*JC Top 100 Albums of All Time* - 200-101 -

Hunter is one badass song.

 

Public Enemy FTW


I don't think I even voted for this album... can't imagine how I forgot it.

 

I've had a bunch of people tell me to listen to Sufjan. One was like "I'm sending you a song, you'll love it." To which I responded "Is this song seriously called 'They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!'?" and never listened to it.

 

That was the last mistake you'll ever make.

 

I'm honored that Harps is posting my comments here; I guess I'll have to just do it myself.

To briefly comment on those that haven't come up in Amp yet (where, by the way, dizfactor and I are about to kill each other over how important genre labels are to appreciating music; God, I love the Amp).

Glad to see two of mine made it; Violator and Les Mis. I stand by my comments on those. Also glad to see Endtroducing, a great album by any legitimate standard. As for Coldplay, Rush of Blood is good, not great; Parachutes is their only masterpiece to date though all of their albums have at least three great songs on them.

Axis: bold as Love. Nice. I hope Are You Experienced is yet to come. All That You Can't Leave Behind; classic U2. Their third masterwork after Joshua and Achtung (not to say Boy, War and October aren't great in their own ways as well; hell, I even like bits of Rattle and Hum ).

Also, Vitalogy absolutely sucks. For Bugs and that foxymophandlemama song all by themselves, it should be consigned to the 'burn on contact' pile. What a letdown. I loved Ten, but whoo, this one . . . oy.

 

Ima make you guys mud wrestle nekkid if you keep that **** up.

 

hawt

 

And that gives me good reason to continue staying away.

 

Wow. Just... wow. This is just silly. Sure Stupid Mop is a weird piece that no one listens to, but so is Revolution 9. Bugs is awesome. But I mean COME ON. Better Man? Immortality? Corduroy? Tremor Christ? These are some of the greatest Pearl Jam songs ever. I love this album dearly. I love the fact that they deliberately moved away from the big riffs and massive solos of their first two albums in an effort to shake loose the casual butt rock fan. They put the brakes on and steered things in their own direction in a way that somehow also fully embodies what the band is REALLY about. They had the balls to explore some of their other roots. With Vitalogy they explored more jam-based stuff like the Neil Young-ish anthem "Not For You" or the punk inspired "Spin the Black Circle." I still say good for them for being true to themselves and their own art, not to mention their survival as a band, which would never have continued had they not gone in the direction of Vitalogy.

 

How precisely, aside from "because the band/journos say so" is "Spin the Black Circle" inspired by punk? I don't see it.

ES

 

The tempo, the riff of the song and the way Ed sings. The length of the song.

 

Hm, if you say so. I don't hear it.

I mean, I can hear punk a lot of areas (e.g. Slayer) but here? Sorry, nothing. NOTHING!

ES

 

The playing is sloppier than the polished sound of Ten or the raw tight sound of Vs. This song is raw, loose, sloppy and simple. Those elements are also punk-inspired. A song doesn't have to sound like the Ramones, the Clash or the Sex Pistols in order to be inspired by punk.

 

Fair enough. I guess I've always thought the label was horribly misapplied to a song simply because it was raw. But I view punk as an ethos as well as a genre, so /shrug.

ES

 

Sure and I think it's the ethos of punk, the essence of the idea, that is what influenced a song like Spin the Black Circle. An overtly punk-ish Pearl Jam song would be something like "Get Right." THAT song sounds like the Ramones.

 

I'll take your word for it, because I never got further than this album into their catalogue. I discovered "Demanufacture"'in 1994, which lead me into sample music and non-traditional metal, then in 1996 an album called "Adrenaline" came out and Seattle bands sounded so yesteryear.

ES

 

That's funny because it was after Vitalogy that Pearl Jam's sound took a huge turn for something different. No Code is WAY different.

 

Did you see soporific in a word-of-the-day calendar, ES? Seems to pop up in every critical post you make lately.

While Vitology is not my favorite Pearl Jam album -- they go experimental a bit too often for my taste -- it's still a great rock album by a great rock band. And definitely nothing about it induces drowsiness or sleep.

I remember just before it was released, a radio station in New York got advance copies of a number of the songs. The version of Better Man was significantly different, as it didn't have the slower intro part. Really loved that version, the actual album version was always a bit disappointing afterwards.

 

Well Adrenaline changed everything. There's nothing they could have done to affect me on the same level.

ES

 

Well yeah that's great. The album that changed everything for me was Ten.

 

Damn straight

 

SO uncivilised.

Complete agreement.


Also, Bjork's Homogenic is a beautiful album.


-JR

 

PPOR.

What I'd like you to do is find any posts of mine that were critical since 14 December 2007 that use the word soporific. As a hint, you'll find most in this this thread.



ES

 

You referred to Coldplay as soporific as well. That's twice and we're only at #66, not even halfway done.

Admittedly, I may have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole.

 

This would be the point in which you "retract".

ES