Pearl Jam - “Hail, Hail”
No Code, 1996
So, Backspacer is a piece of garbage, and anyone who thinks the album is any sort of “return to form” is suffering from the same Stockholm Syndrome that keeps Weezer in business. Me, a sucker for one of the bands that got me through high school, reads this return to form jibba jabba and thinks I’m going to hear an album that sounds like this one, No Code, the last album they put out that’s worth listening to. There’s a passion, a frenzied edge to this album that is missing from everything they’ve recorded since. That’s all I’m asking for: a little bit of frenzied passion. But instead I buy Backspacer and get more of the same watery, wistful crap I had dumped into my ears from 2006’s Pearl Jam. I know we’re never going to get the Pearl Jam of Ten again, but if I want to hear new age music I’ll buy a John Tesh album and use it to cut my wrists because I don’t recognize the man I see staring back at me from the mirror holding a receipt for a John Tesh album.
I’ll say one positive thing about their new album, there are no songs on it that are anywhere near as awful as “Wishlist,” the most embarrassing three minutes and twenty-six seconds in Pearl Jam’s recorded catalog. I mean, really, Eddie. If you’re going to record shitty lyrics at least get out of bed.
Between this and KISS being nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s been a rough week.
3 months ago • 3 notes
