“It doesn’t carry them”: Stone Gossard on the black sheep of Pearl Jam’s catalogue
No artist is safe from that one album that the fans don’t like to talk about. The massive Pink Floyd fanbase is always going to be looking at Ummagumma as a mystifying experiment, and even The Beatles have Yellow Submarine to their name as one of the most unnecessary pieces of their catalogue. While it’s hard to tell what stands as the low light in Pearl Jam’s catalogue, Stone Gossard felt that one particular record didn’t get nearly as much praise as their classics were given.
Then again, Pearl Jam wasn’t the kind of band that was meant to play simple rock and roll for their entire lives. By the time they started getting famous off the back of Ten, Eddie Vedder almost immediately pulled back, getting even heavier on Vs and then making songs that sounded like they didn’t even want to be listened to, like the accordion ditty ‘Bugs’ off Vitalogy or ‘I’m Open’ off of No Code.
Somewhere along the line, they realised that maybe playing rock and roll wasn’t so bad after all. For all of the wild experiments they got up to, Yield is the kind of return to form that most bands can only hope to capture after their time in the spotlight, featuring tunes that hit as hard as ‘Jeremy’ did, like ‘Do the Evolution’ or the Led Zeppelin knockoff ‘Given To Fly’.
Now, with a new gem under their belt, though, it was time to experiment again, which meant bringing in producer Tchad Blake. While the signature punch of their old producer, Brenden O’Brien, isn’t accounted for, Binaural was the first time the band had taken advantage of the signature binaural recording method, which simulated the listener being in the room with them as they were playing.
The idea might have been solid, but the album itself fell on deaf ears for some. While there aren’t many tunes that are cut out to be singles, it also didn’t help that most of the record felt a bit on the sleepy side, starting with heavy rock tracks like ‘Breakerfall’ and sounding like it slowly peters out by the time Vedder starts breaking out the ukulele for tunes like ‘Soon Forget’.
Even though the band and Gossard remained defiantly proud of the album, the guitarist knew that it was nowhere near the public’s favourite Pearl Jam album, saying, “Right now, Binaural is a little bit of a black sheep in my mind. People like it, but it doesn’t necessarily carry them. We can make a better record than that. I’d like to go back and write some more spontaneous songs.”
That said, it doesn’t feel as simple as saying that the songs aren’t there. For all the dozy moments that people complained about, many of the best tunes on the record reward you for your patience, like Mike McCready reaching David Gilmour-levels of guitar god on ‘Nothing As It Seems’ or when the band break out the ballads like ‘Light Years’ and even bother to flirt with hypnotic song textures on ‘Of the Girl’.
Although Riot Act kept up the band’s track record for going in strange art rock directions, Binaural is the best of both worlds when it comes to the grunge icons’ sound. It was far from the stadium epics that they came out of the gate, but here, they strike the perfect balance between their eccentric side and songs that wouldn’t sound that out of place in a massive arena.
