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Pearl Jam's Albums: #3
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"This is the best Yield analysis I have ever read, honestly. You hit the nail on the head with every song. Yield is actually #4 on my countdown, so we're pretty close. Can't wait for the next three!" - Ross, UK
"Charles, did you remember that the band made No Code?? I can only assume that you must have forgotten about the last three tracks on that one...worst record they've made!" - Tim
"This (Yield) is 100% PJ's best album. F U." - "FUCharlie"
That last one is my personal favorite. Not only did the commentator deliver a direct "F U" in his or her comment, but also added insult to injury by entering the name "FUCharlie." I dig it. Those are the kind of remarks I thoroughly enjoy as I go through this countdown because I have no room to take them seriously. In regards to No Code, yes I do remember that the band made it, and I actually do remember the last three tracks on the LP. I simply disagree that it is their worst record. Ross, thank you for the compliment. I know some are upset I did not dig into the literature that served as the background for Yield, particularly Daniel Quinn's Ishmael and the work of Charles Bukowski, but as I previously stated this week, there is only room for so much in these articles and they are certainly not a catch-all for each detail regarding these albums. Oh, and if you are wondering how and why I claimed Yield to be the resolution to No Code, but ranked No Code higher, I encourage you to go back and read the Yield entry again, because the explanation is there.
That being said, I have had a good time drowning myself in the music of these classic LPs, throwing them (in their entirety) on repeat as I write my entries. After spending about a month obsessing over each track's placement in the song countdown, it has been refreshing to take a step back, viewing Pearl Jam from a higher plane when focusing on their complete works of art, also known as albums. It has been a real pleasure sifting through your own comments regarding the records, even those of you who adamantly disagree with my assessments. As has been the case since I began the 60 Days of Pearl Jam, you all continue teaching me new things about this amazing band. Keep it coming and while we enjoy the potpourri of today's album, I will enjoy the wild cross section of commentary.
3. No Code, 1996 -
Emotions probably run higher about this album than anything else in the band's library. 13 years after its release, No Code remains Pearl Jam's most polarizing LP. Its sheer variety and wild arrangement are likely the reasons why many fans list it at number one, while plenty of others (like the commentator above) believe it to be the band's worse. Some (Yield advocates) cannot handle the inconsistency of the album's moods and themes, others (Ten and Vs. fanatics) are annoyed by its inaccessibility and what it did to the band's career, while many (Vitalogy folks) think the band would have been better off continuing in the dark direction of their previous record. But this is what they chose to do instead. No Code is the unsung hero of the Pearl Jam catalogue. Daring, adventurous, and honest to its core, the album is the finest example of the band writing, recording and performing without regard for the results. In other words, on this album, PJ was doing whatever the hell it wanted. After the astronomical sales of the first two albums and Vitalogy going five times platinum, No Code was the great destroyer that tore down the entire concept of Pearl Jam up to the point of its release, only going platinum and alienating many listeners with its eclectic take on eastern, world and experimental music, along with garage, punk and classic rock, dashed with a bit of spoken word, folk and country. Sounds like a mess, huh? That mess is part of the allure of the album, an uncompromising, underrated masterpiece in the history of Pearl Jam's recordings, destined to forever fly under the radar for many and to be the quintessential cult classic for both devoted and pretentious Ten Clubbers.
"I'm Open" might be the best way to begin an analysis of No Code because it contains at least a third of the genres listed above and an indefinable something that makes it more special to this author than it seems to be to most listeners. I have held the opinion for a while that the track could be a great live show opener due to its ethereal quality and its lyrical content reflecting the greater ideas and themes of the band as a whole. Of course, Ed would need to go back and memorize the spoken word bits; otherwise it would basically fall on deaf ears. The sentiments he expresses in the track remind this fan why I got into Pearl Jam in the first place. It is the journey of a man (obviously at loosely based on Vedder himself) attempting to discover spiritual enlightenment that keeps running into dead ends. This theme seems to be an extension of the whole concept of No Code, almost a trap of isolation with a great deal of fear and thus, stuffed aggression seeping through brief moments of insanity and occasional glimpses of bliss and something resembling happiness and satisfaction. This fear, insanity and aggression are the results of a loss of innocence, something for which Vedder readily grasps throughout this album, directly present in the lyrics of "In My Tree," and more subtly at hand in the questioning quest of "Sometimes," the attempt to let the past go and dive into the future on "Present Tense," and of course, in the willing surrender of "I'm Open."
