Santa God

Oh, the anticipation of Christmas morning, unwrapping presents that mysteriously appear under the tree, gifts from that weird, omnicscient fat guy Americans refer to as Santa Claus.  That’s what Christmas is like for the children who celebrate it, at least until they learn that their jolly toy-bestowing benefactor is not real.  It’s hard to imagine (cough) that that type of innocence can still be maintained in this age of overwhelming media, but somehow, it is.  ”Santa God” is slight in nature, but surprisingly touching in its simplicity. In some ways, “Now we’re grown and so complex / In a world that can’t relax / Even though he was a lie / We all were satisfied”, tells more effective truth than the band’s more “serious” songs.   And the parallels between the innocence of believing in Santa Claus and in the mysteries of rock and roll fandom are not insubstantial.

On the eve of the release of Backspacer, there are those fans still desperately clinging to that old-fashioned, pre-mp3 leak time of unwrapping a shrink-wrapped CD or vinyl album on the day of its official release.  And there are those who can’t wait, who raid the parents’ closet early to get the toys, which are no less fun to play with, but who also are left with the feeling that something was lost.  But still, there are few bands left today who still inspire that nostalgic feeling of anticipation conjured on “Santa God”, where every new song feels like a gift wrapped in a bow.

Speed of Sound

The availability of demo versions of officially recorded music has seemed to grow to ubiquity over the last decade with the internet and deluxe reissued albums flooding our ears with our favorite artists’ rough sketches. Yet, we’re usually afforded the opportunity to hear an artist’s earliest takes on a new composition long, long after the fact.  Rarely do we have the chance to compare both a skeletal and fleshed-out version of the same song immediately upon (or, ahem, before) its release.

“Speed of Sound” provides a fascinating comparison between the solo Ed Vedder version offered via an internet promotion/game, and the fully-crafted, Brendan O’Brien-produced final result. The song, like its Backspacer compadres “Just Breathe” and “The End”, is a folky, finger-picked ramble, clearly the result of the major stylistic breakthrough Vedder underwent which resulted in the Into the Wild soundtrack.  That much is evident to anyone who downloaded the demo.  The final version, however, is strikingly arrayed with different textures that weave in and out in ways that have already befuddled some early listeners, and which, to anyone who hadn’t heard the demo, would barely suggest the song’s humble beginnings.

I’m of the mind that, good or bad, “Speed of Sound” demonstrates the most new growth for Pearl Jam on Backspacer, in terms of the band’s collaborative process both among themselves, and with a producer.  First, as Ed’s contributions in the form of three aforementioned songs sound so distinctly like his growing body of solo material, the band could have easily let those songs go toward a seperate project of Ed’s.  Ed’s earlier acoustic forays (“Elderly Woman”, “Thumbing My Way”) and even some of his ukelele compositions (“Can’t Keep”) lent themselves much more easily to Pearl Jam as a full band than the prospect of these fragile, warbly little tunes. But considering the strength of the material, it’s no wonder the band decided to tackle them and expand what they’re capable of doing in the process.

But whereas “Just Breathe” and “The End” are more conventionally (but no less wonderfully) arranged with strings, shakers, and various leads, “Speed of Sound” was taken in a dramatically different direction, as if the band with O’Brien’s  guidance decided it had to stand out as something different than a dressed up acoustic song, an Ed solo cut with embellishments.  As anyone who writes songs alone on an acoustic guitar can attest, it can be difficult to introduce them in a band setting and think beyond just adding leads or little textural colors.  Particularly if the song is based on fingerpicking patterns, which suggest finer rhythms and highlight individual notes that perform some of what a full band provides.

What the band decided for “Speed of Sound” was to take the motion of the acoustic guitar and replace it, most noticeably, with drums and piano, which both mimic the nimble movements of Ed’s picking on the demo.  The guitars are either pushed way back in the mix, or converted into sustained little drones, blending with gentle pulses of organ.  In the short amount of time since Backspacer has been leaked, “Speed of Sound” has become one of the more controversial songs on the record, which I suspect is because rather than sound rooted in one or more acoustic or electric guitars, it’s assembled from lots of smaller sounds and details (with piano being perhaps the most prominent —> not something Pearl Jam fans are used to). Matt Cameron’s drums provide something of an anchor, but the pattern is still unconventional.  It’s like listening to a cloud as opposed to the rain.

