best later Pearl Jam album (post-1995)

Gonna have to weigh this one. Gut says 'No Code', but damn, I can't stop stanning for Avocado.

No Code never clicked with me. Yield was quality even if I didn't like the singles at all, "Brain of J" was one of the best album openers they ever did.

Binaural also didn't click with me -- I could see they were trying to branch out sonically but it didn't always translate into memorable music, even though there were definitely some memorable tunes from it.

Riot Act wins my vote because I think they really streamlined the songwriting into catchy music and seriously rocking guitar riffs. Eddie was very restrained vocally which is the only drawback, but "Save You" was a great tune, as well as "Get Right". figures that this one had very mixed critical reception, but Pitchfork bashing it legitimizes it in my eyes.

self-titled one seemed like a step back to me, even though I liked a lot of it.

No Code - I have very strong feelings about this album, as outlined in this classic thread: Pearl Jam - No Code

Yield - this album has aged really well, all the singles are great and "MFC" is an all-time favorite, but the less exciting tracks on here are more tedious to me than the filler on almost any other PJ album

Binaural - pretty cool album that I don't love but probably like way more than most people, solid start to the Matt Cameron era with some nice solid grooves on shit like "Insignificance" and "Grievance" that made it feel like they were capable of some stuff they didn't do w/ previous drummers

Riot Act - this was the first time I really felt let down by a new Pearl Jam album after years of defending the previous 3 from detractors, in retrospect it's not so bad and I dig "Can't Keep" and "Get Right" and "You Are" but still kind of a downer imo

Pearl Jam - quickly supplanted Riot Act as my least favorite album, could live without hearing any of the songs besides "Gone" ever again

Backspacer - not a huge improvement over the couple before it, but being 20 minutes shorter than Riot Act helped a lot as far as it feeling a bit lighter and more enjoyable and "The Fixer" is a classic.

I don't know why I'm still mad that "Sad" was cut from Binaural

but I'm still mad.

(I mean. How do you put "Evacuation" on a record when you could put "Sad" on a record.)

this is a question that haunts me

anyway the answer is no code.

used to bury myself in that record in high school.

remember the specific way my whole body tensed when i first heard the drums on "in my tree."

yeah.

In My Tree, Red Mosquito, Smile, Mankind, Habit... I think Im ready.
Fuck, No Code is SO the shit. TITE!

I think I've talked about this in another thread, but No Code will always hold a special place in my heart. It was released three days before my 20th birthday and I had just moved into my first post-dorm apartment several days before classes. One of my roommates was supposed to move in that day as well, but he decided to head in the next day. All summer my grandfather had been in the hospital and I knew his situation was getting worse and worse and, as I unpacked the last of my boxes, I got the call from my mom that he had passed away. So I was stuck in a college town where I knew plenty of people, but none of them seemed to be around (this was pre-cellphone, so I couldn't just text around til I found someone). So I sat in my half empty room for a bit before deciding, fuck it, I'm going to go for a walk. As it turned out, the store (Discount Den) down the road a bit was having a midnight release sale for this and, since it was one of my favorite bands at the time, I figured it would be a nice diversion. I waited in line, met some cool people, bought the album, then went back to my room and laid down in the dark and put it on my stereo. Obviously the moment was loaded with a lot of emotions, but this just seemed to embrace everything going through my head - the loss of my grandfather, the excitement of a new chapter of a new school year, being away from everyone I cared about. When "Off He Goes" came on, I lost it and cried for the first time in years. But it felt really damn good.

So, yeah, as much as I love Yield, I can't vote for anything but No Code - the album really helped me through a rough patch.

No Code pretty far above the rest. Then Yield...
The rest I can pretty much take or leave.

No Code. The rest are great - and i seem to have more time for binaural than most - but No Code's a messy work of genius.

Yield. But I've only heard that one and No Code. No Code is fine but it's a bit disjointed. Yield is consistently good all the way through.

