Pearl Jam - No Code (1996) poll

They excel at the churn, and "Hail, Hail" is their churniest number.

Looking at the Spotify plays, I'm surprised to see "Present Tense" a close second in popularity after "Off He Goes". Was that song used elsewhere?

xp Alfred, I'm not really into their hoary churny numbers on the whole, but ever so often they release a "Brain Of J" or a "Lukin" and I just love it. Not really into "Hail Hail" or "Habit" so much (the latter being basically "Spin The Black Circle II")

is it fair to think of this album as of-a-piece with another album by an alt-rock band who were wondering where to go next in 1996 and took a more experimental approach? namely RHCP's One Hot Minute (the only RHCP album I truly like)?

lol I thought you'd say New Adventures in Hi-Fi

oh yes, that too!

UK pop, still in the throes of Britpop-mania wouldn't do this until the following year with OK Computer, Blur, Ladies & Gentlemen, Vanishing Point etc.

oh, also - excellent packaging. i still have my cardboard copy with the random polaroids

"In My Tree" is fuckin nuts, top 5 PJ song for me

Looking at the Spotify plays, I'm surprised to see "Present Tense" a close second in popularity after "Off He Goes". Was that song used elsewhere?

― Ray Cat Strut (dog latin), Monday, August 11, 2025 11:02 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Present Tense" was indeed used prominently in both The Last Of Us and the Michael Jordan docuseries The Last Dance. "Present Tense" was absolutely my favorite song on the album the first few times i played it in 1996 so i'm happy to see it belatedly become popular.

My joint-favourite PJ album, my vote is probably going to In My Tree

re:alt-rock bands not knowing where to turn in '96 and taking a more experimental approach, Tiny Music seems a pretty obvious comparison too

although 'Who You Are' and 'E-Bow the Letter' served similar purposes as choice of lead single

UK example from '96 is C'Mon Kids

...which appparently, and don't quote me on this, caused Radiohead to rethink their follow-up to The Bends. Although I just can't imagine Thom Yorke listening to "Meltin's Worm" and thinking "Right, Paranoid Android it is then"

One day in the distant future I will record my intended cover of Meltin's Worm in the style of 60s toytown psych and it will be brilliant

Red Mosquito is far and away the best thing here imo

Yeah Red Mosquito is my fave on this album (and one of my top faves overall)

But there’s a lot of great songs on this one to choose from. When I bought this album in college I kept it in my cd player on repeat for months, couldnt stop listening to it.

It sounded brighter and felt looser than their other albums, where it was maybe natural to veer heavier and they eased off the gas instead. It’s a good mile marker in their discography imo in that it showed the other textures they were capable of

I have a big sot spot for I'm Open

But I think I'm going to vote for the sweet, understated opener "Sometimes". That's the album's "Eye of the duck" for me, and it wouldn't be the same record without it

Maybe I'm listening to a remastered version or something but I never knew until now that Vedder mumbles "Speaking as a child of the 90s..." during one of the little breaks on 'Habit'. Actually I'm enjoying that song a lot more on revisiting than I ever did. It's great fun

^^^ a shoutout to his appearance on "Against the 70s" on Mike Watt's Ball-hog or Tugboat? the previous year!

I first read that as "Mike Batt" and I was like, no way!

agreed that this record is pivotal in their career. i'm probably just repeating conventional wisdom (or possibly the press kit) in saying that continues what was already happening on Vitalogy by folding in more of what they did with Neil Young in '95. i've never actually listened to Mirror Ball, but i used to have the "I Got Id" single (aka Merkin Ball... ugh), and that story tracks for me ---- there's something in that song that's not exactly on their previous albums but is all OVER this one. something about the guitar intro especially, a kind of questioning, reflective quality, that then rolls right into this roaring churn.

while i think my high school peers and i were too quick to dismiss it as a totally lousy jump-the-shark moment, certainly it's not an album that just screams out of car-stereo speakers and demands to be played again the moment it's over. what it does do is invite you to spend time with Pearl Jam the band, and contemplate some things with Eddie Vedder their thoughtful singer. it's a more sustainable mode, long-term. but i should give it a relisten before voting, it's been a while. i have a weird fondness for "Lukin" and Stone Gossard's oddball "Mankind" but i don't think either of those is gonna take it.

red mosquito was my fave from this when i was a kid sooooo

also my pet fave pj record for a long time. vitalogy has since overtaken it but this album still feels like a perfect integration of their weirdest tendencies in their actual songs

I Got Id is easily one of my favourite Pearl Jam songs

big reason this album appeals is whereas the earlier albums all feel like big major statements, if only because of their sales, this is the point where they start sounding really comfortable with making looser records for the amusement of themselves and the same few million dedicated fans. it helps imo that it continues the weirdness of vitalogy, but its a lot less showy about it. none of the songs are actually as baffling as bugs, davanita, stupidmop but it feels intentionally sequenced as an 'eclectic' album in a way vitalogy hadn't been.

Mankind is really fun. They never did a song like that before or after I think. It's kind of Muppety

Yeah Vitalogy is weirdly paced and could have had more confident sequencing. Opening with three full-throated rockers before moving into the ballads and weirdy tracks speaks of them being hesitant to look like they'd gone soft or lost their edge.

I really think Vitalogy would work better with different sequencing, but I'm not sure how I'd do it. I don't like it when albums open with the same song twice (see also Hail To The Thief). By all means start with a rocker, but don't puff yourself out with two if you're going to switch gear immediately after. Anyway, I'll save that for a Vitalogy poll.

i really love everything on here but "Off He Goes" still esp. gets to me / brings back a lot of stuff

the space or vibe of this caught me when it came out. i remember sort of putting it together that this was their neil young tribute album or something. did i read that somewhere or imagine it, because iirc shortly after this i finally heard some neil young, i can't remember. either way i liked this at the time, bright and spacious with all of that pleasantly clattering percussion. good one for a road trip. it still sounds great, like they're really just cooking with ideas. they pretty much lost me after this though, i just went other places instead. i should take a few minutes to check out some of yield i guess.

this is the point where they start sounding really comfortable with making looser records for the amusement of themselves and the same few million dedicated fans

yeah definitely - it sounds so assured and just like excited to be alive and making music, like the band just got back from some kind of meditation retreat or something.

side poll of which tape cover everyone had? mine was the painting of a mouth (end of third row on the cd cover)

i think the artwork and album title really compliments the pic'n'mix quality of this album. the throughline is that there is no throughline, and i love it

i had the cd!

and yeah i remember thinking the postcards - polaroids? - were way cool. thinking about it this album may have been my first 'hippie music is cool' experience.

"Off He Goes" is the most peculiar-wonderful mix of On the Beach-era Young and Together Alone-era Crowded House.

That half-step modulation right before the vocals come in in "Mankind" is what makes it so cool. I recently found out that's something that happens all the time in jazz.

Mankind is written (and sung!) by Gossard & shows off his groovy tendencies music-wise (imo you can hear it in “Satans Bed” on Vitalogy too)

I also really like his singing voice <3

oh and shoutout to “Lukin” which gets in and out of a fuckin BANGER in under 2 minutes

still goes off live, never get tired of it

and hey, shoutout to Matt Lukin’s kitchen too

from wiki:
“In 1996, Pearl Jam wrote and recorded a short and fast punk-rock song entitled "Lukin" for its album No Code, naming it after Matt Lukin.[4] Lukin described the song in an interview for the book Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge: "Vedder had a stalker chick that would come by his house that was freaking him out. He would start to avoid his house after a while, so he would just come by my place. Vedder'd come over and we'd sit 'round the kitchen and drink and stuff. He would talk about his stalker problem a little bit, but I would just blow it off. It was just drunken talk, throwing darts, having fun. There'd be other people there, sometimes four or five of us. Just me and Eddie and our wives and mutual friends like [then Mudhoney manager] Bob Whittaker. The Pearl Jam song 'Lukin' is about how my kitchen's a sanctuary for him. Also, I was giving him shit about all their songs being too long. That inspired him to make 'Lukin' a one-minute song. I've always flipped him shit. Never let him be the rock star that he is."”

my cd is a 2010s remaster, sans foldout panels or postcards. not that i knew this when i bought it (nor that i was buying the vitalogy non-book version).

yeah i had (still have!) the cd with the polaroids

even tho its m/l just tom petty/neil young pastiche... smile is still the one for me. also off he goes, teenage me loved that.

really love the heavier hitters hail hail, lukin, red mosquito

'Lukin' is fantastic (is it secretly a nu-metal song? It has Korn-like qualities), that's shouty PJ done right

Smile is great, the delivery on "I miss you alreeeadddyyyyy yeah-heh / I miss you always", it just hits me

yeah i think of "Off He Goes," "Smile" and "Red Mosquito" as the triptych of their most Neil Young-y songs that probably wouldn't have happened without Mirror Ball.