But as it stands, whether or not it becomes a favorite of fans, or a concert staple, it most surely will open the door for more of this type of exploration, of breaking songs into symphonic fragments and expanding the band’s sonic palette.  It’s proven that there’s more than one way to play with Ed’s new acoustic songs, and created a world of possibility for the future.

Yellow Ledbetter

Here we are. It’s the end of the show. Lights up.

There are many tangential bits of information about “Yellow Ledbetter”, both statistical and personal, so I’ll begin with a list:

1. In the early days of “Yellow Ledbetter”, though it was occasionally performed as a set/show closer, it wasn’t uncommon for the song to pop up in the middle of sets as well. 1995/1996 saw the emergence of YL as a standard grand finale. Prior to that, Pearl Jam shows were as likely to close with “Leash”, “Porch” or “I’ve Got a Feeling”. Granted, the early shows were rarely the 25+ song marathons of the last ten years, but it goes to show that the iconic status of “Yellow Ledbetter” was not always exactly what it is today.

2. When I was in junior high, I had my first chance to sing for a rock band at a summer program I was enrolled in. The program was for students around the country and the globe, and I somehow met up with a few kids from Venezuela who knew how to play guitar, bass, and drums. The repertoire they knew well were a handful of Green Day songs, and “Yellow Ledbetter”. So I suffered through the Green Day material, affecting my best snotty faux-British pop-punk snarl and dying my hair orange, all so I could try and approximate the notoriously untranscribable “Yellow Ledbetter”.

3. To this day, I know several people who claim “Yellow Ledbetter” as one of their all-time favorite songs, though they do not consider themselves overall fans of the band. I also know someone with a “Yellow Ledbetter” ringtone on their phone. I bet many of you do too.

“Yellow Ledbetter” is without a doubt, one of the most popular and well-known b-sides in all of rock music history. Seriously, try and think of another. Heavy early radio-play and its status as an import-only b-side cemented the song’s legacy from the start. If “Even Flow” was semi-unintelligible, “Yellow Ledbetter” was full-on, which created an enormous amount of buzz, i.e. “What’s he talking about”, but also an undistracted appreciation for the charms of Ed Vedder’s voice, and a friendly, accessible midtempo guitar tune. Whether the lyrics were about a soldier coming back from the war “in a box or a bag”, or someone feeling so beat up by life that they didn’t know whether they were “the boxer or the bag”, there was and is something communal and celebratory about “Yellow Ledbetter” that makes it an idea closer, the song that caps the night with an easygoing finality, but finality nonetheless.

An audience may occasionally groan when they hear McCready’s first few unmistakable bars, but only because they know with reasonable assuredness that the show is about to go into the books. For 5–7 minutes, everyone gets a chance to reflect on the night, the songs, the band, the crowd, whatever they want, and mumble along. Some people view Pearl Jam’s enduring success and its attendant cult fandom as a mystery, but mystery isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, it’s healthy: a band that provides its listeners with uncountable entry points into the songs, albums, artwork, shows, and keeps them, if not always entertained, always engaged. “Yellow Ledbetter” then is the perfect embodiment of Pearl Jam’s mystery: fluid, familiar, enigmatic, comforting, confident, puzzling. It marks the end of the show, but also the return back to your everyday life, in a way that makes that prospect somehow less dreadful and daunting. It says good night, and now with the final song reviewed (until the next album), so do I!

Foldback/Thunderclap/Harmony

I’ve wrestled with including these three instrumentals from the Touring Band 2000 film on this blog, mostly out of sheer laziness with not wanting to have to find them in the movie and figure out which was which. But through the wonders of the internet, it is possible to find strictly audio, labelled versions of these pieces, and because of popular demand, I’m giving them some solid listening. That the songs were titled, even though they sound very much like the demoed candidates for Binaural that they were, also makes them indispensible for this blog’s ambitions. Because of films like TB2K and Single Video Theory, plus a wealth of pre-album release interviews, we know that material such as these three instrumentals is constantly brought into sessions. Some of it gets put on hold indefinitely; some turn into fully realized songs on later albums. “Foldback”, “Thunderclap”, and “Harmony” each received the strange fate of ending up as montage music on a DVD. Through some clever triangulation and research between my own crumbling memory, Given To Wail, and an old Rumor Pit, I’m fairly confident in matching titles to the instrumentals.

