I don't know, nothing forces Ed to come up with a vocal melody which is more appropriate for early 80s Brian Johnson. It's those sustained screechy notes in songs like Life Wasted, Can't Deny Me, World Wide Suicide, that tear his voice up and I can't think of anything equivalent in their earlier material.

Songs like Dissident have high notes which Ed would occasionally stumble on, even back in the earlier days, but they seem less demanding overall as he wasn't writing melodies which forced him to hit high note after high note in a sustained way.

It seems like he's consistently writing vocal melodies which he simply can't sing, and probably couldn't have sung even when he was younger. It's a totally different approach to his voice, and one which seems crazily inappropriate for a guy in his mid-fifties. Is it a weird mid-life crisis thing?

Hmm, this is interesting. He definitely does swing for the fences more now on a syllabic basis.

Eddie Vedder trying too hard to be EDDIE VEDDER

Perhaps now they will finally age gracefully.

He needs to work on being Robert Louis Stevenson

We can only hope, but I'm not holding my breath just yet.

I was listening to one of the South American shows yesterday and Ed sounds like he's going to explode when he's trying to screech out the beginning of Can't Deny Me, even though it's tuned lower than the studio version. It's bizarre, I don't think he struggles anywhere near as much with the older material (aside from Blood, maybe). It's only the songs they've written in the last few years which are ridiculously out of his range.

Eddie Vedder trying too hard to be EDDIE VEDDER