This is a good album! I still think it loses its way a bit in the back half, but that's mainly because "Present Tense" has never clicked with me - I'd rather it dusted its hands and closed up shop after a couple verses and a chorus the way "Lukin" does. I also don't really love the spoken-word aspect of "I'm Open" as much as the lovely, spacious instrumental track.

But those aside, what a great bag of songs! i think "In My Tree" gets my vote, such a great enveloping cloud of guitars and percussion for Eddie's vocal to cut through! And it really covers a lot of sonic ground while feeling totally of a piece. I could listen to that all day.

"Who You Are" gets some of that same feel in a strummier campfire mode - I love how Gossard is always ready to leap up and take you on a little journey coming out of any given section of it. The "aforementioned verse" line drives me crazy though... He clearly means "foregoing," it's a silly idea anyway, and he basically trails off as he's singing it. Oh well - the warmth of the singalong harmonies goes a long way.

Other gems and earworms - "Smile," "Off He Goes," "Red Mosquito"... I don't know why I don't put this on more often. Swap "I Got Id" for "Present Tense," adjust the sequence accordingly, and it'd be pretty nearly their best album I think.

and oh yeah, that "I miss you already" part of Smile is absolutely top-tier PJ.

PJ's rootsy stuff isn't always to my tastes but it is throughout No Code and "Smile" is the best example - and even though it's ironically named and so Neil Young sounding it's unreal it really works as pop imo.

I've seen PJ live a handful of times and once, i think on the Binaural tour, they actually played "I'm Open" -- but just the sung part, so maybe Eddie finds the spoken word part embarrassing as well.

it's sophomoric Morrison-esque rock poetry, but I like the line "trading magic for fact, and no trade-backs", and the music carries it well enough

I'm not sure why two songs have been omitted as voting options?

I'm not sure why it's taken anyone so long to notice that. And I'm nit sure why I did that. Fuck!

it's just an inadvertent elimination

This album is kind of a textbook post-Imperial Phase record, huh?

They sensed the wind was changing and, as far as they cared, owned the situation: Vedder has admitted that the choice of "Who You Are" as the first single for No Code was a "conscious decision" intended to keep the size of the band's audience down.[5]

I borrowed a copy of this from a friend from college, then lost it, and had to buy him a new CD. But I don’t think I ever heard it! I guess it should hear it.

(I’d kinda drifted away from PJ and wouldn’t return until around Binaural.)

My own lost-CD story: my high school buddy who got me into PJ at one point demonstrated his disgust and frustration with No Code by stuffing it behind the changing-room lockers in the gym.... I think between the back of the locker and a chain-link fence separating one bay of the locker room from the next. A year or two later, the two of us went through this period of exploring unseen nooks and crannies of the school during lunch, sort of a junior edition of 'urban infiltration' type adventures. On our initial forays, which extended into the weird zone of back-of-the-house corridors behind the locker rooms, we had in mind that, if caught, we could claim to be seeking the retrieval of this rejected Pearl Jam CD. I think we actually did somehow dig the damn thing out at some point, because in my mind that was the copy I used to own, but I also could have just gotten it at a used CD shop at some point.

Hail Hail, one of their best singles

Are you woman enough to be my man?

i love hail, hail and didn't understand why my station at the time never played it.

maybe the relatively "natural" sound on this had something to do with it. it sounds kinda albini influenced but obviously with a lot more tolerance for studio stuff.

these tracks are definitely a lot more "pop" than i remember. i'm sure due to decades of listening to unconventionally catchy indie rock. at the time i had barely heard any rock and had listened to the "smooth pop" station as a kid lol.

sheesh yeah "smile". probably been 25 years since i heard it. what a jam! kinda "cortez the killer" lite or something.

yeah, in my head this was a little more raw and ragged. it still is, kinda --- on my most recent listen, a couple of passages made me think there was some sort of unexpected psychic connection with Modest Mouse, who basically did not exist yet and wouldn't zero in on that rangy, wild rock sound for another year or two anyway. but this album has a clean warmth to it, a polish even, which i don't think most indie-rock acts in the 1990s either wanted or got out of their production.

i had this long-held notion that “Smile” was adjacently about or dedicated to Stefanie Sargent but i cant find any confirmation online so idk if its true

but the thought always made me like the song even more than i already do <3

it's just an inadvertent elimination

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, August 13, 2025 12:45 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha, amazing

oh god, i get it now. A++++

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

UP HERE SO HIGH THE SKY I SCRAPE

nice to see such a great spread of votes across most of the songs!

speaks to how good the album is imo

even if two of the best tracks were left off completely

could have voted for Around The Bend

Regret not going for Who You Are now. Needed the love.