According to GTW, the longest of the three tunes is “Thunderclap”, a broad and expansive tune that sounds more in keeping with the band’s work on Yield than Binaural (unless you count “Of the Girl”, which was supposed to have been attempted for Yield anyhow). When I first heard My Morning Jacket’s “Gideon”, I immediate thought of “Thunderclap”. Listening to them side by side, the two songs are astonishing in their similarities: a breezy guitar figure backed by tom-heavy drums, eventually underscored by a few well placed strums. “Thunderclap” is accomplished and lovely, and the imagination reels at what it would have sounded like completed, with lyrics. What I believe to be “Harmony” is the heaviest number, a crunching rock song that betrays a possible Matt Cameron writing credit, as the second half sounds remarkably like Soundgarden. It also would have proven a challenge to accompany with words, though its moody atmosphere makes it a worthy backing for imagery. “Foldback” is the slightest of the three and sounds like wistful Vedder tunes like “Wishlist” and “Untitled”. The playing here is relaxed to the point of not being completely in time. What all three prove beyond doubt is that the band has grown in its songwriting abilities enough to create music that is evocative without words. When a band’s relative castaways demonstrate more character than most radio acts’ hits, it just goes to show how much more there is to music than capturing the zeitgeist. These instrumentals were never “finished”, per se, but still found their own avenue to listeners’ imaginations.

Vitalogy

1. Last Exit
2. Spin the Black Circle
3. Not For You
4. Tremor Christ
5. Nothingman
6. Whipping
7. Pry, To
8. Corduroy
9. Bugs
10. Satan’s Bed
11. Better Man
12. Aye Davanita
13. Immortality
14. Hey Foxymophandlemama, That’s Me

Corduroy

I’m wearing corduroy pants right now (chocolate brown, thin wales, straight legged); I named my beloved cat Corduroy when I was 15 (orange and white, fat, loves to drink water from the tub faucet); I just discovered a great website for the Corduroy Appreciation Club (stylish, funny, reminiscent of McSweeney’s) because I was looking up word origins and the history of the fabric on Wikipedia. I learned from Wikipedia that a common but unverified belief is that the word comes from the French for “cloth(es) of the king”. Well, that’s supposedly not true, but it dovetails quite nicely into the story of “Corduroy”, the Pearl Jam song (classic, magnificent, liable to be played at least twice per show).

Okay, done with parentheses; here’s a story: at every Pearl Jam show I’ve been to, there’s always been, in addition to similarly obsessed fans who know every word to every song, a strong contingent of rock radio-lovin’ dudes that show up in stone-washed jeans and faded black concert tees, get loaded, cry openly during “Black”, and push through the crowd en route to a pee break during every post-Vs. song. Annoying yes, but those dudes are always going to be there. And I’ve come to realize that’s okay. Love your favorite songs and hate the ones you hate. There will also always be those who claim nothing after 1993 was worth their time. Fine. Wherever Pearl Jam decided to go after the last seconds of “Indifference” ticked away, lots of folks decided to hang back and let them be. Great. I would never claim to have ever been close to veering off from the band at any point during their career, but I can say with surety that though Ten and Vs. hooked me in, “Corduroy” itself was largely responsible for keeping me there, for winning my trust in the band’s future, and verifying everything I felt about what I already knew and loved.

As infamous as Eddie’s “complaint about fame” songs are, fans and non-fans alike often miss the bigger issue at stake. “Corduroy” is about seeing one’s personal clothing style co-opted and exploited for big bucks just because of lightning-struck celebrity, but behind that, behind “They can buy but can’t put on my clothes”, “Corduroy” is about wanting to live a true and honest life, and how that existence is threatened. It’s about, in essence, freedom. Not the nebulous, flag-waving idea of freedom, often invoked but never considered, but the idea that commercial culture and consumerism, regardless of good or bad intention, separate us from ourselves. You can’t buy a jacket that looks like Vedder’s and become him, or automatically become part of a “grunge” or “alternative” culture, the same way putting a flower in your hair or patches on your jeans doesn’t make you a hippie.

