Corduroy13, I never really looked at ‘Get Right’ as a stoner tune, rather a political one, but I think you may have swayed my interpretation.

Your reviews of the songs are really interesting and thoughtful, and I enjoy reading them. Do you plan on looking at the albums as a whole as well?

You’re absolutely right about the current view of albums as mix tapes, but I don’t think Pearl Jam are completely alone in creating albums as albums. There are plenty of younger bands and artists, from Magnolia Electric Co. to Wilco (not really that much younger than PJ), to Sufjan Stevens etc. etc. who put together solid records. Even some pop artists like Amy Winehouse seem more concerned with crafting 40 some odd quality minutes, even though her singles more than stand on their own.

I’m not a huge advocate of swapping songs in and out of records, making my own “perfect” ten by throwing in “Footsteps” or “Wash” for example. But it is interesting to consider why bands make the choices they do w/r/t certain material over others. I think you hit the nail on the head with “Get Right”. It was what was needed.

It used to be that listening to an album was viewed as a very different experience than it is today. It was a journey that you took with the artist as your guide. In the iTunes-oriented world of today, every album is listened to as though it were a mix-tape. No one understands this better than a group like Fall Out Boy, but Pearl Jam are like dinosaurs in the current pop world. It’s pretty clear to me that GET RIGHT was never meant to be a stand-alone song. It’s less than three minutes long, its percussive style fits right into where it’s positioned, and it provides a break between the true love theme of YOU ARE and the greed theme of GREEN DISEASE.

DOWN and UNDONE are both better songs that GET RIGHT, and I love their current arrangements, but remembering the LIGHT YEARS demo vs. LIGHT YEARS album version, what is the likelihood that we would know DOWN and UNDONE in their current forms if either had appeared on Riot Act?

That said, despite the fact that the songwriting here is very weak, the arrangement makes this a light listen on a very weighty album. I actually enjoy the relief when GET RIGHT comes on.