music discussion! - reviews, opinions, etc. [new rule!]

[strangetales]

favorite artist, and why;
Taylor Swift, because I love her music and she's so kind to others.
Halsey, because I love that she just doesnt care what others might think about her and her songs are so good!
And Selena Gomez, because her music is art and she's such a good role model.

favorite song, and why;
At the moment Shape Of You by Ed Sheeran, but I think it might change in a week again. I dont have always the same favorite song.

favorite lyric, and why;
"They are the hunters, we are the foxes... and we run." [I Know Places; Taylor Swift]

favorite album, and why;
Badlands by Halsey, 1989 by Taylor Swift. But I love all albums I've bought so far...

favorite genre;
Pop.

least favorite artist, and why;
Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber. I just dont like them.

least favorite song, and why;
Happy by Pharell Williams because its so annoying. And overplayed.

favorite platform? (records, cds, digital, etc.); CDs and digital.

[laura palmer.]

@raya36

welcome to the club !!
ive heard a lot about papa
roach, and ive been meaning
to check them out. nme + rs
has been posting a lot about
them lately.

@spottedfang

im not a taylor swift fan, but
i adore halsey. my favorite song
by her is probably her i walk the
line cover. it sounds really good.
badlands is a really good album and
i cannot wait for halsey to put out
more

[Raya36]

They're definitelt worth checking out! Theu actually have a new album coming out soon. They recently released two of it's songs as singled and both are really good so I'm excited!

[chanel]

Im planning on reviewing love by Lana Del Rey, i think it's really good. It'll be up probably tomorrow or later tonight!!

[laura palmer.]

@raya36
ahh thats rad!! do you have any album suggestions
for me to start with by them, or do i just go for it?

@chanel
oo yay, i heard it and it's really good, im excited to see what you happen to think!!

[Raya36]

You can't go wrong with fear. I like just about every song on that album. If you're looking for some of their more earlier stuff I would suggest trying a few songs from each album. Getting away with murder, scars, leader of the broken hearts, last resort, (between angels and insects and blood brothers if you want their heaviest songs), crooked teeth, help, still swingin and where did the angels go are all some of my favourites.

[snakeman]

Gonna jump on the little review bandwagon lmao
I don't really know anyone to talk to about the music I like and I have a hard time talking to strangers, even online, so I don't get to talk about my feelings about music very often. Maybe reviewing things I like would help... I won't put too much emphasis on the lyrics, I don't know all the lyrics anyway, and I just don't pay as much attention to lyrics as I do to other things. I'll listen to the sound of the voice and the melodies but to an extent I don't really care about the words.

I'll start out with my favourite... Bet you didn't see this coming



credits image taken from liner notes archive at http://www.theskyiscrape.com

Album: Yield
Artist: Pearl Jam
Tracklist:

1: Brain Of J.
2: Faithfull
3: No Way
4: Given To Fly
5: Wishlist
6: Pilate
7: Do The Evolution
8: Red Dot
9: MFC
10: Low Light
11: In Hiding
12: Push Me, Pull Me
13: All Those Yesterdays
(14: Hummus)

Released on 3rd February 1998

I love pretty much everything about this album. I can't pick just one favourite song, because there's aspects of all of them that I really like- Wishlist's simplicity, Red Dot's contrast from the rest of the album, Do The Evolution's, well, evolution- it gets louder towards the end, and the vocals go from a little whine at the start to a massive roar at the end from Eddie Vedder. The album has a theme of, you guessed it, yielding and going into hiding, which is basically what the band were doing at this point, though they were brought closer together through a different writing and recording process and their drummer. Vitalogy and No Code were pretty much just Ed bringing stuff in on his own, but Yield took some of the strain off him as everyone else brought their own demos in and wrote lyrics to lessen his burden. I'll just go through the songs one-by-one and give my thoughts on them...

BRAIN OF J
I actually have some lyrics and a link to a live performance (the first with Matt Cameron after he replaced Jack Irons as the drummer) in my signature. :)
The song starts off with a little extra bit at the start, with someone (presumably Mike) counting in and then starting the song. I love the part when the drums come in, Matt's never done it properly live from what I've listened to, he really dumbs it down and it doesn't sound as good to me. I like to say Jack Irons was the best thing to happen to Pearl Jam... But I digress. I also like the vocals in this one, they're aggressive but not in the way that they were in Pearl Jam's early albums. I don't even know what to say, I just really like it. The chorus is great, the verses are great, Jeff's bass tone is great, it has a Stone solo! It's different but still really similar live as well, which is interesting. Nice hard-hitting opener.