“Corduroy”, though it is specifically about Ed based on his feeling and experiences, has implications and meaning for everyone. Every social and artistic movement eventually gets folded into the larger culture that seeks to define it based on how that culture wishes to perceive it. “Grunge” was oversimplified down to being depressed music made by unhappy people. All the easier to dismiss when those sourpusses start having challenging political ideas. Ed’s corduroy jacket getting turned into a fashion statement is symbolic of that transformation, and his song is his refusal to accept that, his attempt to reclaim his own life from marketers and hitchhikers. In high school, I probably didn’t think about it in these terms, but I wanted control over who I was and how I was perceived too. I resented being judged by people who didn’t know me, or overhearing someone who always picked on me for my tastes suddenly raving about them once they became “cool”. “Corduroy” hit me hard. I too felt destined to take the varmint’s path.

It didn’t hurt that “Corduroy” was the most musically satisfying Pearl Jam song I’d heard since I was initially drawn to “Even Flow”. Built on Ed’s familiar arpeggiated riff, the song goes through several distinct yet cohesive parts, some minor, some major, which together create a song that is sad yet noble, defiant yet heartbroken. There is no context on stage or coming out of a set of speakers that “Corduroy” doesn’t sound perfect; it works as the centerpiece to Vitalogy, and it stands alone as a great song apart from the album setting. Turned inside-out and upside-down at the Bridge Benefit? Again, it loses none of its import or resonance. With a lot of Vedder’s material past and present, it’s fairly easy to hear his influences, even when they’re well-incorporated, from the Who to Neil to Dylan to the Clash. But “Corduroy” feels most archetypically and organically his own, maybe a synthesis of everything he’d digested and learned to that point, but with his own spark and stamp. I find that although I latch onto other songs for periods of time, and have several which I’d call perennial favorites, they all remain planets around “Corduroy” the sun.

Undone

From “Green Disease” to “U” and now “Undone”, in this final stretch of More Than Ten, the remaining songs have many similarities, namely (at the risk of being completely redundant) they all consist of Ed Vedder indulging his lighter, leaner musical sensibilities. “Undone” is also a catalogue of other favorite Ed themes. Let’s recap them again!

1. Escape from mass, mainstream society to a smaller, simpler locale? Check.

Last stop on the west coast line
South of the northern border
One small corner on my mind

2. Commentary on the pitfalls of fame? Check.

Everybody, they know me there
Don’t get any second glances
Chances are that they don’t care

3. Ocean imagery? Oh you betcha.

Change don’t come at once
It’s a wave… building before it breaks

4. Left-wing politics? Yep.

Can’t wait for election day
Witness the occupation
Corporations rule the day

Ah yes, the four tenets of Vedderism. But there’s a notable, directly stated difference in “Undone”: “All this hope and nowhere to go / This is how I used to feel, but no more.” Though the song was released as a b-side, it is the act in Riot Act. It’s interesting to see that this renewed sense of both hope and purposefulness coincided with one of the grimmest times in modern U.S. politics and affairs, but that determined vigor and optimism has continued throughout a dire 2-term Bush presidency in much of Ed’s, and Pearl Jam’s work, as if the silver lining to an increasingly Orwellian world is an eventual wake-up call, and pendulum swing back towards sanity and rationalism. “Undone” is breezy yet focused, definitely west coast, with e-bowed and wah-wah guitars, sighing background vocals, and an explosive outtro that ranks among the band’s best.

U

There’s nothing wrong with a song that takes as much time to write as it does to play. “U” (none of this new-fangled “You” business, I prefer Prince-style), is an exhuberant slice of bubblegum that asks nothing more of listeners than to smile, purposefully. Had the song reached for some other brass ring of meaningfulness or deep cultural import, I would understand the handwringing “U” sometimes provokes. But it is what it is, even faking out listeners with a moody intro that quickly dissolves into syrup. That being said, I much, much prefer the original “Wishlist” b-side version to that of Lost Dogs, which is one of my least favorite of the band’s released alternate takes, just ever so slightly less brisk, with a re-recorded vocal and Cameron’s drums replacing Irons’s.

