Pearl Jam is beating the (anti) war drums for a big new album release coming May 2 on J Records, after a long association with Epic. Here's the track listing:
"Life Wasted"
"World Wide Suicide"
"Comatose"
"Severed Hand"
"Marker in the Sand"
"Parachutes"
"Unemployable"
"Big Wave"
"Gone"
"Wasted Reprise"
"Army Reserve"
"Come Back"
"Inside Job"
This is such a big new thang for them that they are releasing it eponymously. Indeed, they're so excited to get this best work of their career out that they generously gave away an mp3 of the first single "World Wide Suicide" for at least a couple of days. Anyway, it's widely circulating on radio and the Internet for free.
It's way overpriced. Besides the space on the hard drive, this is 3:27 of my life wasted on nothing. "World Wide Suicide" has even less melody and hooks than the broadly similar guitar rock of U2's mediocre "Vertigo." There's not one even vaguely memorable turn of melodic phrase, just two or three notes of random shouting with no significant or unique patterns. The more times I hear it, the less substantial it seems.
I am not known as much of a Pearl Jam fan, so I'm trying to go the extra mile here, listening carefully to this song a dozen times. There's nothing memorable, no spark of creativity. They play guitar real frantic and all like it's supposed to mean something, but there's absolutely no there there. I cannot think of one good thing to say about this as a composition.
In fairness, the band seems to be performing their material very skillfully. They're probably generating a somewhat more interesting, fluid sonic palette than tired latter day U2.
But there's no song under it. The greatest band in the world couldn't make anything out of this. Eddie Vedder sings like his life depends on it, but there's only so much anyone could do with such a totally indistinguished composition.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mark Saleski
there is no east rutherford, new hampshire.
2 - Michael
Reading this review was a waste of three minutes of my life.
3 - kev
It is an awesome song from an awesome band...the lyrics are meaningful and well written, unlike the review. Although the reviewer also takes a swipe at U2 so clearly pearl jam must be doing something right...it must be a good thing to be vriticised by this reviewer.
4 - Brian
doesnt seem like a very objective review.......the writer admits to not liking the band
5 - jonbenke
I would love -- LOVE -- to know what you like - lol.
6 - The Jeagler
you're an idiot.
7 - Mike
You have no friends
8 - shahril
im a HUGE pj fan. but i will be the first from the camp to defend ur review as a very fair if not accurate one.
9 - Hater
This blog is a waste of bandwidth, diskspace, an IP address and a record in a DNS Server.
I am now stupider for having read this pile of dung.
10 - Garrett
huh...
11 - James
yea pearl jam sucks this song is filthy and sloppy. sounds like they want to be the MC5 but are failing badly. yea vedder should kill himself fucking sellout
12 - Andrew
Nothing like bashing an incredible band to generate attention. Well done.
13 - Pearl Jam
My experience is that people with no intelligence tend to bash such an insightful band as Pearl Jam, if you don't like the band, why do a blog on it, that was pretty idiotic, World Wide Suicide is Pearl Jam through and through true blue! Very moving and powerful...
14 - Al Barger
Howdy, gang. Come and in and bash away at me. I'm a no-goodnik, and I gots it coming.
However, merely saying that I suck and I'm stupid means nothing. Why would anyone care about your arbitrary emotional response?
Review my review. Point out some of what I'm missing. Is there some particularly cool unique key change or chord progression that I'm missing? Is there in fact a melodic line in this song with significantly more than three notes. Don't just say that I suck, but show how I'm sucking.
If you can show me something that I'm missing or not giving account for, I'll give you credit. I've done it before. Look, I've got humility in spades. I will admit to being backed down a step by some of Mariah Carey's lambs, and end up giving her at least a little bit of credit.
Then again, I'd listen to Mimi over this any day.
Howdy Jonbenke. In answer to comment 5, I like a lot of things. Go HERE to find out. Among other things, I loves me some White Stripes, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Beatles, Rolling Stones, my hero Elvis Costello, and definitely a lot of classic Prince.
Not far behind those I will put the Who. They're particularly relevant to my distaste for Pearl Jam. I just can't imagine why I would ever, ever listen to Pearl Jam when I could just as easily be spinning vintage Who. Similar range of hard guitar rock, only based on really good SONGS.
Shahril, thank you for your understanding. You represent well for Pearl Jam fans, as opposed to some of the more childish displays here.
15 - Shart
Eddie covers Pete's Blue, Red & Gray, you should look it up. You might like it, you might hate it. I love it.
4/12/03 Orlando, FL www.pearljamlive.com
to each their own
16 - Al Barger
Well Shart, that might be worth hearing. Pearl Jam's strong suit is performance and not composition. I could imagine PJ doing something worthwhile with that.
17 - Something insightful
How about giving props to a band for writing a song with lyrics like it has at least and for putting it out as a single. Your f'in' country has been sitting with its thumb up its ass for the last 3 years while thousands of your youth have been dying in a godforsaken part of the world for no good reason other than that your elected leader and his henchmen can't admit when they've made a mistake.
Bands like Pearl Jam, in their own small way at least, try to not "play it safe", which all too often is what everyone else in America seems to be doing these days. Kudos to Pearl Jam for not shying away from controversy.
In any case, music reviews and music reviewers are about two of the most useless things on this planet ....... to each their own. So suck on that!
18 - nighthawk
pearl jam is the only arena band left that started during your lifetime is still creative, fun and controversial...go to a live show is all i can advise....but after reading your two qualifications for a good song (having hooks and a melody to that of U2)...there may be no hope
19 - Gonzo1977
The problem with Blogs is that it gives any psuedo wanna be rock journalist a platform to spew half-bright,ill-informed opinions all over the internet. The last thing the world needs is more rock critics...especially water-heads with a grudge.