Feeling pretty embarrassed by my emo post now. :/

No way dude! Was just coming here to say how glad I was that you shared it! And when you get down to it, thats what it, music, is all about...at least to me...personal experiences that link you to the music. No shame in that!

yeah great post dude

And I'll give you mine: I met Mr Veg on a Pearl Jam usenet board back in 1995 :)

My rankings:

Pearl Jam
Yield
Backspacer
No Code
the rest

This era is by far their best.

Yield - this album has aged really well, all the singles are great and "MFC" is an all-time favorite, but the less exciting tracks on here are more tedious to me than the filler on almost any other PJ album

Very true. "Pilate," "Brain of J," and "No Way" are tedious and just sound ugly (the mixing of their late nineties recordings repels me). But "In Hiding" and "Faithful" kill me every time, and "Given To Fly" and "Wishlist" are my favorite one-two singles punch.

"In Hiding" is incredible -- i vaguely included that in my 'singles' praise since it charted. i like "Brain of J" though!

I keep meaning to make a mix of all of PJ's absolute barn-burner songs in the vein of "Do the Evolution" and "Breakerfall". It would be kind of a short mix, but it would be WOW.

Also, why are people dogging "Evacuation"?

I like how Vedder learned to ride a liquid guitar melody: from "Off He Goes" to "Faithful" is a nice trip.

subquestion: best PJ album opener?

i'd rank them like: Last Exit > Go > Can't Keep > Brain Of J > Once > Breakerfall > Sometimes > Life Wasted > Gonna See My Friend

Also, why are people dogging "Evacuation"?

I don't think I hate it as much as most, but that one has always been a weak link. The chorus just seemed so lazy to me.

Sometimes is one of my absolute favorites anyway, and Breakerfall is as well, so it's definitely those two...and then all the others.

"Evacuation" is OK, but kind of annoying and not as good as the other 2 fast songs that precede it on the album. my main memory of that song now is that last time I saw them live in '08, they tried to play it and Stone's guitar cut out and it kinda turned into a trainwreck, which is really amusing to listen to on the 'official bootleg' CD of the show.

like "Gods' Dice" is just killer, even if Jeff Ament totally made up the word "resignate"

i may have talked myself into voting for Binaural in this thread because, while i prefer No Code and Yield, i feel like one of Binaural's few fans

I like Binaural too, though for all the hullabaloo made about how it was recorded, it doesn't sound much different than any other post-1995 PJ album.

yeah i think the binaural recording methods were only used on certain instruments on certain songs, they just liked the word as a title. and Tchad Blake after 4 albums w/ Brendan O'Brien was kind of a big regime change but it mostly just sounded like a Pearl Jam record.

Yield - this album has aged really well, all the singles are great and "MFC" is an all-time favorite, but the less exciting tracks on here are more tedious to me than the filler on almost any other PJ album

this is v close to how I feel about Vitalogy...

Pilate is obnoxious as fuck, but I like most of the rest of the filler on here...even the Red Dot song and Push Me Pull Me, both of which are better at being werid/quirky than Bugs or whatnot...

No Way gets a little rmde, but it's pretty rad for what it is

maybe VegemiteGrrl is right; maybe it was the constant shifting of drummers that kept the weirdness feeling awkward instead of as a nice change-of-pace...

yeah "No Way" has some cool musical moments, i just can't get behind it as an overall song. red dot and "Push Me Pull Me" are kind of mildly quirky among more bland filler, whereas Vitalogy is like their best songs ever + some super goofy weird shit, some of which like "Aye Davanita" is actually really good too.

No Code (1996)
Yield (1998)
Binaural (2000)
Riot Act (2002)

^^ haven't heard any of these since high school. from what i recall i'd vote Binaural i guess?

not sure it's the "best" but it's the first one i picked up as a new release, so i spent more time w/ it.

I just listened to MFC, and it really is like PJ just took like a whole sound that was prevalent in the 90s, not grunge bcz too mellow & R.E.M.-derived, but modern-rock stuff like Cracker, Gigolo Aunts, Pete Droge and most of the rest of the bands on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack...it's like Pearl Jam took that music, distilled and purified it and then poured it into this perfect two-minute pop song.