Writing a good pop song is neither easy nor a useless, unworthy talent, though it’s generally scoffed at by “serious” rock fans. Vedder may have written “U” during a 12-minute car ride, but he was likely able to do so because a) he’d been honing his melodic sense for years as a songwriter and obsessive fan, and b) he had the instinct and good sense to commit the idea to memory and tape, and not abandon the tune. Half of the battle in creating high, low, or other art is just following through. I believe that everyone possesses the capability of creating something great, but half of the battle is following through. Students in writing classes are often told to keep a journal or pad of paper by their bed at night, so that they don’t ignore the thoughts and ideas that come to them before drifting off to sleep. People are too quick to dismiss their own ideas, not only because they’re unsure about how to take them further, but because their ideas might seem to simple or poppy or catchy or even silly. But as “U” proves, there’s room enough in the music world for silliness, straightforwardness, and hooks that get endlessly looped in your brain.

Riot Act

1. Can’t Keep
2. Save You
3. Love Boat Captain
4. Cropduster
5. Ghost
6. I Am Mine
7. Thumbing My Way
8. You Are
9. Get Right
10. Green Disease
11. Help Help
12. Bu$hleaguer
13. 1/2 Full
14. Arc
15. All Or None

Green Disease

I didn’t save “Green Disease” as the last of the Riot Act tracks on purpose, but I have to admit I’m more fond of it than most from that record. It’s like a champion welterweight, even a flyweight (balsaweight? croutonweight?), punchy and upbeat but swift, with a trademark Vedder guitar riff but a few surprises as well. The biggest draw for me is subtle: the insertion of little series of three notes in the second half of the first verse. “Green Disease” is pretty much in standard 4/4 time, so the slight rhythmic play of three picked notes within that framework adds both quirk and propulsion, as well as more melodic and tonal dimension. For such a brief song that is relatively uncluttered by heavy instrumentation, there’s a lot of variety from start to finish. After the intro, the verses kick in and sound almost in a different key. The verses in turn never culminate in traditional choruses. The sections that begin “Well, I guess” are more like a second series of different verses. It’s an odd structure for a poppy little song, and one that I believe is unique to Pearl Jam’s catalog.

As far as the lyrical concept of the song is concerned, I’m less convinced. Purposeful, ideologically driven greed is indisputably a huge concern in contemporary business and politics (when isn’t it?), and Vedder keeps his rhetoric appropriate concise for his quick tune, but the language is still mostly flat and uninteresting. The best imagery in the song is of “weeds with big leaves / stealing light from what’s beneath” which neatly defines the idea of “green disease”, providing a visual foothold for listeners’ imaginations and an apt comparison to corporate leeches that become inordinately rich off of the work of others while still maintaining the delusion that they’re somehow pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. Had the song continued along those lines, or kept some consistency even across its musical and structural leaps, “Green Disease” might have been even better. Oh, and could someone please explain the fat man’s dream about “choking Ti leaves”?

Black, Red, Yellow

I promise not to hold my breath, but I’d still love to someday be treated to a “Black, Red, Yellow” –> “Black” –> “Red Mosquito” –> “Yellow Ledbetter” tetralogy. The return of the “Hail, Hail” b-side to the live stage after 9+ years (from 1996 – 2005) was a treat, with the scrappy, junkyard rock homage to basketball star (and friend/fan of the band) Dennis Rodman fitting in remarkably well with the rest of the ‘06 sets. Two Feet Thick offers a pretty great decoding of some of the tune’s lyrics, my favorite of which is likening Bulls coach Phil Jackson to “Freud walkin’ the sidelines”. Nothing monumental, just a great dirty little rock tune.

Down

Somewhere inside Mike McCready, there’s a Tom Petty album just waiting to get out.  Between “Last Soldier” and “Down”, two Riot Act-era heartland rock tunes, there’s enough promise and potential for the band to go down that dusty road if they so desired.  Though Mike intended “Down” to be much more aggressive than it became, the relaxed jangle and twang of the song sound completely natural, making it both looser and more confident than almost anything else produced in the same sessions.

