U2start.com | Pearl Jam

i know i was quite extreme with the example hehe
that's my view of a strict "album ranking" and the way i do it, of course others can judge them considering everything, live, studio, mixture of it, production, mixing and so on.
luckily PJ offer a large variety of cases, playing almost whatever they wrote, everything in the albums anyway ...

going back to studio albums you could have a let down but you could also, for example, discover Bugs is a great song and finally love it! .. as it should be hehe

RUMMY

11 years

The other factor here is the "subjectivity factor." The first three albums (studio versions!) were released at a time when my love for new music was at its peak and very few post-1995 albums rate in my "top 20" of all time (save Radiohead's OK Computer, of course).

As most PJ albums were released, I (obviously) listened to the studio versions and positioned each album in my own list as time went on. Right or wrong, I doubt much has or will change as the years progressed. I'm too set in my ways.

EDDMB

11 years

I agree with Ron...Matt you have to separate live from studio..I understand what you are saying..live the songs on No Code , Yield and Binaural are great..but the fact is, the studio versions are the studio versions..and IMO they sound like cheap demos...

The thing is , the first 3 studio albums (especially the first 2) were recorded very well....with that loud bombastic PJ sound that the world fell in love with....on Vitalogy EV got "weird'...the sound was still decent though...

I wont go into one of my long rants here..but IMHO No Code and Yield were terribly recorded ..on purpose , at the inane insistence of EV.. hence the awful sales of both records... when I rate No Code I give it a 3 out of 5..same goes for Yield...the song quality is there , but the recordings are flat ..live is a whole different story..EV almost destroyed PJ in the mid 90s when he took over PJ.......no videos , the ticket master nonsense etc.....

From Riot Act on , the sound is much more clear and crisp , like their first 2 records... .....I just don't care for the tunes on Riot Act....

RUMMY

11 years

I'm okay with being in the minority. This said, I don't think my order would change whether or not I considered the studio or live version of each song.

1. Ten - a great group of songs that mesh very well together
2. Vs. - so many great styles that work well together
3. Vitalogy - classic, classic tunes with some nonsense filler
4. Yield - a whole whack of very good songs with one or two clunkers
5. No Code - five great songs, a few okay songs, and two or three duds
6. Binuaral - some great songs, some good songs, some crap songs
7. Riot Act - no songs I hate but very few I love
8. Lightning Bolt - still too new to rank any higher but definitely some gems here
9. Avocado/Self-Titled - Three great tunes but most of the rest sound like a band trying to finds its way
10. Backspacer - Too many disappointing songs that don't gel

KieranU2

11 years

I'm going to throw it out there, but I think Vitalogy is their finest work. You had a band from 1991 to 1993 who were known for, what Ed just described two posts up, a "loud bombastic sound." They got so fed up of grunge this and grunge that, and popularity which was clearly more of a irritation to the band and especially Eddie Vedder.

Ten is a great record, no doubt about it. It has some fantastic tunes on it and is a wonderfully flowing album. There isn't a single bad tune on it but I've always hated the production. Vs. is one album I used to absolutely love but the more I listened to it, the more I noticed flaws. It is incredibly inconsistent. Pearl Jam clearly tried to add a few mellow ones here and there to make it sound as if they weren't a one-trick pony. Go and Animal are two great openers but then it's Daughter and it dulls right down. Great song but badly placed in my opinion. I think they found it difficult to come out their shell a lot more in fear of becoming irrelevant. It has a great selection of songs on it, none bad at all.

There is something about Vitalogy that bonds well with me. I love how personal an album it is - an album that got so personal that Vedder had to get impersonal on No Code because fans were getting crazy over it. The start of that album is mindblowing, and if you were an active fan of the band at the time (Matt, Ed), you must have been beyond enthusiastic about it. What impresses me so much is the development in sound between Vs. and Vitalogy, which only took a year. They got to the realisation that they were so popular that things had to be extinguished; they had to be different. 'Last Exit' and 'Spin the Black Circle' is just a mindblowing duo that opens the album, and 'Not For You', lyrically and musically, is simple and in-your-face. 'Nothingman' is beautiful while 'Whipping' is astonishing - Abbruzzese's drumming is out of this world. A lot of people criticise the strangeness and the nature of the album. I praise it. I dig it. 'Bugs' is weird, don't get me wrong, and I can imagine the faces fans were pulling at the time upon first listen, but you have to admire their intention to develop. You have 'Aye Davanita' which is admittedly very odd and sort of pointless but it fits well with the other bizarre songs. If there was only one unusual track on that album it would look pathetic, but the fact that they chose to have a few, it sort of intrigues the listener more.