I really shouldn't like Yield as much as I do; it's basically a more flannel-y version of R.E.M.'s Document and I think that album sucks donkey balls, but there's something so bracing about this music, like cold water on your face; something so incomprehendingly beautiful that it just turns me into the dentist character played by Keanu Reeves in Thumbsucker.

I can see kind of why you don't like it though, some dude: it does kinda sound like the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack, and Vitalogy was I think their first album to break the Seattle mold, and there are some career-defining jams on there (Corduroy, Immortality, Nothingman, Not for You)...

well i called Yield one of my 2 favorite albums in this poll and said it "has aged really well" so i'm not sure where you got the impression i don't like it?

oh my bad...probably meant in comparison to Vitalogy and No Code...

I'm not voting because I haven't heard enough of these, but I just wanted the case to be made for Yield...

fwiw i see nothing wrong with people voting in a poll where they haven't heard every option as long as they have heard the option they're voting for

some dude otm, but don't try to pull that move in a film poll... they get a little touchy if you haven't seen everything on the list

yeah there are definitely situations in which it can be obnoxious that the one option most people are familiar with skates to an easy win. but in a lot of polls, particularly this one i created, i'm fine with it.

haven't heard enough of these = have only heard Yield

but if you guys are totally cool with it, then I guess I'll vote it...

I checked out after Binaural so now I'm wondering should I actually give Backspacer or whatever a try? The horrid cover art and such put me off of the two in between, plus I think I was in college and got kind of indie-fied and Pearl Jam suddenly seemed like stodgy dinosaurs of a different era. I think the cover-art to the self-titled was a bit problem with that actually just because it made them seem like a generic corporate band, whereas NOT being a generic corporate band was something that would have really appealed to me at that moment in my music-fan evolution. Now I don't think I'd care, but I don't listen to a lot of radio rock whatever generally at this point - - - - I suspect this may be a somewhat common path for ex-grunge fans to have tread? Sorry, this post is kind of ill-formed. I did love "The Fixer"....

The s/t and Backspacer are actually decent fwiw, though you're not missing anything by avoiding Riot Act altogether.

Sad that Riot Act was the only time I ever saw them on tour, but the setlist wasn't dominated by its material or anything (plus I got to see Sleater-Kinney open, and that was the only time I ever saw them as well).

I stumbled across a Polish ALL PEARL JAM radio station on the TuneIn radio app and I've been playing it a ton, revisiting a bunch of these albums' songs.

I tend to group "No Code" with the first three albums, really.

"Smile" is in my top 5 PJ songs.

yeah i thought about making 97 the cutoff point since No Code at least had the most post-superstardom afterglow but it's still kind of an underdog here

i'm actually if the Vitalogy/No Code/Yield represent some sort of creative peak for PJ

actually wondering if, just in case you were wondering...

they do imo

Ten and Vs. have some great songs and obv huge hits but i don't really love them as albums

iirc No Code was the last one where people were still at the record store right when it opened to buy it on release day, but then it didn't get talked about a lot. It was definitely the real beginning of the second phase of PJ's career (though Vitalogy started that lean).

No Code, its most Pearl Jam fans fave album in my experience

xxposts upthread: Backspacer is well worth a listen, don't let the Tom Tomorrow artwork put you off (I don't find it as on-the-nose as some, but I get the balking)

yeah i haven't looked at a PJ fan community in ages, i have no idea how different albums get rated around those parts now

not reading this thread but 'yield' is fukken tremendous

I may be truly alone in my opinion

Will say that I haven't heard No Code in years so that might raise its stock a bit if I heard it now.

yeah my guess is Riot Act and maybe Backspacer will tie for last

A shame: Backspacer is better than RA and Binaural.

Yeah Backspacer by rights should be in the top 3, imo. They just sound totally renewed, and raw, and...I dunno, youthful. Kinda sucks that they waited so long to give us that side again though...almost everyone got bored waiting around and left, lol

BAckspacer's pretty much all-barnburner. i love it.

interviewed these guys at their place in seattle a couple of times in 2009, and more than any other group i've ever met, they have Figured Out How To Live. nothing but admiration for how they operate, and how they use the independence they've won for themselves.

lol stevie fangirl me immediately leaped to OMG YOU MET THEM SQUEEE but I'm okay now. I've modified my response to "Wow. That's cool."