The “I Am Mine” single may very well have been the last physical single I’ve purchased by any band, and I had to search fairly hard for it. I remember finding it at the giant Virgin Megastore in downtown Chicago, which means I must have had family or friends visiting me in the city, because that was the only time I had desire or reason. In some obscure corner of the store, the single racks still existed, and there it was: an off-blue digipak w/ 3 b-sides, 2 or which were non-album tracks. Oh how it brought back excited memories of finding some import that I didn’t even know existed (I still have dreams occasionally of finding some lost album that I can’t wait to listen to, always waking up before I get a chance to hear it).

I immediately liked “Down” more than any of its companions. It’s a perfectly compact little rocker, whose verses, choruses, and bridge fit together like jigsaw pieces. Vedder famously uses a Howard Zinn quote too good effect, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train”, but the politics of the song are still wonderfully vague, even self-effacing. “Cry me a river / Dried up and dammed” is a pretty loaded, playful couple of lines. “Cry me a river” is an old eye-rolling response to someone who is over-emotional about something, as “bleeding heart” is a common tag on people with liberal ideals. But in this case, a river can’t be cried because it’s been dammed, weaving an environmentalist’s concern into a play on words (dammed/damned). Plus, Vedder sings the lines with dry, upbeat humor, a call to personal/political action that is dependent on the individual, not an overwhelming collective, i.e. pick up after yourself, quit smoking, decrease your footprint, vote, people have the power, think globally act locally etc. etc. etc. Lyrically and musically, “Down” makes you want to move.

Yield

1. Brain of J.

2. Faithfull

3. No Way

4. Given to Fly

5. Wishlist

6. Pilate

7. Do the Evolution

8. The Color Red

9. MFC

10. Low Light

11. In Hiding

12. Push Me Pull Me

13. All Those Yesterdays

14. Hummus 

All Those Yesterdays

What, exactly, makes a song Beatlesesque? Is it a defineable quality beyond “you know it when you hear it?” And what Beatles period/song/member are people referring to when they describe another piece of music as being reminiscent of the Fab Four? There are a number of Stone Gossard-penned Pearl Jam tracks that beg the comparison, from “Sunburn” (though it’s still up in the air whether this is Bayleaf or not) to “Parachutes”, and especially “All Those Yesterdays”. The Yield closer gains the most allusions to John, Paul, George, & Ringo, but not much in depth examination as to why. I’m not a Beatles scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a few ideas open to debate.

1. Jeff Ament’s bass sounds like a horn. Whether on purpose through technique or effects, Ament’s bass squawks and honks like a tuba or trumpet or what have you, and for that reason, that type of simulated Salvation Army brass band line recalls Sgt. Pepper’s, Yellow Submarine, etc.

2. The used of doubled-vocals and harmony tracks is similar to those employed by Beatles. Perhaps the specific harmonic intervals are approximate to certain Beatles songs we’ve all heard, which in turn are products of not only rock and roll, but British parlor tunes and vaudeville.

3. Gossard’s lyrics.  While not as specific as “A Day in the Life” or “Eleanor Rigby”, do dig into how average people get through (or don’t get through) the mundaneness of existence, while memories and experience pile up like “all those paper plates”.

Of course, whatever Beatlesy business is going on with “All Those Yesterdays”, that’s not all that’s going on.  The song eventually builds to a chugging rocker with the decidedly Vedderesque lyrics about escape, and it caps Yield appropriately in both its lean melodic sense and diamond hard approach.  Extremely rare live, it seems like a tough song to place within a set.  It closes the album, but only if you don’t count “Hummus”.  At the end of a show, or an encore, “All Those Yesterdays” might sound too much like a new beginning.  Played first, it might sound too much like an ending.  Perhaps better that the song pops up from time to time, drifting off and doing all the things such songs do.

Don’t Gimme No Lip

One of the major surprises on 2003’s Lost Dogs was the uncovering of a second No Code-era track written and sung by Stone Gossard. “Don’t Gimme No Lip” managed to evade rumors and leaks for a solid seven years, but there’s probably a good reason for that. Despite a pretty satisfying crunch, the song offers very little other than its novelty, making it a wise choice to give “Mankind” album status instead. The repetition of the title gets old quick, but even that is preferable to short couplets like “Don’t gimme no lip / I’ve got no taste for it”. Still, it’s always a joy to have Stone step up to the mic in concert, make a few sly, self-deprecating comments, and launch into even this slight little pop punk tune.

