pff thats so wrong

Quick Escape reeks of Cready and Ament. The same can be said of Buckle Up, its a classic Gossard folk tune. Pretty much every song has a distinctive feel of Pearl Jam.

Ok I’ll bite on Buckle Up. Quick Escape? Meh. It’s a Zeppelin song.

That's Given to Fly.

If Bono fronted Zeppelin

for all that I enjoy DOTC, the notion so many of you have that it's unbridled genius and far and away the best song on Gigaton is completely nuts; it's solid and sounds like Pearl Jam, just like the whole record, but I can't get behind "X Gigaton Song is lacklustre and meh because it's not DOTC" (which many reviews have noted sounds like Pearl Jam doing Talking Heads); I think some of us have forgotten that we love(d) this band despite (or even maybe because of) their habit of wearing influences on their sleeves; they have loads of songs that ape other bands

In defense of trag - and in agreement of - he’s right.


Yes gigaton is a much better Pearl Jam effort than previous few albums.

Pointing out buckle up is a quintessential stone song is the issue.

“Here’s the stone song. Here’s the Ed song. Oh that’s obviously the Cameron song. Oh hey there’s Ed’s stuff”.

For a few records you couldn’t really tell or you could at best make an educated guess. Because they FELT like organic pearl jam compositions that each individual had a part in writing

Looking back on track lists now it’s obvious which songs are storm songs or Jeff’s songs, but as time progressed it wasn’t always clear.

Now Pearl Jam albums - seemingly sound like individual compositions in the spirit of a democratic operation.

Except for DOTC which by all accounts was built upon each individual members contribution. And it’s brilliant.

A main reason we know it's an 'Eddie' song or a 'Matt' song going in because unlike many bands, PJ is specific in their songwriting credits. A band like Radiohead always credits the music to the entire band, regardless of a song's particular genesis, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to know a song's origins without hearing about it in an interview. If PJ had always credited their music to the entire band, I think it'd be more difficult to know that. But we already have that in our mind (that it's the Stone or Eddie or Matt song for the record) going in.

Eh. I can tell pretty easily Ed’s songs. His guitar tone. Same with quirkiness of stones music. MC’s time signatures etc.

you wouldn't if you'd never been told they were Ed's songs

bullshit.

Ed songs: Sound like The Who, Cat Stevens, and occasionally Springsteen (but this all began with Binaural. Everything prior was more elusive -- Dennis Johnston, Neil Young, Split Enz, but also his own thing).

Stone songs: 7th chords. Lots of them.

Jeff songs: Weird chord movements. Sort of an airy, ungrounded feel.

Matt songs: Weird time signature changes.

Mike songs: Sounds like classic rock or Social Distortion.

you wouldn't be able to attach these different styles to a name if writing credits hadn't already done it, I'm not sure why that's "bullshit"

if everything was "written by Pearl Jam", all we'd know is that Pearl Jam has various sounds

For me personally, it's less about writing credits and more about having poured over interviews, listened to side projects, etc. I can draw a line from the original Loosegroove stuff to Stone's PJ contributions; ditto Ed's interviews about The Who; etc.

I'm not sure if this is included in your argument or not? But wanted to share that the writing credits haven't informed me here nearly as much as reading interviews.

that's fair, I hadn't factored interviews etc in; tbh I never really paid a great deal of attention to that stuff

If they didn't do writing credits, or have discussions of their influences or show them in the writing and recording process, then sure.

truce! if Pearl Jam did literally nothing except for make cds WITH NOTHING ON THEM my argument would be VALID

You mean Vs. through Binaural?

I didn't know or care much who wrote what through most of my fandom

I'm the opposite. I knew Porch, RVM and Corduroy were my favorite and was always interested to see what Ed would produce. Similarly, I loved what Stone brought to the table and as his contributions lessened always hoped that more from him would bring better Pearl Jam albums.

I don't think I knew that Stone brought the funkier / groovier riffs until I joined RM? they were some of my favourite PJ songs so it was interesting to know they were less Ed; other than that, I started to be interested in Matt cuts

Yes