No Code - Pearl Jam (CD 1996)

This is the review I started writing two days ago. However, as I felt a need to give whoever will read this some background, namely how Pearl Jam became my favorite band, I got about a page on Vitalogy . Eventually that page doubled in volume and became my brand new (already second) review of the 1994 album. So, if you want to read about how this band started to matter to me, click away!


Which allows me to skip a lot of detail I would otherwise have to go into. Like, up until 1996 Pearl Jam were the voice of a whole generation. A generation that proclaimed and eventually made them America s favorite band of the 90s. A generation that was quick to turn their backs on the bunch of guys who then did something crazy.


Released in 1996, No Code is not really an album. It s more of a state of mind. Ten and Vs those were real albums; Vitalogy was already something more than that. But Pearl Jam s fourth is in my opinion best described as a soundtrack for a movie called Going through change . I mean it doesn t really work if you haven t seen the actual movie.


To me this album is, quite simply, where Pearl Jam became the 90s equivalent of Led Zeppelin. No Code has it all. What makes it different from other bold and diverse records of the past decade (and the band s first three records) is the feeling you get when you re listening to it. You feel as if you were a part of something unique, something that's one of a kind, something that only happens once in a lifetime. This record captures the sound of a soul going through a change. No Code is much like its cover art a mosaic of moods. As a result, where Vitalogy almost narrowed the band s audience down to desperate youngsters, No Code is worse it addresses an absolute minority. Souls at the crossroads. It s not that others won t understand. It s simply they won t enjoy it as much. Which was exactly what happened. In 1996 most Pearl Jam fans suddenly didn t have a clue what in the world Eddie was talking about.


I can t help feeling Sometimes, Who you are, In my tree and Off he goes are amongst the greatest searching songs of all time. The album s opener, Sometimes is actually a prayer and what better way to start the quest for your place in this world than addressing its Creator? Albeit a prayer of a man who ultimately puts his trust not in God, it is one nonetheless. Simply because "Sometimes" sounds like a conversation with God.


Sometimes I speak of nothing at all
Sometimes I reach to myself, dear God


Who you are is probably my favorite Pearl Jam song. Almost an Indian mantra, its perfect mix of tribal beats, acoustic and electric guitars, blending vocals simply becomes me, this song is so about searching. It is also about remaining yourself while searching. I think it s about finding one's self in searching. Besides, I m just given a chill each time Jeff Ament s bass kicks bouncing in.


Stop light plays its part... so i would say you've got a part
What's your part? who you are?
You are who, who you are.



In my tree takes me even higher. Radiohead may have called a song How to disappear completely but it is Pearl Jam who wrote music and lyrics deserving of such title. Nuff said. Oh wait, and I dare you to find another 30 seconds as crazily liberating as that bridge.


Few bands are able to pull off a great acoustic song in a studio. Some songs only sound good when played at a campfire or performed live with a little help from adoring fans. It takes a lot of soul to come up with an acoustic masterpiece for a studio album. Zep were capable of that. Pearl Jam do it with Off he goes. An in fact unplugged performance cozily sitting between a blues and a punk numbers, the song achieves greatness with silly ease. Clocking in at 6 minutes, it feels short.


Know a man, his face seems pulled and tense
Like he's riding on a motorbike in the strongest winds
So i approach with tact, suggest that he should relax
But he's always moving much too fast


There were numerous speculations as regards to what the song is actually about. I ll stick with one that says it s about Eddie. And as it still occasionally makes me cry when I sing along I figure I can relate as well.


I wonder about his insides
It's like his thoughts are too big for his size
He's been taken... where? I don't know
Off he goes with his perfectly unkept hope


Hail Hail is one of the band s finest rockers. Apart from the fact that bridge is a minor work of art, here has happened something truly wonderful: the rage Corduroy once burned with is nowhere to be heard in this album s heavier numbers. Instead Hail Hail is all about coming to terms with betrayal, and ultimately forgiving and letting go. Even Habit, explosive as this punkish anthem gets the song appears to be more of an observation than an active opposition it would have been on Vitalogy . Both rockers rely significantly on Eddie s sense of humor, which has grown since Ten and Vs and become almost sarcastic.


Speaking as a child of the 90s Never thought you d habit


Finally, Present Tense towers above both harder and more subdued songs on the album as an old-fashioned rock anthem, two verses driven by nothing much except for a monster riff eventually flowing into a full-blown dual solo. It seems like all of the searching of the 1996 session leads Eddie and the band to one short and concise statement, made in one of the decade s possibly greatest rock songs:


Makes much more sense to live in the present tense.


Of course that s not all. There s a Ramones song (or at least it sounds like a Ramones songs to me), with Stone Gossard on vocals - Mankind. There s two blues numbers that I seem to enjoy slightly less than the rest of the album - Smile and Red Mosquito. There s a minute of lethal punk called Lukin that s just FUN. But in the end No Code is a mosaic of moods, a film ready to be developed, a lifestory and a soundtrack for an individual. And its quest for love and innocence is best summed in the spoken I m open, almost the closing track where Eddie opens his heart to the world:


He's alive, but feels absolutely nothing
so, is he?
When he was six he believed that the moon overhead followed
him
By nine he had deciphered the illusion, trading magic for
fact
No tradebacks...
So this is what it's like to be an adult
If he only knew now what he knew then...
I'm open
I'm open
Come in


Yeah, this is my favorite album.


Thanks for reading.