As "I'm Open" demonstrates, No Code is Pearl Jam's first great attempt to allow itself to be something more than just a successful "grunge" rock band, but instead be willing to be guided by more powerful forces in whichever directions they may go. This open-mindedness created some great moments on this record, but also brought to us the album's experiments that do not work quite as well. "Mankind" is Stone Gossard's lyrical and vocal debut on a Pearl Jam record and is more out of place than anything else here. For this track, Gossard dug his foundation in 60's and 70's garage and pop rock, but his words, vocal delivery and musical presentation do not quite live up to the rest of the record. But although this is the weakest and most out of place track on the album, it somehow fits in a world where there is "No Code." Garage rock is blended with punk and The Who on Eddie Vedder's "Habit," a driving and intense song, but still the first misstep on the album after an incredible opening six track run. Since there was such an incredible abundance of addiction drowning an entire community of musicians at the time, it is unclear if Vedder was addressing his own struggling bandmate, Mike McCready, in this song, or dishing out social commentary for that community as a whole. Either way, Ed's conviction and fierceness, present both in his sneering, growling vocals and his punchy guitar work, carry this track and convey a heavy, deep mood to the listener. Rounding out the bottom rung of the LP (it is discouraging to even label these songs that way) is the nonetheless delightful lullaby of "Around the Bend." Another Eddie Vedder song, he supposedly wrote the ballad for drummer Jack Irons to sing to his son. The track has received it fair share of knocks from the fan base, but it is difficult to picture anything else closing out this album. Similar in tone and theme to the Beatles' "Good Night," (but far superior in quality) which closes their classic "White Album," "Around the Bend" is the perfect send-off for No Code, wistful and gentle folk rock with a soft touch of alt-country and a deep, warm vocal from Vedder.
The diversity and spiritual elements of this LP are perhaps most present and powerful in No Code's opening tracks, which weave together and somehow around each other like distant cousins from distant lands. "Sometimes" was the first sign of the boldness - as well as richness - of this album. The first ballad to ever open a Pearl Jam album (the only one since was "Can't Keep, from Riot Act), the song is introspective and gentle, yet feels off-putting and uncomfortable. Vedder wrote the music and lyrics and both are unconventional in their delivery, featuring no conventional verses or choruses, coming across instead as a sort of stream-of-consciousness acknowledgement of Vedder's "small self." Another attribute of the album that strikes the listener is the difference in Ed's vocal tone from Vitalogy and even 1995's "E.P." (I placed that in quotations because it was really a single) "Merkin Ball." From "Sometimes" onward, Vedder layered his baritone with a vulnerability and indie-like over enunciation that shined from this LP through 2000's Binaural. "Sometimes" is not quite over when "Hail, Hail" comes bursting to life with an unforgettable chord progression. The song sounds more like the Pearl Jam that came before No Code than anything else on the record, but the aforementioned progression is still slightly askew and weird, and along with Vedder's strange lyrics and newly stylized vocals, the song arrives as a shift from the hard rock for which the band was previously known. "Hail, Hail" is the album's first piece of garage rock, but also contains moments of soft musical wonder, especially in the first breakdown, then again at its close, guitars ringing like they are straight out of 1965. Those ringing guitars fade right into the dissonance that opens "Who You Are," a Stone Gossard, Jack Irons and Eddie Vedder collaboration that was the largest departure of all as the world first experienced No Code.
Jack Irons' presence was one of the biggest influences on No Code's left turn in sound. The band decided to put his style right on front street, releasing "Who You Are" as the album's first single. "Hail, Hail" would have been the more logical choice in terms of commercial success, but Pearl Jam was looking in a different direction for this release and found it in this track's eastern style. The song hits many areas, most notably utilizing dissonant experimental jamming during its intro, featuring a sitar and containing more layered harmonies from Vedder than anything on the first three records. Another aspect of the track that set this album apart from the sound of Ten, Vs. and Vitalogy was that it sounded positive and uplifting. Vedder's vocal lifts during the "Take me for a ride/Just a little time...before we leave" sections are hopeful in nature and completely removed from the angst for which the band was known just two years previous. Irons' tribal drumming adds another dimension to the song and the band's overall sonic quality, a key throughout this album.