Obviously the song is not very complex in it's composition...World Wide Suicide is straight up rock'n'roll. If you want complex... Go pull out a Yes record and drool over Rick Wakeman's synth.
I'd expect more from an Elvis Costello fan...but then again you do like Prince and Dolly Parton...Ye Gods !!
The song is currently the most requested song on the Modern Rock Radio Format. For a band to sound this fresh, energized, and current after 15 years is a treasure to behold.
Oh well...enjoy the soundtrack to Mimi
To each his own I guess
Sela.
20 - DJRadiohead
I haven't heard the song yet but I think Al was actually more than fair. There are a lot of critics or reviewers who would not admit to disliking an artist they were reviewing and would rip them behind a cloak of "objectivity." If you want to dismiss Al's opinions because he is not a fan you can do that. I think it's a little dishonest to only take the word of fellow fans but you have that right.
The teenage, jackass response of "You suck" and "You're stupid" (with most of these insults typed incorrectly) say more about the commenter than the reviewer.
21 - Mark Saleski
ok then, it's this line, hinted at in the 'review':
I just can't imagine why I would ever, ever listen to Pearl Jam when I could just as easily be spinning vintage Who.
it's this sort of zero sum game approach to evaluating things that to me is absolutely pointless.
22 - DJRadiohead
I agree with you, Saleski.
I can see that statement being more of a literary device than an honest expression of his feelings, though.
23 - Al Barger
Re: the Who vs Pearl Jam. The "when you could be listening to..." sentence stem is usually, yes, primarily a rhetorical device- but not here.
For starters, it IS to some extent a zero-sum game. You get only so many hours in a day and in a life. There's 24 hours and literally millions of things you could listen to- or videos to watch, or even actual live people to talk to. If you're listening to Pearl Jam, you're not listening to Prince.
Still, I listen to a lot of stuff, and it's not entirely a hierarchical structure of "best." Mood enters into it. Often, I listen to stuff perhaps less utterly perfect than an Elvis Costello or James Brown classic. Granted, Duran Duran ain't in a league with Dylan, but they've got a different sound and things going on with "A View to a Kill" that you can't quite get anywhere else. A little of that is just the thing somedays. The Beatles are the big Kahuna, but somedays a man needs to hear the Monkees. In my father's house there are many mansions.
But re: Pearl Jam vs the Who, I see no such consideration. The Who are totally superior on every level, and I don't hear anything substantive in PJ that I can't get a lot better from the Who. Pearl Jam have mediocre songwriting at best, past Ten anyway. They're a fairly good band as players- but they seem significantly overrated, and obviously the Who blow them away.
Why should I listen to this mediocrity when I could be listening to something stylistically similar, but really good?
Something Insightful (comment #17), try to avoid wrenching your shoulder out of joint while you pat yourself on the back for getting the deep profundity of Pearl Jam. That PJ lyrical shit is so incredibly, ridiculously shallow as to boggle the mind of even a moderately literate person seeing how such things are taken. Some of Mariah Carey's lambs talk almost as foolish about how deep her lyrics are because she writes lyrics about how there's a hero inside everyone of us and so forth. People, crack a book once in a while, please. Or perhaps study some classic Ira Gershwin or Smokey Robinson lyric sheets, even.
For starters, most of their lyrics are just shit as pop songcraft. In terms of imagination, of putting together memorable turns of phrase, creating unique poetic metaphors or having anything even simply, merely coherent to say, it's shit. It's just not skillful or insightful or worthwhile at all.
You're confusing (a very low rent version of) morality with art. You seem to be arguing that because PJ are willing to say that Bush sucks, that makes what they're saying artistically meaningful. It does not. Nor am I impressed with the great bravery of denouncing the president, as if BusHitler were going to throw Eddie in the gulag for speaking truth to power. Please. That's a different issue, though.
But note that I said nearly nothing in the review about the lyric of the song, cause it didn't matter. Even if it had been a better lyric, it wouldn't have mattered much because a lyric is not a song. A MELODY and chords and rhythms - MUSIC - make a song. "World Wide Suicide" has no distinctive melodic components whatsoever, so I'm just not going to care about the supposed profundity of the words.
Brian (comment #4) and others who criticize me for supposed lack of objectivity have it all exactly backwards. I AM an objective reviewer here, as much as one can be. My lack of fandom for Pearl Jam isn't prejudice, a pre-judgment based on extraneous factors. It's a considered judgment based on having listened to numerous Pearl Jam albums. Regardless of general personality factors or fashion statements or politics, the actual records they've made mostly don't sound like anything at all memorable.
What he's actually saying is that I'm not objective because I'm not a fan and thus bending over backwards to make myself like whatever crap they put out. To qualify as an "objective" reviewer to a rabid fan, I would need to start from the premise that the new Pearl Jam is GREAT. Then I should listen to it and work backwards to justify my pre-formed opinion of their majesty.
If you want to question my objectivity as a reviewer, it would be a much better test to look at the stuff I write about my favorite artists. Can I bring myself to speak negatively about the lesser works of my idol Elvis Costello? Or can I say anything critical about the work of my much beloved Sinead O'Connor? You might look up my reviews for North and Throw Down Your Arms respectively on this count.
24 - IgnatiusReilly
Here's why it's so hard to take your criticisms of lyrics seriously.
"James Blunt just SO totally kicks ass with Back to Bedlam. This sumbitch is a real songwriter."
You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.
but you find PJ ridiculously shallow?! Puh-leeeze!
There's plenty of poetic lines in songs like Corduroy, Present Tense, Do The Evolution, Breakerfall, Save You.
25 - Mark Saleski
please al, you don't agree with Pearl Jam's politics, and find a way to say they're shallow.
just fes up to it.