FAITHFULL
There's a little extra bit at the end of Brain Of J that segues into the start of Faithfull. Totally different mood from the previous song, it's a lot calmer but not overly soft. I have to be in the right mood to consider listening to it, but when I do I really enjoy it, I feel the same way about the entirety of Ten and some of Vitalogy. Starts off really quiet and gets louder through the song in a more controlled way than I hinted at for Do The Evolution, I had a go at playing this one and one of the guitars is in an open G tuning, I always like it when people use alternate tunings. I like the way the lyrics just don't fit in one line, they kind of go off into the next one:

Plaque on the wall says that
No-one's slept here, it's rare to come upon
A bridge that has not
Been around or been stepped on

Lyric sites will have it written another way, I just wrote it as a line break when he pauses or where I think a new line should start.

NO WAY
What else is there to say but "this song is a masterpiece"? I love everything about it. The guitar tones, the drums, the basslines, this is definitely a top contender for my favourite song. I've tried for ages to replicate the guitar tone, actually, but it never seems to work... They never play it live, which is a shame and a good thing at the same time, because they totally changed it in the four times they played it live on their '98 tour. It just doesn't sound as good; the guitar tone I love is gone, and they never played it in the month or so they had Jack with them for that tour. People say Jack's drumming on Yield makes it sound almost like garage rock, I like it. A kind of midtempo song, it's nice. Really nice.

GIVEN TO FLY
Another amazing song. Loads of people say it sounds like Going To California by Led Zeppelin, and I can see where they're coming from, but at the same time it's totally different. There's a Yield promo on YouTube, it has words from everyone about certain things and Mike McCready (who wrote Faithfull and Given To Fly while snowed in) said that while Going To California is more linear in terms of its structure, Given To Fly goes more in waves, it starts off quiet and then it builds up to this epic climax and then falls back to quiet again like a wave "crashing like a fist to the jaw." :) A beautiful song. I like to listen to it when I'm up on a hill or a cliff; it sort of invokes that feeling I get when the wind's in my face and I'm up high looking over the sea.

WISHLIST
Like I said, this one's quite simple. It's one of the softer songs on the album and more towards my least favourite but it's still nice to listen to and I'd be annoyed if I played the album and it wasn't there. Eddie plays some guitar on this one, and he gets a little e-bow solo near the end. Maybe I don't like it because I can't relate to it in any way, it's more of a love song and I just don't care so much for slow, soft love songs. I like simple things but Wishlist might just be a little too straightforward for me, I guess, I don't know.

PILATE
Soft one as well, but I like it better than most of the other soft ones (Wishlist, Low Light, All Those Yesterdays). Its chorus contrasts greatly from the verses and bridge, I've seen people say they hate this one for its chorus but it never bothered me. But then again I am a massive fan of System Of A Down...
The bridge of Pilate might well be one of my favourite moments from Yield. It's such a pretty song, to me. If you're listening on vinyl, this is the point where you flip it...

DO THE EVOLUTION
Another contender for favourite song. It hits hard anyway, but especially so because of its placement: it comes after after four slow/midtempo numbers, and it's the first song on side 2 of the vinyl. Like I mentiomed before, it kind of "evolves" itself through it, it starts off with the little howl and cleaner vocals at the start, and progressively gets more disordered towards the end, in a way, the playing and singing gets much more aggressive and it all builds up to this giant roar of "DO THE EVOLUTION!" at the end, then it fades out as "c'mon!" is almost barked a few times. Great song live as well, though it lacks its evolution, it's just roaring and screaming through the whole thing, but it really riles the crowd up, and even the band. The promo I mentioned when I reviewed Given To Fly has this part where Ed talks about his favourite song on Yield, and he said he really liked Do The Evolution. You can tell when they play it too, he goes crazy and starts dancing, it's one of the songs where he gets more "intense" and scares Mike a little :)
There's a sort of interlude in the middle, a quiet part where a choir sings "hallelujah" twice and then it get back to "admire me, admire my home...". I talk a lot about contrast but it's just something I enjoy!
Almost forgot to mention, I heard Jack Irons actually used a metal bin lid as a cymbal for this song. I don't know exactly where, the videos of him playing it with Pearl Jam in Hawaii and Australia in 1998 aren't the clearest (they mainly seem to focus on Ed and Mike as well) but I saw someone on another site say it sounded really good.
I've heard people say they like the sarcasm in the lyrics/their delivery, it's cool. The video for this is really good, it's a cartoon/animated one by Todd McFarlane and it really, really goes with the song. Has a little easter egg with the sign from the album cover at the end.

One more thing... STONE SOLO.