Around the Binaural/Riot Act time I was a little concerned that they might break up...but yeah, they've really figured themselves out as a group and it's great that they are enjoying themselves again.

veg - i interviewed them in 2000 also, for binaural, which was a sobering lesson: i was so awestruck with fandom at finally meeting my favourite band of my teen years that i froze up and didn't ask any questions that weren't steeped in fawning adoration, and got perhaps the most boring interview they've ever given. was much more professional in 09, and got much better results.

oh god I can only imagine. I'm sure I would have been like Chris Farley "So, like, that time on Unplugged when you fell of the stool because you were rocking out? That was awesome..."

Is the 09 interview up somewhere? I'd love to read it!

iirc No Code was the last one where people were still at the record store right when it opened to buy it on release day

Can't speak for everywhere, but in Champaign-Urbana there was more people at the midnight release party for Yield than No Code. I think this is mostly because as far as lead singles go, "Given To Fly" was getting TONS more alt-rock radio play than "Who You Are" ever was.

Love all this Pearl Jam talk lately and glad to see that it has remained free of people shitting on the band just because.

another thing I'm wondering: seems that in times past ILX had canonized synth-pop bands such as Human League & Depeche Mode, bands that a majority of ilxors back then had grown up with. Well I'm sure that this is still the case, I'm wondering if we are switching over slowly to people who were children when grunge was the significant pop-music trend; hence the willingness to not sneer at bands like PJ but to treat them with a sort of respect, and to not feel shame over our fandom...

Makes sense to me, I'd be curious to see the age range of the regulars in this thread. I was 15 when Ten came out, fwiw.

I was 18 when Nevermind got big so i dont think that counts as growing up with them but I've never stopped liking them. I think however they didn't really get that much a slagging in the UK as Melody Maker,Kerrang, Raw all loved them and NME I think gave them good reviews. I think it was more the britpop bands/fans/select readers who laid into them. And who the hell could trust their judgement?

born in 82 here and Ten was one of the first CDs i ever bought and probably the first album i ever loved

born in 81, v similar experience to you some dude

I'll tell you one thing, 8 or 9 years ago it felt like there was hardly anyone else on ILM who liked them, so ILM has definitely changed over time.

here goes!: http://steviechick.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/pearl-jam/

(many xps)

Well I think part of the rejection of Pearl Jam was the "killing of the sacred cows" thing of the next generation. I'm sure Nirvana would have suffered a similar drubbing had Kurt lived and moved towards the rumored acoustic approach with Michael Stipe. They just happened to keep on toiling on, selling less and less, and the easy narrative became "lol, oldsters won't give up" instead of where it sorta sits now, "damn, these guys are great musicians and still cranking out solid-to-great records on a regular basis". Which is where I think they always wanted to be.

Also, Vedder unfairly still takes the blame for Creed and dude from Puddle of Mudd and that post-grunge vocal thing.

i think it's more that PJ were never sacred cows to a lot of people (particularly the kind of rock fans that populate ILM who prefer Nirvana if not other less successful bands of that generation/scene). i mean they never got a ton of love from critics and got sneered at by a lot of alt-rock kids.

early 90s was an amazing time to get into music. I got into great music that was coming out at the time and I was delving into older music that I previously didn't know existed. Reading about albums then having to take a train into Glasgow to see if I could find them. Missing Records was such a great record shop back then.

