5/13 (Life Wasted, WWS, Comatose, Parachutes, Come Back)
Backspacer: (6/11): GSMF, Fixer, Johnny Guitar, Just Breathe, Force of Nature, The End)


Yeah, although the high spots on Yield, Vs, and S/T are higher for me than the high spots on Backspacer, in terms of how many songs I just really love listening to Backspacer is really high up there.




I went through my 'pearl jam is in decline' phase from 1996-2006. These last 7 years have been like a second honeymoon. I just wish they were making more music.

It's not that there are bad songs. it's just that a lot of songs that for other people elevate the album (faithful, no way, in hiding, low light, etc) i just think are kind of there. I probably enjoy Amongst the Waves or UK more than any of those, for instance.

You'd think I'd have stopped reacting by now when stip says things like this, but no.

It's just baffling.

I don't think Backspacer is a depoliticized album for the reasons you lay out here. Eddie spoke in early 2009 in the era of post election optimism how the world felt different and it was all going to be okay. It's more that there was (for a time) a sense that there was no need to write political songs after the last two records.

I agree and I am aware of that era, even people from outside the U.S.A, like us, who are standing in the far far left became somehow optimistic and appreciated the election's result.
I also believe that all their albums until backspacer were political. But I think the band "legalized" and developed its new commercial strategy also as a product of the environment of that time. The less need to remain political the easiest to present themselves differently.