State of Love and Trust

If I had to guess at where I was the first time I heard “State of Love and Trust”, I’d have to guess it was in a high school gymnasium in Worcester, MA, early on a Saturday morning during an indoor track meet in the dead of winter. One of my older sister’s friends, who was also on the team, made me aware of the Singles soundtrack, letting me borrow the cassette for my walkman while he listened to Pantera or Iron Maiden or some such. “Breath” was great; Chris Cornell’s “Seasons” was revelatory; but “State of Love and Trust” beat them all. Along with “Wash”, the title “State” adorned my Pearl Jam stickman t-shirt, so finally that mystery was solved. Here was yet another amazing song by my favorite band that didn’t even make it onto their own record. And I was pretty damn sure it was good enough; it quickly became my favorite Pearl Jam song in the days before Vs., back when it was somewhat easier to choose.

Inspired by the movie, “State of Love and Trust” is another Vedder song about relationships and fidelity, though the most striking lyrics are of the protagonist aiming a gun at his head, which has subsumed the larger picture. They’re also the easiest lyrics to pick out, likely the only ones I could manage when I was 13. But to me, at that age, I took the images of potential suicide non-literally, the way I would “want to die” after getting rejected by a girl I had a crush on, and the way I would subsequently write a poem about it. The media made such huge assumptions and oversimplifications (as they always do) when reporting on the “alternative” music scene, that the music was overly dark, depressing, troubled. But it wasn’t to me.

The hyper-passionate bent of bands like Pearl Jam drew me in partly because everything else on the radio seemed devoid of feeling. Of course, there was plenty of passionate music being written at the time that was more difficult for a somewhat rural teenager to track down, but of what I was exposed to, Pearl Jam was it. “State of Love and Trust” made me think that other people in the world cared as much about… well, anything at all, as I did. Whatever it was that was working the character in “State” up so much that he had a gun to his own head, even if I didn’t know what it was, meant that there were things worth caring about. The gun was never the point. Fifteen years on, the lyrics in “State” are no longer that interesting to me. But they don’t need to be; how one relates or doesn’t relate to a song is always in flux. Now it’s Ament and McCready’s melancholy yet aggressive music that retains its impact, somber and quick, the same way Cameron Crowe’s Singles still manages to affect via tone despite what now feels like over-earnestness and naivete.

Binaural

1. Breakerfall

2. Gods’ Dice

3. Evacuation

4. Light Years

5. Nothing As It Seems

6. Thin Air

7. Insignificance

8. Of the Girl

9. Grievance

10. Rival

11. Sleight of Hand

12. Soon Forget

13. Parting Ways

Thin Air

Around the time of Binaural’s release, I remember reading about some connection between “Thin Air” and Stone Gossard’s appreciation of the band Wilco. It may have even been a direct quote linking the two. Regardless, I remember thinking “Really?” I still wonder. Wilco’s another band that I considered creating a “catablog” for (which I abandoned, but for which there’s now So Misunderstood), being fairly steeped in their music, and for the life of me I can’t find anything in “Thin Air” that compares to what Tweedy and company had produced by 2000. But for sport, let’s make an attempt here.

The music of Wilco has been described, at times more or less appropriately, as “Americana”.  Although this is an umbrella term that could include musical forms as diverse as zydeco, delta blues, jazz, and gospel, it’s most often used to describe music derived primarily from Appalachian folk music and by extension, traditional balladry from the British Isles.  Jeff Tweedy’s band prior to Wilco was Uncle Tupelo, which combined aspects of country and folk music with punk.  And though more recent Wilco material has seen that band progress into more avant garde directions, the foundations of most Wilco songs are still beholden to structures and melodies of traditional songcraft.

Gossard’s material for Pearl Jam, on the other hand, has never really had a strong folk music vein. Pop, funk, metal, punk (though there’s so much crossover and sharing between all musical genres), even “world” and hip-hop, more often characterize Stone’s songwriting. “Thin Air” is no exception, which to my ears owes much more to classic R&B than the Louvin Brothers or Woody Guthrie.  And it sounds more like the band’s covers of Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay” and “Last Kiss” than any of Vedder’s folkier contributions, Ed being the member of Pearl Jam seemingly most rooted in folk-derived styles by influences such as Springsteen, Dylan, and Young.