I guess so, but I also feel like there was that whole streak of critics (a vocal minority, I suppose) that were all "THIS IS HOW A BAND SHOULD BE" re: standing up to ticketmaster, no videos, etc etc and that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

But I had the opposite experience, pretty much everyone I knew in college that was into "alt-rock" held Pearl Jam pretty much at the top of the heap.

oh Pearl Jam were very very popular and beloved, possibly by a larger number of people than Nirvana, but i think their rep in places like ILM in the early days had more to do w/ who was posting on ILM than how PJ was viewed in the early '00s

Okay, yeah, I missed that you were specifying ILM earlier, you are 100% OTM.

they were pretty derided in the UK music press 91-96 iirc, allan jones' stuff in melody maker and coverage in the metal mags aside. certainly, they were an easy joke at NME for much of that time (pretty sure 'who you are' getting single of the week was the first really positive notice they'd had there at that point)

I despised Pearl Jam from the outset: Ten sounded blowzy and ugly. I preferred Nirvana but didn't construct a binary. My ears didn't prick up until Vitalogy.

alfred, have you listened to the 2009 mix of ten? shorn of much of that excessive reverb, it's aged much better.

Is it still bookended with that drum machine?

probably, but i believe cd players have ffw buttons now?

iirc the intro isn't there on the Brendan O'Brien remix of Ten but the outro might still be there

I got into PJ when 'Alive' first started playing on the radio, I think I was about 15 (born in 76). Followed my nose from them through to Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Green River, Motherlovebone, the whole nine. Fun times!

xxpost: thanks for putting that article up, Stevie. That was a great read, I enjoyed it!

oh and cool to read a story like that knowing it's written by fan. I like that!

thanks veg! my story is pretty similar: born in '75, saw pearl jam play 'alive' on BBC tv's late show in late 91 and was totally suckered in by the epic soloing, and eddie rocking out throughout. them and nirvana were a real awakening for me, and directly or indirectly drew me into the whole US underground scene.

No Nirvana by The Late Show was amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ-ytIdJcZk

xxpost Stevie, we are alike, you and I...lol!

I spent SO much money on imported US music mags - Kerrang and all that guff, just to be able to read something, anything about them. So whenever PJ mentioned a band in their interviews I'd write it down and the next time I went to Melbourne, I'd see if I could find the band at the big record store. I seriously behaved as though I had discovered fire when I found a used Motherlovebone cassette.

that clip still gives me goosebumps all these years later

Oh I put my hands up to buying all the import singles from the us and the pre-PJ bands and every grunge band going.

My claim to fame in highschool was that I was the first person to buy VS in my hometown the day it was released. My friend Tony was the first to buy it on CD...but the poor lamb was second through the door, mwhwhahaha.

No Nirvana was great... I still remember seeing that Pearl Jam clip from the first time it was screened though, on the regular Late Show, inbetween tom paulin and some discussion about finnish cinema or something. I wore a ratty vhs out with that clip.

Main memory of No Nirvana: all my friends turning up the next morning with their minds LITERALLY BLOWN by Rage Against The Machine.

also that clip is the reason why i wanted an olive tee shirt more than anything in the world in 1992

that clip is awesome!

drove my mum nuts with my collection of 'Jeff hats'...army shorts...docs covered in duct tape...school bag covered in lyrics written in liquid paper...lololol

Most people I knew who loved Pearl Jam loved Nirvana & Soundgarden equally too. Was that the same in your circles?

Obv a few maybe liked nirvana more or PJ more, but where I lived there's no doubt people liked both. That is maybe because my mates read Kerrang/Raw rather than the NME. (the nme reading friends i had were more into madchester)

In my group of friends it was pretty much Pearl Jam mostly equal with Nirvana, then Soundgarden a bit behind, and Alice In Chains bringing up the rear of the "big four from Seattle".

Funnily enough, Dirt was super huge with mates who weren't into metal at all. I bought that the day it came out (same with Vs, In Utero,Superunknown, etc)
Screaming Trees were big favourites with me. Got a lotta folk into them.

Nirvana was sort of separate for us -- loved them as much as PJ, but differently...for me the triumvirate was PJ, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains...and then Nirvana alongside them. I don't know why we never put them together in a lump.

Here's my longwinded thoughts about the poll albums...

No Code: went back and listened to this again, and there's no way it's not the winner. Every. single. song. GOLD. There's just a wealth of riches here, from In My Tree and Red Mosquito (probably my 1 and 2 favorite PJ songs ever)...Mankind...LUKIN! fucking LUKIN!...Off He Goes...and even when it dips just a tiny bit with Present Tense it's still great. There's not a bum note here.

