i like you

S/T was really the first PJ album where my anticipation clouded my initial feelings. Maybe it was my fault for spending so much time on RM before its release. I got caught up in the enthusiasm and leak-sharing and forced myself into liking the songs. It wasn’t really until I got back from one of The Gorge shows when I started to noticed all the flaws. This whole sequence was repeated with Backspacer.

WWS, Unemployable, Parachutes and Come Back remain the only songs that I like on the album. Eddie’s vocal performance is lackluster and many of the songs (MITS and Army Reserve in particular) seem to have the core of a good song, but don’t develop into much. The novelty of Comatose wore off quickly and the lyrics of Inside Job make it impossible for me to enjoy. Gone is just plain dreadful.

The packaging doesn’t help matters. Some may think this is a piddly criticism, but I still enjoy sitting down with a decent pair of headphones while perusing the liner notes. I actually don’t mind the avocado concept on the cover, but that with the grotesque stuff on the inside, makes for a less than cohesive package. Combine this with the production and the whole album makes for a shoddy artistic endeavor.

The inside art really is hideous. I just don't get that kind of thing.

better or worse than this

The chorus riff makes me think of "Call Me Maybe".

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country."

Fixed.

I'd never seen that before. Is the booklet just still images from that video?

It's all the same shit.

I clearly remember disliking RA on the first listen but that it quickly grew on me. No such luck with S/T even 6 years later. As a whole the album is just missing atmosphere.

This is what I do like about the album. Parachutes, MITS, the chorus and bridge of unemployable, Inside Job and that's about it. Backspacer had the exact same feeling to me, it was just over quicker.

I mean PJ is still my favorite band, bar none, ten-binaural cements that without a doubt. But guys, they have a lot to make up for with their next pablum.

It's pretty sobering to reflect on the overall quality of the work these guys have produced over the last decade or so, removing all those live shows/bootlegs/movies/t-shirts/onesies/socks/backpacks from the equation.

Its one of my favorites PJ songs...specially because of the lyrics. And the music is fucking awesome.
I

It is sobering when you think about the 3 albums released in the past decade. I mean, there are good songs in there but overall the songwriting and arranging is pretty vanilla stuff to me. Especially the last 2 albums. Not to mention that their "punk rock" numbers these days can't hold a candle to the punk influenced stuff written in the 90's. What's even more annoying is that they are all obviously better musicians now than before. So I am left wondering, have they burnt up the creative wick, is their some animosity between certain members that is blocking out creativity? What is it? Is Ed really that controlling? Again Backspacer to me regardless of what anyone says is really just a runoff of S/T. Both albums grew on me but not in the way that past PJ albums have.

yes, I think so.

Not that I think it's necessarily the root cause of their declining creative powers, but if anything the absence of any interpersonal tension might be one factor. Lots of great bands, this one included, made their best music when they were falling apart on a personal level.

I'm more inclined to think they just ran their course in a creative sense. They had a good eight to ten years or so of consistent excellence, that's certainly more than most bands.

Only one option then. Let Matt just do Soundgarden and get Dave back in the fold. He and Stone can jam/write most of the tunes that way too.

I can agree on this but it isn't hard to come up with interesting sounds on an instrument especially when you're proficient as the guys in PJ. (I've played guitar and bass for 10 years. Gotta back up what I'm sayin lol.) I was thinking more along the lines of animosity through past concessions. Maybe Ed as the default leader of the band has run its course (The Fixer/Need to Know...it's opinion I know but I know which version I thought had more creative possibilities.) It's all conjecture here though. Just throwing thoughts out there.

To me, songs from S/T and riot act are much richer and have much more substance than their previous works. and I love their previous work, mind you.

In my opinion, the band has been getting more creative, and digging deeper and wider than previous.

In their previous works, I find most of their songs were immediately likeable, while still leaving room for growing to like them even more.

for Riot Act & S/T, my initial reactions were wtf.... WTF.

I can only describe it as an acquired taste, I guess (in search of a better description though), because I hear so much intricacy and inter-instrument interaction (?) , and spaces where the music is not, and built up levels of playing, (and I do mean up to sometimes four or five musical/physical levels) that, yeah, at first 100 listens sound like shit. I can't explain it any other way.

S/T sat for so long after I listened to it only once or twice. It sat for a year or more.

but now is mindblowing

marker in the sand
comatose
severed hand
parachutes
life wasted
inside job
gone

inside job "got me" just about 2 months ago. I thought I liked it before...but one day while driving and blasting it, it just became overwhelming to me, like I was really hearing it for the first time. it wasn't the lyrics, but the music/feeling/"punch" that the song, for the first time, was putting out. this was totally unexpected because I thought I had "got" this song all along.

These kind of moments are one of the main reasons I love PJ. They make "creeper" songs.

the only 2 songs on here I don't like are unemployable and big wave. At the present time, I can't imagine this ever changing....
, but then again, I also used to think that evolution was the most obnoxious thing I ever heard. (not anymore I don't )

So anyway,.....I know what its like not to like a song. One can't be "talked" into liking a song. duh. I've just learned over the years not to write off even what I thought were the worst songs solely because of this (sometimes-terribly-slow) "creeper" aspect.

and while I can't tell somebody to like a song that they don't.....even harder, or for me impossible, is saying or hearing that S/T songs show decline, or less creatvitiy, or suck or whatever
simply because I know what I hear.

Nice to read some enthusiasm for this album, even if I think we have completely different opinions about it. To me, it's all very obvious and stilted and outward by design. I'm not really a big fan of that approach for Pearl Jam-- I like them better when there is a foreboding darkness, a mystery to their music, which is why I love that Vitalogy-through-Riot Act stretch of albums so much.

I keep forgetting that "Unemployable" is part of this album. I actually really like that song. I should LAL to this soon.

I stand behind these thoughts: