Pearl Jam Binaural revisited

                                       courtesy Amazon

Release, Review, Revisit

A lot of writers, bloggers, critics and fans review albums around the time of their initial release. The problem, though, is that while a first impression of an album is important, it’s the lasting one that sticks with us all. 

In this series, I’ll revisit albums that were personal favorites at some point, and talk about whether the music still stands as relevant; more so, or if it’s lost some luster.
 

 Pearl Jam

Binaural

2000

Part 1 of 2

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In Spring 2000, sometime after “Nothing As It Seems” was released as a single, but before the album dropped, several friends, some Pearl Jam fans, some just casually, outright denounced their fandom. They metaphorically turned in their PJ fan club card, destroyed their Christmas singles and burned their Vitalogy Health Club paper model car (remember that one? what a b*tch to put together). Seriously though, it was downright amazing how violently opposed people were to that one little song.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t in love with it. In fact, I listened to it several times in a row to try and find anything redeeming about it. Mike McCready’s guitar work finally started to stick out, but what a terrible choice for a lead single! Of course, at this point, it shouldn’t have been a surprise for fans. Pearl Jam had been and was still deliberately sabotaging their fame by refusing to make videos, fighting Ticketmaster, etc. Look at their choice of singles from other albums: “Spin The Black Circle” was a quick, catchy little lead single, but it was the B-Side, “Tremor Christ” that got more play and attention prior to Vitalogy’s release. As big as PJ was in 1994, can you imagine how insanely popular a single and subsequent video for “Better Man” would have been? Vitalogy might have even topped Ten in sales.

It doesn’t have much foresight to know what that would have led to, of course. If Pearl Jam was already trying to trim the fat off their audience to leave casual fans behind, releasing a video for “Better Man” (featuring Eddie singing on top of a snowy mountain or something ridiculous) would have achieved undesirable results. 

This brings me to one of the biggest reasons (besides the actual music of course) that PJ has long remained one of my favorite bands: integrity. Sure, they could have done a lot more to sell a lot more records, but they didn’t. Obviously Sony had a lot to do with why most of us know about the band to begin with, but we’ve all seen a lot of bands jump through a lot of hoops in the name of the almighty dollar. 

Binaural, however, was light years (pun semi-intended) beyond all this, however. In terms of both the music and how Pearl Jam was marketed. A perfect example of this is them releasing “Nothing As It Seems” as the lead single, then performing “Grievance” on Letterman. (Watch it here) Bands almost always, without fail, play their current single on TV appearances. It was that performance of “Grievance” that took my interest level from ho-hum to holy sh*t! I know a lot of PJ fans will back me up on this.

Binaural is the one record for me that I find about as flawed as I do perfect. Music, or most art in general is one of the few places where contradictions not only exist, they thrive. “Flawed” and “perfect” at the same time though? Sure. For every fault I have with the record, there’s the opposite, the anti-matter if you will, that cancels it out. Logically, especially to me, this would result in a mediocre record. Sadly, I think a lot of PJ fans find binaural to be just that. In May, 2000, after opening it up, putting on headphones and tuning out the rest of the world for that first listen, I know I loved the record. It reminded me of the first time I listened to Vs, but only in the sense that I was immediately hooked. 

Fast forward a couple years and I felt as though I’d fallen out of love. I was skipping so many songs, that I actually took three or four songs, compiled them with some B-sides and burned a CD. That was my version of Binaural for the couple years that would follow.

Then at some point in 2003, we got the Binaural internet leaks. “Letter To The Dead,” “Education” and “Fatal.” Wow! Did these come from the same sessions? Why weren’t these on the album? I could think of three songs I’d immediately yank off without thinking twice if it meant including these. 

Then some clever fans pointed back to a press release that talked about the original Binaural track listing. Then after the B-sides collection, Lost Dogs, was released, we could all make our very own original Binaural! Sure I could do that. I have done it. And since you already know how much I loved this record from day one, I’m going to go into how I feel about Binaural today. Not any altered version, not the original track listing...the real deal.

NEXT PAGE: Revisiting and reviewing Binaural, one of Pearl Jam's most challenging records.