Binaural: there are a lot of great songs on here, but on the actual album they sound SO flat to me now after years of hearing them live. Like, "Insignificance" is a killer live song, and on the album it hits about has hard as soggy newspaper. There's none of the intensity and excitement that should be in there. And stuff like Light Years, Thin Air, great songs too. This album just *sounds* halfhearted to me. Like, "Here's the album. Okay now we go tour." That's how this and Riot Act sound to me. They weren't realized as songs until the live shows. Which is the difference between that and say Avocado and Backspacer...they finally figured out how to capture the intensity on the cd, so that there's no drop off.

Riot Act: I think Love Boat Captain is a gorgeous song...I love I Am Mine...but stuff like bushleaguer just jars...and how on earth they ever ditched 'Down' to a B-side, I will never understand because THAT's the song that needs to be on an album like this. Riot Act feels very patchworky to me, a lot of different ideas pulling in a lot of different directions and again, the track listing sort of becomes this compromise rather than "YES!' This is the album we want. I don't get that feeling from this or Binaural, much as I love individual tracks from both.

Avocado: I kept this on repeat for, shit, like a month after it came out. "Come Back"? They haven't had a song like that before. "Aneurysm" sounds like they finally found a way to say "We Love the Who!!" and turn it into a song...I don't get any jarring notes on this album, there's no songs that feel like compromises, there's no distinctly Eddie song/Jeff song/Stone song/matt Song...they sound like a band again. Maybe like the band they hadn't truly been before.

Backspacer: SuperSonic was the first song I heard and that's when I knew that they had definitely, truly figured 'it' out, 'it' being the band as a unit, and how to put that on an album. And they know what to do with Cameron know, they use him SO well, he fits in so great and I think that Ed's being more democratic now, and letting the band give him songs, they're writing music for him now, rather than him writing lyrics for their music. Well, okay I don't know that but that's how it feels to me. The fact that there are songs on here that just flat out rock...that alone is a gift after 20 years of loving this band.

Screaming Trees were great. My little brother just saw the 'Hype!' doco and said how much he loved the Trees, and I got to regale him with my story of seeing Lanegan go apeshit at the Big Day Out and try to punch some guy in the crowd that flicked a bottle cap at him. I get so excited when my brother starts to get into bands I've loved for years, it's like the gift that keeps on giving, lol

sorry for threadbombing. This thread <3

I've had fun reading you today. PJ is the only band whom I like not love that I've seen four times.

screaming trees just rule so hard.

Oh man, I left off Yield!

Yield: In my mind Yield comes before No Code. I don't know why. Yield has some of my favorite songs, like All Those Yesterdays... and Low Light might be one of Jeff's best writing efforts...Given To Fly still gives me goosebumps when the second verse kicks in, I get so much out of that one it's like the force of three songs. There are a lot of great songs on here, looking back over it now. I'm not sure why I pass it over so much. But I don't know if I can rank it higher because of how tight the 2 most recent albums have been. hard for me to get past that.

So I think I'm at:

No Code
Avocado
Backspacer
Yield
Binaural
Riot Act

for any screaming trees fans: http://www.timeforlight.com/downloads.php

wow THAT is a treasure trove :D

I wish that PJ wrote a full length album using the same ideas from when they recorded the Merkin Ball ep and Mirroball lp with Neil Young. I suppose No Code kinda is the result of that in someways, but still. I really like that ep a lot.

Wow, I'd forgotten about Merkin Ball.

"I Got Id"...got a story that goes with that one.