The point of attempting to debunk the “Thin Air”/Wilco connection, is that even though Gossard may have been inspired by that band, that inspiration, filtered through his own talents and tendencies, made “Thin Air” something else entirely, and a good lesson on the nature of inspiration.  Inspiration does not have to equal mimicry.  The surface qualities and aspects of a particular piece of music don’t need to be replicated in order an artist to claim inspiration.  Though “Thin Air” features a strummed acoustic guitar, it follows a groove typical of classic R&B and pop, an odd chord making the song a sort of warped version of an old ’50s romantic ballad. Stone’s lyrics (“There’s a light / When my baby’s in my arms”) could also have come right out of the Righteous Brothers or some such, were it not for idiosyncratic details like “Byzantine is reflected in our pond”.

“Thin Air” never struck me as particularly great, either as a Pearl Jam song or a Gossard composition; it’s strictly in the middle of the pack. But I’ve always appreciated listening to it from a writer’s perspective, as an artist’s attempt to pay homage to another in their own way.  In that respect, despite or because of its not sounding particularly like its inspiration, I’d say it’s quite successful.

Push Me Pull Me

I admit I’ve been hard on Ed’s spoken word tracks, and though I’m not about to apologize, I will at least recognize that part of my distaste for them is due to the fact that spoken word of any form/kind tends to make me writhe in agony to hear. So it’s surprising even to me to note that I find “Push Me Pull Me” not only the band’s best spoken word track, but a pretty damn good Pearl Jam track in its own right. Lacking the type of self-seriousness that too often characterizes such pieces, “Push Me Pull Me” delivers lines and images that are more interesting, i.e. “Like a cloud dropping rain / I’m discarding all thought”. Even better, Ed’s playful performance keeps the tone light and self-effacing, abetted by goofy studio effects and double-tracking. On a record so distinctly focused and tight, “Push Me Pull Me” is deliriously jumbled and bewildering, from the opening snippet of “Happy When I’m Crying” to Ament’s warbling bassline to the assorted beeps, buzzes, and other sonic detritus. The band even performed the song live twice in 1998, not as a tag (which they did once). I’ve never heard those performances, but how they pushed or pulled it off, I’m most curious to know.

Immortality

If Vitalogy is the Pearl Jam album most crying out to be experienced on vinyl, then “Immortality” is the reason. While I’m not the world’s biggest collector, the “Immortality” 7″ is at the top of my list of coveted Pearl Jam items. The song deserves the experience of setting needle to record, in the dark or near-dark, and hearing the song heavy in the air, its waves replicated in wax, not as “immortal” as digital code, but temporal, fleeting, of the earth. And though my short list of quintessential Pearl Jam tracks is a lot longer than I’d anticipated, “Immortality” could never, ever, ever be excluded. It is one of a handful of truly defining moments in the band’s career, a song as enormous and infinite as its title. Performed live, its gravity never fails to draw in the audience’s attention like a black hole. The opening one-two of “Of the Girl” and “Immortality” at the Sendai, Japan show in 2003 remains one of my favorite pairings from all of the live sets I’ve been fortunate to hear. There is little to connect the two songs thematically or stylistically, but both wield dense atmosphere with uncommon grace.

Were it not for the late addition of “Stupidmop” to Vitalogy’s end, “Immortality” would have been the closer. With that in mind, it’s important to remember the tone with which the song finishes as much as its primary sound. Though “Immortality” is most often characterized as a dirge, and understandably so, the entire song has a strong sense of rhythm and movement, a subtle sway that separates it from connotations of plodding and drag. This is especially apparent after Ed’s final words, when the song lifts out of its minor key fog, reclaims at least a semblence of optimism and groove, and trails off into the distance. The album’s seemingly most unforgivingly dark song actually provides its surest flicker of hope, the crocus after a long winter. Oh but what a winter, piled onto the hard ground of steel-stringed acoustic guitar, icy shards of cymbals, and a noticeably varied vocal performance by Ed, both strident and defeated. Mike McCready’s solos on “Immortality” are among my favorite (particularly at the 2:20 mark), serving the song more than mere embellishment, channeling the confusion and frustration of Vedder’s coded lyrics into singular lines as primal as waves carved in wax.