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Eric Schumacher
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Mesmerizing. Seriously, this put me in a trance.
I hope we get to hear singles soon.
I was thinking the same until the vocal hook and the choir. I don’t remember, was Gold Lion the first single from Show Your Bones?
Revolver
Hide it in my backpack and have a personal synth pop theme song wherever I go
I was like 3 when these albums came out, but my circle of friends in 8th grade was pretty big into grunge, and I am ashamed to say, nu metal. This was the year that System of a Down’s Toxicity came out, so while my metal-centric friends drooled over that album for months (I admit to being a fan when I was young and foolish, just not to the same degree) something that satisfied my need for good rock without pounding double bass at every opportunity.
My dad had listened to Pearl Jam in the car cassette player as long as I could remember, and there was something more engaging and accessible to me about Vedder’s lyrics and style as compared to Cobain’s-even though his lyrics were even less intelligible than Cobain’s were. I also remember having deep appreciation for, as this article put it, Pearl Jam’s more traditional rock orientation, as opposed to the punk minimalism of Nirvana, the trio with a statement to make. There were also Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, who were good but never achieved the type of influence and importance of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and Rage Against the Machine, who I liked as a teenager for many of the same reasons I liked Pearl Jam. Were it not for the many cheap imitations of Vedder’s vocal style (see: Creed), I think the band would enjoy more distinction than they do today, especially among my generation who find it hard to differentiate them among the dozens of late-90s/early 00s imitators.
I know this has been a blog post on its own and I appreciate anyone who took the time to read it. Real quick:
Favorite Song: Black or Why Go
Favorite Moment: Vedder’s passionate vocal crescendo at the end of Black when he sings the line “Why can’t it be mine?”
Favorite memory: Hearing Even Flow at a hockey game in 2002 and thinking I was the coolest person in the stadium for knowing every single word.
And kudos to tom for also pointing out the album’s imperfections, e.g. the borderline-cheesy solos. Loving something and claiming it to not have flaws are totally different things.
You can even find more recent examples, e.g. Terrible Love, Afraid of Everyone, Conversation 16. These songs are all pretty emotional, but they sort of thunder and crash and I would say the subject matter is approached in a pretty ‘masculine’ way. What this “journalist” fails to understand is that masculinity is not synonymous with brutish dumbass-ery.
Even with a couple of the other bands, I think The King is Dead by the Decemberists and The People’s Key from Bright Eyes go a long way to opening up indie to more traditional ‘rock’ in indie-see Down by the Water from the former and Jejune Stars from the latter.
There’s always the likes of Mogwai or Mastodon to help those random bursts of testosterone.
I agree with your point, but I think at least the Raconteurs have the potential to do something of classic caliber.
Definitely The Walkmen-Lisbon
John Lennon-Imagine
So Demons was good, but it wasn’t one of their best. This makes me think this album might be their best yet.