When I got into college my boyfriend of about a year or so and I broke up. He was a year younger and seemed to think I'd be swarmed upon by guys wanting to date me. Which bore out to be completely untrue, lol, but even during my first year in college we remained pretty close friends, I saw him most times I went home and to be honest, I still held a candle for him. I never dated anyone else, and neither did he. If at any moment he had said he wanted to get back together, I would have dropped everything. and because he wasn't seeing anyone, I just always treated it like it wasn't ever officially over.
So flashforward to December 1995. We hadn't seen each other for six months and I was back home on summer vacation. We met for lunch, and I was still in the back of my mind thinking that nothing had changed, and it'd be like it was before.
It wasn't. He brought a friend with him to lunch, which should have been my first sign...and maybe that was why it was different. In typical Danny Zuko fashion he acted like a stone cold jerk. Jerkier than I'd ever seen him. Towards the end of the lunch, I got up to go to the bathroom and could't get by, asked him to move, and he laughs and says "Lose some weight" and moves his chair. Aaaand that was when I knew this might be the worst day of my life.
I made an excuse to leave (I think I actually used the Merkin Ball release as my escape clause), drove to the record store, picked up Merkin Ball which released that day, drove home, locked myself in my bedroom and cried and cried and cried, because now I knew for sure that we were over. "I Got Shit/Id" was like a handrail. I'm sure there would have been another song if it wasn't that one...but to this day, I hear that and all I can think of was how sad I felt, and how as I calmed down and put it all into perspective, the song sort of, I dunno, released me of something.

(and I read that story now and can't believe I held a candle for him for THAT long. Jeez.)

I Got Id is another great song that I love...

I've always loved "Not For You". I used to imagine some old miserly type dude eating soup and watching an Oliver-esque orphan come up to him and dude pulling back and screaming "THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!" to the kid...

I remember when they played "Not For You" on SNL it was really powerful, and not having been too long since Cobain died, it read sort of like a eulogy.

don't think I ever saw that performance. will have to look it up.

It's a good 'un :)

I wasn't really even into Pearl Jam yet when Vitalogy came out. by the time I started buying and listening to their music, No Code was already out.

but Nothingman always jumped out at me. the one 'band' I ever played in for a one night only deal, we did that song....

now Vitalogy's in my top 3 for sure though. classic.

There are a couple of SNL rehearsal clips on youtube, but the broadcast performance is here: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/3vGwY0h4on0/

yeah it was only a week or two after Cobain's death (and way before Vitalogy was out). Eddie had a "K" written on his shirt and at the end of "Daughter" sang a bit of the Neil Young song referenced in the suicide note, so I don't think of the "Not For You" performance so much as being the eulogy, and supposedly "Immortality" is the song that really alludes to Cobain.

Oh yeah, that's what it was! I hadn't heard "Not For You" before that night and it made me think it had been written to somewhat eulogize Cobain (watching it back, I didn't get the same impression as I did in 1994, but it was really all about context).

shit that SNL performance is hottt t t t

Oh yeah, Merkin Ball was huge. I don't remember ever being so excited for a two-track single in my life! Also, that whole era was my entry point for Neil Young, who has become pretty much a lifelong love at this point.

I voted No Code kinda lazily fwiw; I love that album a lot & gave Yield & Binaural the old post-college try but by then I was deep into alt.country & wasn't receptive to PJ anymore. Those days are long gone & I should revisit those albums & the later ones too.

Yeah man, do it :)

'i got id' is amazing... especially neil's solo, so very haunting.

"Holier-than-thou (How?)/Surrendered, executed anyhow" is the lyric on Immortality that remind me most of Kurdt: there's a mini-rant on the printed lyrics inside the How? parentheses that I think almost addresses him directly. I don't have it with me, so I couldn't tell you exactly what it says offhand...

Somewhere in storage I think I have the first draft of a novel titled All Good Truants Must Decide.

I remember getting into a huge argument with a friend about "Spin the Black Circle", no matter how much I pointed out the vinyl references, he insisted it had nothing to do with listening to records and was solely about heroin. I tried pointing out that some of those allusions were on purpose, but it was about loving records. He would never cave though.

lol

first time i heard it i was amazed that they blatantly ripped off husker du and noone noticed.

^I prolley would've noticed if I had heard Du at that time...

