I adore this song

truth is i only listened to the whole song maybe once, usually i skip to the ending, just to hear the ending.

now cono is back-tracking, trying to cover up his folly.

just write the damn essay

19 thumbs up.

Why in the hell are all of these SOTM's being bumped? I don't care, it's just a little peculiar.

here's the reason this one was bumped.

I also agree that taking the vocals up an octave was a good idea.

Thanks for sharing the song strat.

That is right on for me but I gave it a 2. This is one of the very few times where I feel like Pearl Jam are trying too hard to sound like something or someone else. It feels cheap to me like using these amazing talents, Ed's voice, Mikes guitar and interesting studio work for a result of blah and emptiness. (I like Pearl Jam slow songs and can see the potential but this one misses me)

That drum bothers me too. I don't know much about drums but it is like the snare is tuned too high so the sound is sharp and just won't sit down into the song.

So I've been listening to the 2000 shows a bit recently and have been thinking about this song, which I have always really enjoyed musically, but never understood or hardly thought about lyrically.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I like it, but I am sort of starting to feel like I get what was being attempted. Jeff seems to write songs about a moment, or a feeling. He does so in a lyrical way that lacks any narrative or, really, any focus at all. Low Light is a song about dusk. That's it. It's not a song about something that happens at dusk or anything like that: It's just a collection of images (thoughts going through someone head) set to music that also manages to "feel" like that time of late evening.

NAIS is attempting the same kind of thing, only this time he's describing (lyrically and musically) a sens of confusion and wrongness. In this song, though, the musical part work far better than the rest. Indded, the only part I can really term "effective" is the first verse with it's mismatched pairs:

all these words alone
Is nothing like your poem

Putting in and putting in
Don't feel like methadone

A scratching voice all alone
Is nothing like your baritone

It's hard to say whether there's actually value in writing about a feeling. Narrative and context aren't always necessary but at least one of the two is nice. This ends up feeling like something that could work on a true concept or rock opera type of album - this song could serve as everything from a descent into madness or the confusion of returning home after a long time away and finding everything changed - but as just another song on the record it really seems lacking in context.

I loved your insight into Lowlight...and as for this song...i agree that a narrative or context is needed. All we are left with are loose scribbles, and whilst this writing technique could be used for good effect in some songs, NAIS just really struggles. Because of the sparse chords/plaintive structure (through the verses especially) we're forced to cling to the few lines we have, and - if anything - it really just exposes how poooooor some of the rhymes are: lone/bone/cone/drone/ET phone home et cetera et cetera...

I have no problem with this writing/narrative style if it is an intentional artistic decision, and is done to reflect the state of mind of the song's subject matter, or to fit the 'moody' music or whatever...but this is a 5+ minute song, and (to me) the words/rhyme just feel a little grating and annoying after a while.

Sonically, the song has some amazing moments - listening with headphones, there is so much colour and texture towards the bridges and outro, and you can hear how much effort has gone into it in regards to musical layerings and production/engineering tweaking.

Yeah, that's the only version of the song I listen to anymore. Thanks.

Still top-5 for me.

I love this, the way Ed looks and gazes across the crowd and into the distance. It fits the mood of the song and you can see he feels it:



I guess for me live it's a close your eyes song and just let go and dive into this song, like you just got a shot of pure musical heroin.

yeah that lowlight observation was interesting. I'll think about it the next time I hear the song and see if that salvages it for me, since right now it's a pretty song with terrible lyrics

I've got no problem writing a song describing a mood or a moment, and for the most part Jeff does a good job matching the music to the moment. His songs are almost always evocative, even if they aren't good. As is usually the case with him the issue is the lyrics--without a narrative does he uncover a way of describing the feeling that the listener never thought of before, or was never quite able to describe. NAIS has a few nice moments like that "A scratching voice all alone..../a whisper through a megaphone) but for the most part the lyrics are kind of nonsensical and not very compelling, given weight that they don't earn because the music that surrounds them is weighty.

Absolutely amazing fucking song. This is in my top 10 PJ and the best track from Binaural. Sure the lyrics are nonsensical but who cares when the music is so rich and brutally sweeping. This is a dark storm of a song that leaves destruction, trees uprooted and bystanders wondering what the fuck just occurred. Reminds me of Swans, which is a huge departure for PJ (and a compliment).

5 stars.

I really love this song. As others have said, musically it's beautiful. True, lyrically, it doesn't all come together. It does lack narrative and context and to some extent focus. I don't care much for narrative in songs anyway; but it's tough to get by with neither context nor focus.

My claim is that there IS more of a focus than others have suggested and that while the song is about a feeling, it's a rather complex one. Not just despair, but a deep ambivalence.

"It's nothing as it seems,.. the little that he needs,. it's home
The little that he sees,.. is nothing. He concedes,.. it's home"

The juxtaposition of 'the little that he needs' and 'the little that he sees, is nothing, he concedes'
suggests to me that he's expressing one part of him that can be satisfied with this 'little' home ('the little that he needs'). In a somewhat self-pitying and ashamed way, he can find comfort in it, and some sort of acceptance. But it's a very conflicted acceptance, one he loathes himself for, because after all, it's "little" and "nothing" and-- here's where the more obvious despair comes in--it feels devastatingly barren. It's full of disappointment, and he feels trapped in its smallness, yet attached to it at the same time, as we all are in some way to our "homes," however bitter we may be about them.

Anybody else see any of this in it?

sure, I think that makes sense.

The lyrics are about Jeff returning to Big Sandy after he became famous.