It's hard to explain, I don't know. There's something about Vitalogy that I hail. I consider it as one of the best albums of all time. I love the production and sound, music, lyrics, artwork and packaging, everything. It was an album completely out of its zone at the time. With Cobain dying, it was maybe obvious that 'grunge' was dying, although Pearl Jam were starting to make that obvious with peculiar tracks and a lawsuit which preventing them from playing shows that would aid their fame. I suppose they didn't want that.

LikeASong

11 years

Very well argumented Kieran. I tend to agree with you in lots of points. I'm not a hardcore PJ fan and I haven't even listened to all their albums in deep (yet), so my opinion might as well be invalid... but as usual I tend to compare them to U2.

Here's my long shot: Vitalogy might be PJ's Achtung Baby. Really different to what they'd done earlier, maybe not plagued of hits like The Joshua Tree (Ten) but also not plagued of clichés (Rattle And Hum), done during a time when the bands were rethinking their popularity and their style... Vitalogy, as AB, has some absolutely fantastic tunes that never were released as singles (Better Man, Ultraviolet, Corduroy, Acrobat, Nothingman, Love Is Blindness) but are fan favourites...

EDDMB

11 years

Vitalogy is a great release..I remember the day it came out...I bought it at Tower Records in Greenwich Village , ran home and blasted it....

I remember scratching my head a few times...as I still do , when listening to this album...Nothingman is in my top 3..Immortality STBC Not For You Corduroy Betterman Last Exit Tremor Christ are all classics..its the weird odd tunes that fans like me in 1994 couldn't relate to ,and still cant because they are awful "songs"
...Bugs ? It's awful , period...

EV just wanted to be weird to be weird..he cant actually think that Stupid Mop is listenable..its worse then Revolution #9....I know EV wanted to change their sound....as U2 did...the thing is this..you are who you are..and they both became worldwide known acts because of their sound....both bands (thankfully) eventually came back to their original sound , since the muted dull efforts of No Code Yield and Binaural basically landed the band in the "has been" section...

The same thing happened to U2...from 1993 -1999 the band were irrelevant to me..which was shocking considering they were my favorite band hands down , from 1983 -1993..but they "changed" and , IMO , for the worse. They were so worried about being "relevant"....fuck that...this is what I tell my 4 kids..."be who you are and don't worry about what other people think or say"....I wish I could have told Bono and EV this many years ago...

For me bands like Oasis , Pearl Jam (91-95) , Soundgarden, Radiohead and Dave Matthews Band were the new great bands of the time (93-99) .

Once Morning Glory came out , in 1995 , Oasis were my band....and I basically stopped listening to any new PJ studio releases....IMO , from 1996 - 2000 , PJs studio efforts weren't listenable anymore.....live , now that is another story...

EDDMB

11 years

I think its fair to say, that Pearl Jams bootlegs in the year 2000 brought me back into the fold. I love live releases , and the day the Euro boots came out , I strolled over to Tower Records , and I was in a state of shock and awe.....I grabbed 5 of them... Milan , Prague , Hamburg , Berlin and Katowice......and that was that , I was hooked again .

Mr_Trek

11 years

I think Stupidmop is pretty brilliant. It's creepy.

KieranU2

11 years

Stupid Mop used sounds from a real psychiatric hospital. On vinyl, it sounds even more eerie. Not by any means a great song, but there's something quite gripping about it.

RUMMY

11 years

Originally posted by EDDMB:I think its fair to say, that Pearl Jams bootlegs in the year 2000 brought me back into the fold. I love live releases , and the day the Euro boots came out , I strolled over to Tower Records , and I was in a state of shock and awe.....I grabbed 5 of them... Milan , Prague , Hamburg , Berlin and Katowice......and that was that , I was hooked again .

I'll go out on a limb and admit that it's the bootlegs (old and upcoming) that make me the Pearl Jam fan that I am today. These shows provide me (and everyone else) alternative takes on songs and, most importantly, something to look forward to.

BIG HINT/REQUEST from other bands - if you want me to stay interested between albums, give me something else to listen to!!!!!

RUMMY

11 years

As far as the Vitalogy "fillers" go, I don't mind 'Aye Davanita' (although I will admit that I just copied and pasted Kieran's text of the song as I never remember its actual name or its spelling).

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