Stip, you also mentioned that the song takes on a different meaning live, when it's being sung by everyone. I agree, but that feeling IMO also exists on the studio recording. In the same way the meaning of Insignificance is clouded and made stronger by the music those lyrics are set to, the music of In Hiding makes that chorus so triumphant and anthemic it's inherently communal. He's alone in his temporary seclusion, but he's also connected with the countless others that commit to the same action so as to improve themselves and the world.

yeah all that makes sense Dig. I am not convinced but that seems like a totally legit interpretation, and your point about the chorus is a good one.


Thinking about it, my take on Yield is really pretty heavily influenced by Ishmael. I wonder what I would think about the record without the book

I feel like Glorified G is what DTE wants to be but fails at, because it's still too much in Ed's "voice." Certainly I think DTE is meant as sarcastic, but the only clue to that within the song itself is the "do what i want, but irresponsibly" line, which is probably the weakest line in the song, because it doesn't belong/doesn't fit the voice.

Not sure what you mean about not taking DTE at face value. Certainly the song is sarcastic, but it's sarcasm is so evident that it almost seems like that is the face value of the song.

Interestingly I fall kind of right in between Digster and stip when it comes to In Hiding.

I think the verses are clunky and poorly written. I get what it's all going for, it just feels like an awkward first draft to me. (Hell, maybe that's intentional because most of the Bukowski I've read has always felt like an awkward first draft in need of revision). That said, the music and the overall message work for me, and I really like the song.

Ah, I think we're coming at it from divergent views. DTE, more than any other song in PJ's catalog, to me, is the one most removed from Ed's "voice." I don't think there's any song where he inhabits a character less like himself than that one. It's kind of over-the-top, in the way they seem to draw attention to it; the overdrive on the vocal, the ludicrous music, the "choir", the dispelling of all the horrors of the verse with "it's Evolution, baby!" like the end of the world is coming with a coke and a smile. I think with Glorified G, that was the intent, but he wasn't able to sell it, for lack of a better term. He does here in a big way.

What I meant by taking the song at face value, was that for it to fit into that Ishmael way of viewing things, someone would have to believe that Eddie's not being sarcastic, that all the horrible things that humans do is really just survival of the fittest, and there's nothing to do about it. I don't think Eddie believes that; at the very least, he certainly doesn't believe the latter part of that.

Digster, DTE is perfectly in line with Ishamel, but the point is not that Eddie endorses those views. That's clearly not the case. But Ishmael is a story about how our human obsession with mastery and privilege, the belief that the rules don't apply to us, is writing us out of the planet's story. DTE is (I think) telling that story. I can't imagine any other interpretation that makes sense. But if you see DTE as a musical cliff notes version of Ishmael (which I think it is, and i don't mean that dismissively in the slightest as DTE is one of my all time favorite pearl jam songs) then it makes sense to read that song in light of the larger book.

Ishmael is, despite its desire to be optimistic (a pretty thin desire) is really much happier wagging its finger about how awful things are. The grand conclusion of that book is 'someone better come along and do something' but the most the guy can come up with is telling other people how horrible things are. The big solution running through his books is to run away and try and reproduce a sustainable society on a much smaller scale--that we're all basically fucked so we might as well bail and save ourselves. There's nothing in DTE (the song or the video) that suggests any kind of positive platform, any kind of engagement. It's not a nihilistic song since it clearly aims to critique and has a standard it is using to judge, but it is a defeated song, that throws its hands up in the face of its own extinction (elements of insignificance but without insignificance's humanity). It mocks and laughs because there is nothing else that you can do.


Yield is, to my knowledge, the only pearl jam record where they spend time actively talking about literary inspirations for the album (Bukowski, Ishmael, that pilate book). I can't speak for Pilate, but Ishamel is a pretty defeatist book. I am a huge Bukowski fan, and have probably read like 40 books of his poetry or
novels, and the thing about those books is that Bukowski never emerges.

Of course it is possible that these songs are meant to invert the outcomes here, to try and redeem the negativity in the books. That would be the kind of project i think the band could get into. But I don't think that's what they're doing. Underneath this recipe for inner peace I think what we end up finding is alienation, which comes to the fore in the next record.

also just so this is clear, I don't think anything I said is a criticism of the record. If anything, I think it makes it a lot more nuanced and interesting than it might otherwise be

now I have to go write a lecture on Congress that I really don't feel like writing, so someone better respond to this quick so I have something else to do!