I had just got into them in 1992 (just before i heard of sugar) and bought Metal Circus & Zen Arcade. So by the time STBC came out i was well versed in all their catalogue and spotted it right away. I even took zen arcade down to the record shop in Hamilton to let them hear for themselves (Pearl Jam was their favourite band)

God damn it, I don't have any Pearl Jam on my iPod right now.

>:(

This is one of the downfalls of switching from my 160GB classic to a 32GB touch. I'll have to remedy that tonight.

should we do a POX for the albums in this poll? mine would be like:

In My Tree
MFC
Grievance
The Fixer
Given To Fly
Mankind
In Hiding
You Are
Insignificance
Gone

ooh good idea

right now my wife is reading The Face by Dean Koontz and apparently that guy is not a fan of Pearl Jam:

Here on December 21, the Muzak play list included no Christmas tunes. Most likely, the mall management worried that "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" or even "Jingle Bell Rock" would deeply offend those shoppers of non-Christian faith, as well as alienate any highly sensitized atheists with money to spend. Currently the system broadcasts an old Pearl Jam number. This particular arrangement of the song had been preformed by an orchestra with a large string section. Minus the shrieking vocal, the tune was as mind-numbing as the original, though more pleasantly so.

Well that's just mean

When I think of all the Dean Koontz novels that wouldve made perfectly good toilet paper...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

No Code by a mile. But I usually think of Yield as the dividing line for Pearl Jam eras.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I'm completely fine with the top two, but it kinds of pains me to see Backspacer ranked below the s/t.

eh this is totally fine to me, i like Backspacer more but it's not like it was ever gonna get many votes.

I'm blown away that Yield got as many votes as No Code.

i'm not! Yield has always seemed pretty warmly regarded by most people, whereas No Code seems a little more divisive.

Like i said earlier, No Code has always been the PJ fans pick.

in my experience, obviously

yeah but ILM is not a total hive of typical Pearl Jam fans.

Jack Irons is so great on both those albums, though, has he recorded much with other bands that's worth hearing?

What Is This? and Uplift Mofo Party Plan with RHCP, if you like the punky Chili Peppers stuff from the early years. I haven't dug much into his other outings.

yeah i like some of the early RHCP stuff i know from the What Hits comp, should check out those records.

apparently Irons also has solo albums! interesting

All my Pearl Jam loving friends like Vs. best.

haha i probably shouldve actually voted

a small part of me still thinks the video to 'do the evolution' is totally meaningful & cool

All my Pearl Jam loving friends like Vs. best.

Yeah, sure, but this is post-1995 we're talking here.

I still love the Do The Evolution video

I remember getting into a huge argument with a friend about "Spin the Black Circle", no matter how much I pointed out the vinyl references, he insisted it had nothing to do with listening to records and was solely about heroin. I tried pointing out that some of those allusions were on purpose, but it was about loving records. He would never cave though.

― rendezvous then i'm through with HOOS (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, February 16, 2011 6:13 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha, same exact experience here! Jury's out on "Blood" though.

yeah it definitely took me a while to realize what that song was about. PJ are pretty good at making some of their happiest songs ("Spin The Black Circle" and "Smile" particularly) sound really dark and tortured.

i would be curious to see a poll of pearl jam's 4 post-'yield' LPs but it might seem redundant w/this poll having already occurred.

Of those four, I'd pick Backspacer.

wouldn't really be too redundant since those four albums got less than 20% of the votes in this poll, fwiw

would pick Binaural

i might pick riot act

i have no idea what i think about riot act now but it seemed pretty underestimated at the time. "save you," "thumbing my way," "green disease," etc.

Riot Act has some songs that i'm pretty into but it was really their first album i felt genuinely disappointed by and couldn't get excited about even initually, left a bad taste in my mouth

Riot Act/Binaural my least favorite. There are standout tracks but as albums they don't hang together well at all. imo

Avocado/Backspacer by FAR more complete, enjoyable, energetic albums.

Divergent opinions already!

Binaural, then Backspacer. Riot Act and Pearl Jam might be great records, but I've just never felt compelled to revisit them enough to uncover their true charms...

No Code and Yield are such great records. I don't know why I didn't bother to check anything that ame out after