That tribal drumming is at the forefront of the next track, another Gossard, Irons and Vedder number known as "In My Tree." Hugely popular among the fan base (I ranked it #23 in my song countdown, while the readers voted it #15), this song simply soars and sounds just like its title, far removed from the battles versus self, society and external factors, present in so much of the band's music. The song is so significant that the hugely popular theskyiscrape.com website took its title and its front page artwork from it. If one looked hard at these opening songs, he or she could pull out a few influences, but overall, this opening section of the LP is about as unique as it gets, the band presenting plenty of new things never heard before, on a Pearl Jam album or anywhere else.
The band wears one of its influences on its sleeve for the next track, Jeff Ament's "Smile." Neil Young is present in every second of the heavy, distorted guitar playing, as well as the grungy funk rhythm of this choppy song. It is rare that the music of Pearl Jam sounds so much like another artist, but "Smile" is still a remarkable PJ song. Uplifting, fun and interesting, the Ament tune features a shift from verse to chorus that echoes the Beatles as well, especially in the piano work that increasingly swells just before Vedder moans, "I miss you already!" The Neil Young influence continues into the next track, but shifts from Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Crazy Horse mode to Harvest mode for the shuffling country folk rock of Eddie Vedder's "Off He Goes." Earlier tracks in the band's career featured a softer ballad sound, but none got as direct and honest in its lyrics or as spatial and earthy in its music as this track. Vedder confessed that the "he" in question in the song is him, and that the song was his way of apologizing for drifting in and out of his loved ones' lives over the years, for being, "a s**t friend." Extending to six minutes in length, "Off He Goes" is unconventional in its longer take on Vedder's love for storytelling, as evidenced in Mike McCready's country-like lead guitar work and Vedder's continuing expressive singing.
"Red Mosquito" is interesting for somehow fitting into the "grunge" sound while essentially being a blues song with pop/rock melodic breaks. McCready really shines here with his slide lead guitar while Vedder tells the famous tale of his flu bug that knocked him off the stage and into bed in the summer of 1995. As "Smile" shifts wonderfully from a chunky stomp to a hopeful, wailing chorus, "Red Mosquito" moves like magic from its bluesy verses to its folk rock chorus. "Lukin" features no such shift. The song is another example of the band delivering a straightforward attack of one of its primary influences, but with no deviation or separation from its core. "Lukin," clocking in at one minute and two seconds, is pure punk.
The lack of code that, in essence, is the code of the album all comes together in the record's greatest song, the monumental "Present Tense." The song encapsulates everything discussed in this article. Its opening is a weird version of a ballad with soft Eastern touches and elements of folk rock, its build-up is progressive classic rock with punky guitars, its explosion of sound is garage rock built upon a world music drum pattern, with strange, experimental chanting in the background, all giving way to pure hard rock and punk thrash and releasing into a delicate pop/rock coda. "Present Tense" demonstrates Pearl Jam's open-minded diversity in a single song like no other song in the band's library. So much happens in under six minutes. It truly is the greatest example of the soul-searching process the band was undertaking at this point, and how far it could reach.
No Code was apparently too much for the average Pearl Jam listener. The amount of fans that dropped off the face of the PJ planet during this era is phenomenal and somewhat strange. Rarely has a band with such huge success over a nearly five-year period experienced this kind of fall. There has been some argument over how deliberate this was on the band's behalf, but it makes sense that the guys were aiming at a smaller audience, both to tame the chaos of their world and to bring their own sense of that world back down to the ground. Jack Irons helped the process, as did Eddie Vedder's shift in songwriting philosophy. While Jeff Ament has since said that he felt barely involved in the recording sessions and entire creative process of No Code, it seems that this was when the band began to come into its own and each member started to fit into a role that suited him. The result of this transition was present and dominant on the next album, yesterday's Yield, but the transition itself is part of the lore of Pearl Jam. It is this kind of record that sets this band in a different realm from the rest of modern rock. While plenty of artists have ventured into unfamiliar territory and have thus created some dynamic albums, no group has ever allowed this venture to become who they are and forever alter their entire musical presentation.
No Code YouTube Playlist: www.youtube.com/view_play_list
For all things Pearl Jam, visit my home page here: www.examiner.com/x-3940-Indianapolis-Pop-Culture-Examiner
Also check out Mel Duncan's Pearl Jam coverage here:www.examiner.com/x-16134-Pearl-Jam-Examiner
Questions, comments, complaints, ideas, etc.? E-mail me 24/7 at cpeelle83@yahoo.com
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