RED DOT
A kind of strange song, and a break of sorts from the album. It fades in from the quiet at the end of Do The Evolution, and it's purely a Jack song. It has him drumming, singing and playing a steel pan! I like steel pans. The only lyrics were pretty undecipherable for me, but I looked it up after a while and it's basically just "we're all crazy, we're all crazy at war" which is totally different from the happy sound of the steel pans.

MFC
Another absolutely amazing song. The whole thing is just great, I love the guitar tones as well. Another one that Ed plays guitar on. I think Stone plays lead here as well, I can almost do the bit at the end, my guitar tone is way off but I can basically play the entire thing. I said I like simple things, but I also like "digging around" in songs with loads of different instruments playing- this one has three guitars, drums, bass and vocals, I like trying to pick out what all the guitars are doing. My favourite part of this would have to be the second verse, especially when Ed sings "They said that timing was everything..." I don't know why but it just has this sound to it that I really enjoy. The liner notes booklet (I don't have it for some reason, I have a secondhand CD and it just never had it) has the songs in a different order to the album, and it starts with MFC. It's one of Pearl Jam's three(?) car songs, and "it's pretty simple, you're in a car and you're getting the [censored] out of a bad situation". I haven't heard Gone, but Rearviewmirror is another really good song. It's fom Vs.

LOW LIGHT
Another quiet one. I quite like this one, the solo's really relaxing. It's probably the most acoustic one, but the solo is electric, and I like songs like that, acoustic mostly but with electric/distorted leads. Nutshell by Alice In Chains is another great one like that. I quoted Low Light in an illustration I did for the first draft of my English folio creative piece, and named the story after the song. Most of it took place in a massive cave system, which was scarcely lit apart from glowing flora and fungi and the reflections of that light in crystal geodes. Neither really have anything to do with each other though, it's more a companion to Pilate. Jeff wrote them both, I can't remember why but I really like them both. Low Light has some time signature changes in some places to do with the "riff" it has going on, I like that in a song too.

IN HIDING
I like this one a lot too, I feel like the vocals could be better but what can you do? It was recorded in 1997 and Ed sounds nothing like that anymore... Even 2000 sounded totally different in places. Probably Do The Evolution's fault, but it would have been fun while it lasted, I guess. Yeah, I really like In Hiding. In Single Video Theory (basically a making-of film that gives some background on Yield and its recording) it's shown that Stone wrote the riff and recorded it on a tape then pestered the rest of the band for ages to come up with something for it, he must have really liked it. It's kind of like Given To Fly but it doesn't have the waves, and the climaxes aren't as big, but it's good nonetheless. Ed's had some difficulty playing it live sometimes (though I think most of it was because he was having throat problems), I don't tend to listen to it much when I listen to 1998 boots though

PUSH ME, PULL ME
Another big contrast from everything else, it's a complete change of style for both the vocals and the instrumental. First off, most of it's spoken word, and it's very bass-heavy, the guitars don't come in much but there is a bit of feedback in places. Has references to water- a given on any Pearl Jam album, you'll probably find them somewhere if you look. I actually like this one, I think it's quite catchy, and I like bass-heavy songs. It has a sample of a song called Happy When I'm Crying (from a Christmas single, they send a vinyl single to members of their fan club with unreleased stuff on it every year) at the start, it's slowed down and stopped in bits like it was being played or stopped on a turntable spinning too slowly. The few seconds of it are separated from the song by what sounds like an explosion. I like how they did it.

ALL THOSE YESTERDAYS
An interesting one. The last slow song, and the last song on the record. Not one of my favourites, but like I said, it's interesting. They didn't actually use a tuba. Yeah, that's just a bass. Bass guitar. I thought that was cool.
Single Video Theory opens with this if I remember correctly. The band all arrive at their rehearsal/recording space (not sure which) and it plays over them arriving, getting in the door and stuff. Then it switches to them playing it, cause I don't remember there being any of the studio recorded stuff in it, apart from maybe Red Dot.
I'll admit to sometimes skipping over this when I listen to Yield... I get bored, and it's terrible, but I do. I like to listen to the full album.

HUMMUS
I think it's called Hummus... It's a hidden track on the end of All Those Yesterdays. There's a minute, maybe a minute and a half of silence between them. Hummus is kind of weird, it's a little thing on guitar with some percussion stuff and some guys occasionally saying "Hummus!" I skip over it more than All Those Yesterdays, but that's just because of the silence.

Overall, I'd give the album 9/10. While it is definitely my favourite album, and the '98 boots are my favourites Ed looked the best round that time too in my opinion, I feel like Wishlist and All Those Yesterdays bring it down just slightly for me. I like them, yes, just not as much as other songs, on record and off... It's annoying, but it's just how it is.

