It's about a drug addict with a vocal range between the tenor and bass ranges who doesn't seem to be interested into getting treatment for his addiction but ultimately all he would need is home.

Agreed. The things he said on tour before playing the song seem to reinforce this if I remember correctly (which I probably don't).

Eddie doesn't do that well, either. It undermines unemployable a bit for me as well. There is some blue state smugness in that song that wouldn't have been there if Springsteen wrote it

Binaural is my favorite album, and I've never done one of these LAL's before, I think I'll try this later when I have some time.

McP's track listing is a cool idea but even assuming Of The Girl was stretched that long 65 minutes fits on one cd and on one cd I don't think that mix works. No record company is gonna release two CDs if the songs fit on one. Of course that has nothing to do with McP's concept but it's the dumb stuff I think about when laboring over the mythical perfect Binaural.

01 Breakerfall
02 God's Dice
03 Evacuation
04 Letters To The Dead
05 Rival
06 Grievance
07 Light Years
08 Of The Girl
09 Fatal
10 In The Moonlight
11 Thin Air
12 Insignificance
13 Nothing As It Seems
14 Education
15 Sleight Of Hand
16 Parting Ways (Soon Forget)

Soon Forget is one of the big examples, at lease for me, of Binaural's flaws. How the hell did they decide that was a better tune to keep than Sad, Education, or In The Moonlight? It's just mind boggling, and knowing all the cool songs / ideas that went down with the Binaural sessions, vs. what we actually got just make it all the more frustrating.

The album sessions and the highs from the album are Pearl Jam at their best. What we got though was a good album, rather than a masterpiece.

This albums timing came out exactly when I was in a phase of life learning to mix/produce. It's greatly impacted the way I hear music know. Knowing what the band was going for, where there are obvious flaws and where they succeeded have helped trained my hear to know certain elements of the recording process that work or just flat out down work.
This is one of favorite albums of all time and I credit the band so much for going out on a limb and trying something different even if it didn't come out perfectly. It's the flaws of the album that make this more special to me in a strange way.

Greviance, while it could have been recorded differently, is a shining example of an amazing song that is almost ruined by the production (but ultimately saved by a few artistic choices).

This is the definitive PJ album for me and I can't imagine the void in my life if this didn't exist. It's Pearl Jam firing on all cylinders and probably their creative peak.

I adore this album regardless of what tracklist. The songs are so strong individually that it just flat out doesnt matter what order or what b sides are added in place of other songs.

God's Dice and Evacuation are the 2 most underrated songs in the PJ catalog. God's Dice more so than Evacuation.

This came out in 96. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_There_(Wilco_album)

I'm wrong more than I'm right.

But that album was definitely the exception.

exactly

If only I'd thought to imply that you



Honestly, even if they'd simply developed one of the instrumentals into a song (the softer one. what's the softer one called? I liked the softer one.), offered up a solid 'Of the Girl'-level binaural mix of Strangest Tribe, and done a little work on Anything in Between (isn't that from these sessions?), and that would probably have been enough to justify it. It'd be preferable if they invested another of those oh-so-tiring two week sessions to coming up with something new (or seen what else they have unfinished from previous sessions, since that paid off gangbusters this time around), but goddamn do I love me some Strangest Tribe.

Then again, Cold Roses is another record that fits on a single disc but was marketed as a double, so...

I missed this. Fantastic.

You don't really expect me to read the entire post do you?!?!?!?

Shit. Not even I did that.

it's an excellent description of what they're trying to do on this album. I just think they're not consistently successful, and since it's such a mood piece the missteps are more constly than on other records.

Interesting that you give them a pass for the recording and production missteps on S/T but are holding to such a high standard on Binaural. I get that by naming the album as such and obviously relying on a specific technique means more attention to this aspect of an album, but still, come on. I'll take the imperfections of the Binaural recording over muddy yet empty pieces like Life Wasted, WWS, Gone, and Inside Job any day.

S/T is trying to be a record of loud, agressive, forceful songs. There are production missteps that hold back quite a few of those songs, but they're less costly given what the album is trying to do. I'll judge an album based on what I think about the general songwriting, and for whether or not it pulls off what it is trying to accomplish (and of course whether or not I enjoy it).

The S/T production missteps are much more costly because they make it painful to listen to the songs.

if you are a prissy wuss, sure