“Huh? What? Is it over? What time is it?”
Pearl Jam – No Code – 1996 – (itunes)
We’ve reached that critical point in Listening Posts. Like the very end of Aerosmith where I just forgot about the band. Or Sonic Youth where I just quit because they were making me hate music, this is the point where I have to go…um…why should I care again?
So, by the time this came out there was no chance that I was going to buy another Pearl Jam record. Vitalogy just scared me off. Had I not been so frightened off, I’m pretty sure that No Code would have done the job. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a much better record than Vitalogy. Well, it’s better.
It’s also Pearl Jam’s Vishnu record. Instead of leaving world rhythms to masters like Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon, Pearl Jam embrace their earthy world brethren and succeed! In being boring.
In My Tree isn’t a PJ song. It’s U2. But I don’t need Pearl Jam to refashion themselves as U2. There’s already one U2. We don’t, i mean it, need another.
Off He Goes is beautiful, though. But it really sounds like a 90s era Springsteen tune. And I already own Ghost of Tom Joad, thanks.
The band has said that the recording was rushed, Jeff Ament didn’t even know they were recording when the band had already been in the studio for a couple days. And it sounds like it. It sounds disconnected. Disjointed. Unfocused. What does it mean when my favorite track, “lukin” is 1 minute long???
“Present Tense” is as rich as anything the band has ever done but, in the end, what does it mean that the hardest rocker, “Mankind” is written by and SUNG by Stone Gossard? What is happening to this band?
When a band incorporates spoken word to it’s repertoire it better not suck. “I am Open” sucks.
I really hope it gets better….
Grade C+
A Side: Hail Hail, Who We Are, Around the Bend
Blind Side: Off He goes, Lukin
DownSide: In My Tree, habit, I am open.