If anyone's interested, here's a link to the Yield promo thing. The whole of Single Video Theory (40-odd minutes) was on Vimeo and I watched it maybe five times but I think it must have got taken down, it's not on YouTube either. But if you can get your hands on it and you want to watch it then do, definitely, I enjoyed it, but then again this is my favourite album we're talking about. But I feel like it could give you a better outlook on Yield than I ever could, I'm just a kid who was born a couple of years after the album was released. q:

[horchata]

@superunknown
nice review!! i grew up listening to pj like a lot of us probably did, i agree that wishlist is kinda simple but at least it's kinda concise? it's only 3 min something if memory serves me correctly. all those yesterdays, on the other hand, is really long and dragged out a bit, so i agree with you there too. my favourite on the album is probably do the evolution

@realjoshdun
also this is just a suggestion for the front page, but i think it'd be better if you linked the albums/songs reviewed to the post they were reviewed on? i mean it's cool if you don't, just a thought (oh and also the kings of leon album is aha shake heartbreak, u left the first word out but that's cool i don't want to seem like i'm nitpicking sorry hahaha)

also this is just a general question @ everyone but what is your guys' favourite way of finding new music kinda similar to your taste? i've found spotify discovery to be okayy but i end up saving a few songs i don't like that much and lately my discovery has been going kinda country? which is weird since i don't listen to country at all, and also i stress abt any song that's kinda outside my usual genre affecting my playlist, but like again i have found some reallyyy good music using it

i also used pandora but i have difficulty sticking to one genre in my radios so my suggestions kinda end up all over the place? which i guess is true for spotify discovery sometimes but to a lesser degree so i didn't find it too helpful (and also half the music i tried to add to the radio wasn't even on the database bc a lot of it was from bands i'd found on spotify discovery tbh that weren't big at all so sometimes i'd have to add the whole band even if i only liked one song, or i wouldn't be able to add them at all so ugh) oh and spotify's radio thing isn't that great because you can only add one song like tf (i only tried adding a brazilian song w that bc i really liked the tune and they recommended all brazilian songs to me with completely diff genres so idk)

and i don't find music magazines thatt useful (but to be fair i've only tried rolling stone) because their suggestions are relative to small bands i've never even heard of like "if u like ______ then you'll like _______" yknow what i'm sayin

so basically: what is your guys' favourite way of finding new music?

[snakeman]

@superunknown
nice review!! i grew up listening to pj like a lot of us probably did, i agree that wishlist is kinda simple but at least it's kinda concise? it's only 3 min something if memory serves me correctly. all those yesterdays, on the other hand, is really long and dragged out a bit, so i agree with you there too. my favourite on the album is probably do the evolution

Ahh, I wish I could say I grew up listening to them but sadly my mum doesn't know many of their songs. My dad said he likes No Code though, and a few people commented on my Yield record (reissued. I'd love an original though) when I was taking it around town the day I bought it. I couldn't go home to put it there because I live a few miles out of town, I was at an all-day gig thing with loads of small bands playing. I didn't trust anyone not to steal it so I took it to the co-op with me when I was getting food and the guy at the till said he liked No Code as well. Funnily enough, I'd bought it the day before xD

so basically: what is your guys' favourite way of finding new music?

Probably a combination of finding new bands through the bands I actually listen to and from just stumbling across songs. I said in a post a while ago that I play a lot of Guitar Hero, I found some favourites through that. Trapped Under Ice by Metallica, Hey Man, Nice Shot by Filter, Black Rain by Soundgarden... Now I have all of Metallica's albums, most of Soundgarden's and one of Filter's. And I've found some songs I like from looking at previous bands and influences of musicians I like, for example I love Mother Love Bone (Green River's cool too) and I wouldn't have known they existed if not for Pearl Jam. A while ago I got loads of CDs off someone, Ten was one of them. Then about a month later I found Vs on my bed, and soon after that I got some RHCP albums and Yield off someone else. Didn't like Yield initially, but it really grew on me, obviously. It started out with Do The Evolution actually, I thought I'd listen to it in the car on the way to my auntie and uncle's house in March last year and found that I really enjoyed it. And then here we are, it's my favourite album!
If you can get a load of old unwanted CDs off someone I think that's a good way to find new stuff, I found some songs I really liked from getting all those CDs off people. Wiseblood by Corrosion Of Conformity was one of them, I need to listen to the whole thing front to back still but Redemption City is so good

[Raya36]

@acacia,

What I usually do is look up on google "bands like ____" and use youtube or spotify to listen to a few of their top songs. Another method is just looking best (genre) of (year) and doing the same as above. I also find genre and artist radios on spotify pretty helpful in finding new bands. Another thing that I do is find playlists on youtube based on a certain genre or even similar to a certain band.