Binaural - Pearl Jam (CD 2000)

"I'm sorry, we've stopped rocking." - Pearl Jam by way of Guildenstern, May 25, 2000.

The title of Simon's review of Binaural might be the best, simplest, one-line summation of the album I've read. The band who buttered their bread with earth-shaking socially- and self-conscious rock-- 1993's Vs. and 1995's Vitalogy two of the most blisteringly effective cases for the art as the mainstream (or the direct left of mainstream, anyway) has ever allowed us to hear-- effectively ceased to rock with 2000's Binaural. And with the airy, schizophrenic album, Pearl Jam's discography-- which, mind you, includes Vitalogy's bizarre "Hey Foxy Mophandlemama, That's Me" and "Bugs," and Yield's "Red Dot" track-- got a bit weirder.

And album art dotted with nebulas, constellations, and other astrological phenomena is simply a starting point. Binaural is simply "weird," and that's the best single-word description of it i can offer. "Brilliant" is overshooting, and more suited to, say, Vitalogy; "disgraceful," too, is unfair, since much of Binaural finds the band, to wear out a dead cliche, "aging gracefully." There are flashes of brilliance and moments of disgrace. But mostly it's weird.

I said that Pearl Jam ceased to rock with Binaural. That's not entirely true. What is true is that they probably should have.

Pearl Jam have never had problems rocking; from "Alive"'s lengthy, Stones-ish guitar solo round about 1992 to 1998's brutal "Do the Evolution," PJ have penned enough fantastic rock songs to make legions of Bush and Creed fans re-think their bands of choice. They're the new stars of classic rock, intent to make music on their own terms when the rest of the world stopped caring. And without the world as an audience-- discounting a brief tenure as a radio band with 1999's fluke smash "Last Kiss"-- and no performance anxiety to get Eddie Vedder down in the dumps, Pearl Jam have simply been doing their thing (and their thing alone) since '96 or so. Which is fine-- but although Binaural is certainly a _good_ album, it smells like a band becoming too lax.

Binaural is Pearl Jam's weirdest album since Vitalogy-- even weirder than No Code, because No Code's restlessly experimental weirdness had obvious method to the madness, a certain brilliance behind every spoken word breakdown or tribal drumbeat. It's certainly P.Jam's most collaborative album-- which may account for the general lack of musical and thematic coherence throughout. It's also not as soulful as previous records: rarely on Binaural does infamous bleeding-heart Eddie Vedder simply strip down and lay bare. It's certainly _sincere_-- what emotion is here certainly doesn't seem forced or showy-- but it's more clinical than Pearl Jam fans are used to.

The bulk of Binaural's strength lies in its non-rockers; the mid-tempo stuff, the ballads. The rock songs here are largely the most clinical, soulless songs of all-- and yet, inexplicably, Binaural's curtain opens on three of them. With five albums in their collective rearviewmirror, you'd think that Pearl Jam would have more of a handle on what they do best.

**

Perhaps what frustrates most is that Binaural's best song is the most intense rocker on the album. "Insignificance" is a piss and vinegar cocktail, all righteous indignation and galvanizing damnation.

"bombs dropping down, overhead, underground
it's instilled to wanna live
bombs dropping down, please forgive our hometown
in our insignificance.. "

Goes the chorus. Which simply means: it's the most exciting thing Pearl Jam's recorded in years, and the best protest song of the last half-decade or more. Even "Grievance," quite rock-y in context, provides the album with much-needed steam, even if the clipped album version blanches against its incendiary live performances. The rest of Binaural's notable material is mid-tempo.

Which isn't a bad thing. "Light Years" is pretty and sincere; "Parting Ways" atmospheric and affecting; "Soon Forget," a ukelele ballad allegedly written on a dare by Chris Cornell, an interesting novelty, the glib impropriety of lines like "counts his money every morning/ the only thing that keeps him horny" reinforcing a oddly affecting, if staunchly sarcastic, anti-materialistic stance. Rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard, too, shines on Binaural, writing three of the album's most interesting numbers: passive acoustic ballad "Thin Air" (likely Pearl Jam's most straightforward non-cover to date), spacey and downbeat "Of the Girl," and "Rival," a chilling take on the Columbine massacre (and best viewed as such, the tragedy indirectly referenced in song, but subtitled "growing up gay in Littleton" in the liner notes).