I'm a context guy, too, and accept the idea that albums are informed by their adjacent works, but I think you're overstating the reality of what Binaural means to Yield here. Binaural and Yield were released roughly 27 months apart; to me, trying to essentially expose Yield as fraudulent simply because the songs didn't sustain that same state of mind for 2+ years feels unreasonable. It feels similar to saying that Bob Dylan's 'New Morning,' a record of love songs he wrote during the happiest years of his marriage, is now null and void because he later got divorced and wrote 'Blood on the Tracks'--as if the earlier songs somehow become less genuine.

"Escape is never the safest path" has become a kind of mantra for Pearl Jam, but I think it was misstated originally. I think there's an important line to be drawn between "escape" and "denial," and I think Yield deals strictly in the former while "Dissident" really meant to address the latter. I remember a recent discussion where we talked about the notion of Pearl Jam as a "snapshot band," and I think that's applicable here: Yield doesn't stand contrary to Pearl Jam's ethos of community, of getting out there and facing the world head-on, etc.; what it does is document those moments of self-collection which are necessary for those other things to function effectively. I think one thing that affords Yield so many vocal supporters is that this is kind of a rare thing in rock music, particularly by bands who do share Pearl Jam's ethos--this idea of looking inward to examine oneself before looking outward to change the world, ensuring--when you do go back out there to make a Binaural or a Riot Act--that the person attempting to do the "changing" is coming from the healthiest, most sensible place possible.

To that end, I've never read Ishmael, or any of the books supposedly at the heart of this record's message. So maybe that's to my (dis)advantage. Either way, I think a lot of what you're reading into why certain lyrics negate themselves is too semantic. Like digster says, the song structure makes a difference; the reason Ed goes back "into hiding" after emerging is because "in hiding" is the chorus, and that song sounds best going out on a chorus.

Also, with Binaural you have a massive range of emotions; frustration, impotence, rage, confusion. But one thing Binaural is definitely not is ignorant of the world outside, and an intended ignorance is what where PJ would be if Yield had truly been the album that stresses escape (or denial, which I agree is the better word. There's nothing inherently wrong or ignorant about escape provided it includes a return). I don't see how they could get from Yield to Binaural if Yield really was that album; Binaural is full of characters that have walked the protest lines, been present at the riots, gotten their hands dirty, and it details what they found there. None of that would be present on Binaural if Yield was about throwing up your hands and walking away for good.

The thing about this is that I don't necessarily disagree that the story of DTE is one of the rules not applying to humanity (although I think it's a stretch to claim that the song speaks to and for all humanity; you mention the video, and that makes it clear that just as there are victimizers, there are victims. It seems to me that Eddie is singing about a group of people rather than humanity as a whole). What I was saying to mray, and something I still believe to be true, is that for that song to truly be advocating Ishmael's approach is that at some level Eddie, or Eddie's character or whatever, would have to believe that. He'd believe that it really is evolution, there's nothing to do about it, that not even the struggle itself has meaning, which was a big part of the Vitalogy tour thread. I just can't listen to the song and feel like I'm supposed to be taking him seriously. That doesn't make it light-hearted, but that doesn't make it a defeated song, either. Just because the song is not about 'engagement' doesn't make it a 'disengaged' song, either. The fact that Eddie is willing to approach these horrific men with humor and mockery shows how little he fears them. Additionally, when you place Evolution in context of the other songs, Faithfull, Given to Fly, Wishlist, In Hiding, etc. all these songs that stress personal fulfillment and making yourself better to make the world better, I don't think Evolution is nearly as defeated as that.

I'm with you in what the song is meaning to do--I also agree as you stated in response to me above--that DTE is not in Eddie's voice (Glorified G is, which is why it doesn't succeed as well as DTE does).

Where we diverge is in what this means to the record. You see a context of "Faithfull, Given to Fly, Wishlist, In Hiding, etc. all these songs that stress personal fulfillment and making yourself better to make the world better," and that's what I don't see. That's there in G2F, of course, he comes back to share his love with everyone, though in a detached way, but I don't get a feeling of engagement from Wishlist, or In Hiding at all (nor from Brain of J, MFC, Push Pull, or ATY). Even when the character of In Hiding reemerges he still seems separate, more able to stand back from the world and see it as a result of his time underground. He doesn't seem to have come back to being a part of the "aground" world at all in that song, and then we move into Push Pull and ATY which really seem to advocate escapism.

