I know first-blush on AtW for many was maybe "streamlined, dumbed-down anthem bait", but, I can't help it.
Grew up on a lot of "dumb" 70s rock (kinda like they did, I guess), so when that quick, harmonizing guitar bit with Mike & Stone in unison comes on, I can't help the involuntary visceral reaction.

One of my favorite moments on the record.

ATW lacks a backbone, i.e. a riff, to go from “what was that” to an all time great

Remove UT and ATW and this album is stellar but oh man those two are probably my least favorite PJ songs of all time.

I really love The End when Ed plays it live, but not so much the studio version.

We diverge on AtW, but, Unthought Known has never been one of my favorites, either.

I can appreciate the way it builds, especially when I'm hearing it live in the room, but, they're aspiring to some U2/Coldplay style grand sweeping epic here that I don't feel has enough song behind it to reach the heights they're grasping for;
ironically, how many would also describe AtW.

The title is an absolute nonsense as well, imo.

I like Unthought Known, and there are moments within it I love, but you capture why the overall song doesn't quite hit what it's aiming at. I do think Lightning Bolt gets there. It may be (imo) the most successful version of this type of song they've done since Yield

the title is an actual term that has a definition, but I haven't given much thought to how it relates to the song

I completely agree, on both counts. I know it's not a favorite around here, but, I feel like LB was the final refinement of a song they had been working towards for at least two albums prior.

I'm also partial towards the lyrics, as well. Maybe not the most clever in the catalog, but, I do seem to have have a particular affinity towards Ed's post middle-age relationship material.
Things like LB & FoN really speak to me in a particular way that really highlights how Ed's focus and priorities as an individual have changed and matured in accordance with how my own relationship & priorities have shifted in certain ways over the years.

I like how the LB production leans into "fuck it, this is a 90210-esque TV theme tune now"; I think that both LB and Backspacer work best when they abandon themselves to how camp they are without shame

I'm usually a mess of contradictions, in general...I can simultaneously acknowledge the cheese, mock the cheese, and paradoxically, love the cheese, oftentimes in the same breath.
Middle-aged Ed was/is/continues to be a hokey mother fucker, let's be real.

I think I'm just appreciating it more these days and not hand-waving it so much.

oh absolutely 100%

“Unthought Known” just needs more meat to it musically — to me it feels like a textbook example of a sketch that was extended into a song, offering little in the way of a tune, at least one that justifies such repetition. I don’t dislike it, but it is misplaced as a centerpiece, and being paired with the similarly midtempo, similarly musically awkward “Amongst the Waves” does neither song any favors.

But, it was clearly a special song to the band, or at least to Ed. They played it on SNL, they played it (I think) in Berlin to remember the Roskilde victims, and the video for that performance was shared officially by the band in a few different places. It was one of the few Backspacer tunes that took up regular setlist real estate during that tour (I am not sure how it has fared since); most of the rest never really got developed beyond a handful of performances.

I do really like the lyric “dream the dreams of other men/you will be no one’s rival.”

same - and the gems and rhinestones lyric. But Unthought Known does feel like a sketch - that's the right word. It was an Eddie solo track before Backspacer and there's not very much added.

Unthought Known is a top 5 song for me and has been for along time. I won't argue that it is one of their best, but it resonates with me on a deep level.

I kinda like songs that are made of minimalistic refrains and repetition; they can become almost mantraic, which goes with the spiritual nature of the song, but the arrangement could do with being "grander" somehow to offset that relative emptiness; I'm sure other bands have done it well, though I can't think of any off the top of my head; oh! yes I can: "Everything in Its Right Place" by Radiohead; it doesn't "sound like UK", but it similarly works with disjointed puzzle-piece lyrics that feel like poetic notes jotted down in the margin; in the hands of Ed they're like proverbs, and I've always enjoyed his lyrics in this style (Riot Act has a lot of them) but to circle back, the bright but thin musical aesthetic of Backspacer doesn't serve it as well as it could do

As per usual, Kevin. You've managed to articulate what I was striving for with my point and expanded upon it with an eloquence that is unmatched...except by maybe stip.

Very much appreciate the conversation from all.

and this definition I just Googled really does lend itself to that fragmented thought trail

"Unthought Known is a phrase coined by Christopher Bollas in the 1980s to represent those experiences in some ways known to the individual, but about which the individual is unable to think"

I mean, in as much as this song is always searching for itself and never feeling truly resolved or complete or narratively coherent, I think the title succeeds

yeah, Unthought Known remains as a favorite for the band. They played it at Werchter in 2022.

having some distance from this album, being in the midst of some course-correction after Lightning Bolt, I've been enjoying this album quite a lot recently; it is what it is, a (rather minor) experiment in sound and recording, and I like that; it's just that there was a lot of fear at the time that this was... just Pearl Jam now; they continue to surprise us though, and off we go, forward, with this little neo-Ramones nugget to enjoy from the catalogue

you folx who don't like ATW are nuts! that's all