And because Binaural shows flashes of brilliance, it, like the debut Ten, is frustrating when it scrapes bottom: it opens, in fact, on three soulless, ball-less rockers. Ed Vedder's "Breakerfall" is the best of the three, process of elimination tells us; it's short and half-baked but at least has the good sense to steal liberally from a good Who song ("I Can See For Miles"-- and everyone who groaned about P.Jam's minor copping of a Led Zeppelin melody for Yield's brilliant "Given to Fly" should have devoted more piss-and-whine to "Breakerfall," a far more overt rip). "Gods' Dice" is bassist Jeff Ament's baby, and aggressively pedestrian, especially from the man who wrote the wonderful "Low Light." And "Evacuation" features all of the tuneless abrasiveness of punk rock, with none of the purpose.

Ament gets another songwriting credit-- and while first single "Nothing As it Seems" is nicely atmospheric, with some impressive "Comfortably Numb" solos from lead guitarist Mike McCready, it's lyrically mired in a bed of unimpressive impenetrable imagery like "one uninvited chromosome, a blanket like the ozone."

Chalk it up to new producer Tchad Blake if you'd like, or chalk it up to a dulled sense of purpose. But the Pearl Jam of Binaural seem disappointingly hit-or-miss. By normal standards, Binaural is a solid four-star album-- but Pearl Jam have proven themselves capable of more. For all those flashes of brilliance, Binaural is uneven, and emasculated and fireless by comparison.

**

A FOOTNOTE: Admittedly, i appreciated Binaural a lot more before I heard Pearl Jam's two follow-ups: 2002's Riot Act, warm, soulful, and sincere, was a much fuller realization of Pearl Jam's potential. At that it's no No Code or Yield, but a welcome respite from the relatively boring Binaural. 2003's odds-and-sods collection, Lost Dogs, provided an illuminating glance into Pearl Jam's archives, including tracks recorded for albums but tossed aside when putting together the final product. What blindsided me was the number of Binaural castaways-- and how _good_ they were. At once, this heightened both my appreciation and disdain of Binaural: on one hand, it's good to know that they were making more good music than made it on record, but i'm simply unable to explain why some of these fantastic tracks didn't make it on record. It's not like it would have interrupted the flow: Binaural doesn't maintain much of a flow as is, and some strategic track-juggling would have produced a four- or five-star album _by PJ standards_. The fact that "Fatal" and "Sad" alone didn't even make b-side status-- and that "Gods' Dice" and "Sleight of Hand" made the record-- is just short of criminal. Had i my druthers, here's my proposed tracklist for a re-tooled Binaural:

1. Sad
2. Hitchhiker
3. Light Years
4. Education
5. Thin Air
6. In the Moonlight
7. Insignificance
8. Of the Girl
9. Grievance
10. Rival
11. Fatal
12. Parting Ways

Binaural suffers from the same problem that Ten, the band's only other subpar album, suffered from: some of the best songs were left off the record. Ten, too, could have justly earned that classic status with different omissions ("Once," "Why Go," "Deep") and inclusions ("Breath," "State of Love and Trust," "Wash," "Yellow Ledbetter"). I suppose I should be grateful that the songs surfaced at all, and i am-- I can't imagine not having "Sad" to listen to every day-- but it's unnerving to know that some of the best tracks the band's recorded are regarded as undeserving of album placement. Luckily, this doesn't seem to be too popular a trend: Lost Dogs features some songs that never made it onto No Code and Yield that indicate that the right songs were chosen for record.

**

This is Part 6 in my "Make My Jam the P.Jam, I Want My Jam Uncut" Rewrite-off. It was intended as nothing more than a venue for me to update some crappy reviews of some great albums, but if anyone wants to get in the spirit and re-do your old Pearl Jam reviews, well, I'd just love to read 'em. Next up: Riot Act.