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I think it really reiterated to me that Backspacer is the real sore spot in the catalog. Songs from LB like Yellow Moon, Pendulum and the title track almost made my top 10 but I think the only other Backspacer song that comes close besides The End is Johnny Guitar.
I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39430
Birds in Hell wrote:
I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.
fair enough, and there are definitely some songs on Lightning Bolt that feel constructed in the way you're describing (Pendulum and Infallible come to mind, though I quite like both of those). I definitely don't hear that on Backspacer. Almost all those songs are roaring with energy (if not always intensity) and feel very much of the moment - like 5 guys came together to document this moment in time (which it very much is. I gave Backspacer a listen last night and it is totally an attempt to capture how liberating the end of the bush years/start of Obama's term felt).
Backspacer is a tricky record - it is, I think, the most challenging pearl jam record to unlock without context (it is the coda to that run of the first 9 albums, thematically, as well as being in direct conversation with Riot Act and S/T) while paradoxically being a record full of songs that, even if their darker/weightier moments, are intended to be lighter, carefree, more immediately digestible after a career full of heavier, denser, weightier records. It is an anti-statement album (by design) which is itself, for a band like pearl jam, a statement.
Lightning Bolt, for all its superficial similarities to Backspacer (which are really just similarities in that they were later albums featuring Eddie's diminished vocal capacity), is a very different beast. It's a middle aged record with middle aged themes. It's a cautious record, where backspacer is carefree - concerned about legacy (not really musical legacy as much as something more personal), inheritance, loss, obligation - motivated not by what it hopes to gain but by what it hopes to retain, and the fear that what this is is not good enough. The songs do explore these themes in interesting and interconnected ways, and the songwriting on the record is generally pretty strong. It's just that the antiseptic production flattens all the character out of the performances
Looking at the lists, I realized I forgot 10 Billion Years. It's possible that could bump The End or Comatose. That was really the gem of that leak of songs (and I guess the only complete thing we hadn't already heard).
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 3:35 pm Posts: 32240 Location: Buenos Aires
Like I said in a different thread, I like "Ten Billion Years" quite a bit but I am not convinced it's a Pearl Jam song. I don't think that sounds like Matt on drums.
Like I said in a different thread, I like "Ten Billion Years" quite a bit but I am not convinced it's a Pearl Jam song. I don't think that sounds like Matt on drums.
Like I said in a different thread, I like "Ten Billion Years" quite a bit but I am not convinced it's a Pearl Jam song. I don't think that sounds like Matt on drums.
I feel like I hear Ed doing some of the backing vocals, though I could be far off on that assessment. Maybe I'll also just making the assumption since it came out in concert with the other material that was definitely PJ.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 2:04 pm Posts: 37156 Location: September 2020 Poster of the Month
Birds in Hell wrote:
I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.
yes this, but i'd replace your self titled examples with my own
I think Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are equally as terrible as each other (please restrain yourself, Jorge). It's not even that they're "bad" (though they are, in their own way), it's more that the band's strongest qualities are almost totally absent. I don't have any particular insight into their writing process but the songs feel very "constructed", which I suspect is partly why they're all so flat when performed live. I can't imagine any human beings standing in a room and writing songs like Got Some or Getaway or Can't Deny Me with other real, live human beings. They feel like riffs or rough ideas which were built up in the studio into something resembling "rock music", there's no genuine propulsion or spit or fire in not only the performances, but the actual writing and arrangement, particularly in comparison to relatively recent material like Comatose, Life Wasted, Big Wave, etc.
fair enough, and there are definitely some songs on Lightning Bolt that feel constructed in the way you're describing (Pendulum and Infallible come to mind, though I quite like both of those).
I don't care for the production on Infallible but it's one of the songs on LB I think is least suggestive of what I’m talking about, it has an internal logic and flow that feels quite genuine.
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