Even G2F isn't really about re-engagement--the character there gives his love away but he's still not a part of the world, at most he's a sometimes seen spot in the sky. And that's the only song other than maybe No Way (which only does so through a terrible and presumably sarcastic chorus) that even advocates making the world better. The rest of the album is just about the personal to me. And that's fine. Theoretically of course you need to have your own house in order to be able to help anyone else. But I see Yield as a record about getting your own house in order ... and that's about it.

that's a fair point with the semantic stuff (although I do think album sequencing is significant and the second half of this record, with the arguable exception of low light, is one song after another that seems to be about disengagement. If the album ends with Faithful maybe I feel differently), and I certainly would not want to overstate the binaural stuff--the controlling influence in my interpretation of Yield is Ishmael--the binaural thing is (I think) an interesting footnote (that their most alienated record follows the one where they were the most at peace. If the followup to backspacer is really dark that'll challenge parts of backspacer for me, although backspacer closes out with a number of hints in that direction). And the put your own house in order before you can look to others thing is not unusual for them either (it is on S/T, all over No Code, even Alive).

The thing for me with Yield is that, as mray 10 says so well, it feels private, separate, even isolated, in a way those other records don't. The soul searching has a communal element that is pretty muted here, and its politics have a 'well you might as well just throw your hands up in the air and laugh it off cuz what are you going to do about it' attitude that is unusual for them. I think the Camusian tragedy in a song like Insignficance, or the how dare you stubborn defiance of Grievance, is far more compelling as a position than as a song. or from Breath "If I knew where it was I would take you there...there's much more than this.' --that the point is both that we must look together and that we cannot find it by ourselves. Ten is such an alienated record cuz it is song after song about how those people you should be searching with keep letting you down, but these songs reaffirm the importance of that.

That was my fault; for some reason I read that as "DTE wants to be Glorified G but is too much in Ed's 'voice.' "

I think there is a fair amount of engagement in Wishlist and Faithfull, primarily an engagement of love. I think overall tone of the record is one of trying to find a path towards happiness, and part of that is helping yourself so you can help others. The verses of Brain of J illustrate the past, while the choruses hint at an optimism for the future that is further explored later in the record. That doesn't necessarily mean that every line of every song is imbued with that sentiment (that you fix yourself to be able to fix the world). It's part of the package, but needn't be it's entirety. So I don't think the fact that that doesn't show up in every song means it's not present. I think if that was the case it would make for a less interesting album. Yield, at it's core to me, is about finding ways to be happy. However, to take stip's viewpoint of it, I don't see how that violates the "PJ ethos" (which to be fair, I don't know if I believe exists in that specific a manner, so it doesn't impact my feelings on the album as much).

As for In Hiding and Given To Fly, you're giving them a closer reading than I do. I read the last moment of GTF and the last verse of In Hiding as liberation, not as a "he goes away but comes back but is still separate" thing. That may be what Ed was going for; personally, I disagree. I think the last part of GTF is the usage of some evocative imagery to illustrate the optimism there at the song's conclusion.

I think, to that point, it was pretty unusual, but this is largely why I believe Yield represents a step forward. I think where you hear "throw your hands up in the air," I hear: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Yield is the point where they begin to recognize that maxim as worthy of consideration, and they embrace it with a kind of kid-in-a-candy-shop enthusiasm; Binaural, and especially Riot Act, is where I hear them really struggling to come to terms with what exactly each category encompasses.

That reminds me of this Yield-era interview from MTV, where at the 8:30 mark Eddie says the band's new motto is, "If it's not fun, it's funny."

Maybe I'm naive and just take things at face value but I see Yield as the next logical step after No Code. The first two albums had songs full of other peoples stories, with no thought of the band's place in the world. Albums three and four get more personal, we learn where the band places themselves in the world. They provide some insight to themselves. With Yield they go within themselves, contemplating who they are, looking at their own hypocracy, looking for the places they find and can find contentment.

Present Tense would fit in nicely on this album. I think of it as the bridge between No Code and Yield, a bit of foreshadowing by the band.

With each album and the increasing lyric writers, diverging personal lives, I think finding a linear story line is harder to find. There are always going to be lyrical ideas left over from previous albums and mindsets that make their way in.

it's not that it's ignorance. Think about what the world Yield means. Yield is not in and of itself a particularly introspective word. It doesn't really speak to looking deep inside yourself to fix what's wrong. It means giving way, trying not to let the things moving past you bother you--relax and don't take things quite so seriously. Can you treat that like a breather to recharge--probably. But basically every song on the second half of the album is just the relaxation without that critical second step. I'm just not sure its there. Certainly not the way the album is sequenced, and sequencing matters.

And Binaural is an album about a lost sense of agency. The despair on that record comes from worrying that your actions don't matter and wondering whether or not you should just give up--these are songs about constantly trying and failing and wondering when to throw it all in.

I get some weird natural high whenever I hear stip talk about a lack of agency. It's like I know all is right in the universe.

it's not that it needs to be there in every song. that would wear real thin, real fast, but sequencing should be significant, and it vanishes almost entirely on the second half of the album.