Pearl Jam - Gigaton

B: Hey guys, guess what? I started a group on facebook.

S: chocoholics anonymous?

E: the non-ideologically aligned lefty anarchist's soup recipe club?

C: the John Candy appeciators club?

B: canadian national treasure, if you ask me, but no. My epic imagination muscle had a cramp, so it's underwhelmingly titled Bottle's Album Club, but my real friends all joined, so raspberries to you guys. What should we listen to to kick it off?

S: Bottle, honey, we don't actually care.

C: i care a little, but not enough to pick an album.

B: harsh. what is wrong with all of you? Fine, i've been meaning to check out Pearl Jam's latest album, Gigaton. Here we go.

Off to a great start. Op! I found Waldo. See, Eddie Vedder has this interesting habit of pronouncing random words wrong on every album. Right in the middle of Superblood Wolfmoon, the word is "danger" but he is clearly saying "deenger" with a hard G. 

First 3 tracks are fantastic brain bashing rock'n'roll. Then we morph into some kind of electronic thing, but it's cool.

Whaaaaa the hell is Buckle Up? Then Comes and Goes. We turned into a sketchy alleyway all of a sudden. Actually, bed sores and vivisection is much more normal fare for Pearl Jam than the bizarre half Rock half electronica of the first half with warewolves and guys filing their dicks and running away from all the terrible stuff Trump did. Oh, hi Greta. Yeah, polar bears and stuff.

Don't get me wrong, i'm on Eddie's side on all of it, it's just what the hell kind of genre is River Cross? Doom organ and tom toms?

Ok, this is a 3-act thing. It's straight rock, then electronica sort of and some more rock, then track 9 just smacks you with a frying pan and he says "horm" instead of harm, and that's the least insane thing about the last four tracks. 

I realize it's hard to bargle nawdle zous with all those marbles in your mouth, but what the hell is going on? The queen of collections? You mean Garbage Lady? I made her up just to have somebody to talk to about Warren Buffett. "It's gonna take much more than ordinary love...," ok you got me there, i made that a real point of interest along the tour; insulted Des'ree and everything. Yeah, the river of doom gets wider no matter where you cross. Clearly we're connecting to the same zeitgeist, and i know i've skipped 2 decades of albums, but how is the last 66% of this Pearl Jam? Way to go 2020, even Eddie Vedder can't do a good job of describing how terrible you were.

I can't really call this a bad album, per se. It has structure, we're all noticeably different people by the end, it's all interesting, but it's freakin' weird. You know what it's like? It's like Pearl Jam started to make a Pearl Jam album, then wrote some demos for a Bjork collaboration that never happened, then just shrugged and said "meh, it's 2020, who cares?" I do find myself repeatedly listening to songs and wanting them to grow on me, but i lived it too so all i can really say is "yeah, that was 2020. Started out strong, frying pan to the noggin, wish we weren't caught in the toilet flush of history. 

No, it won't hold us down, but we're still in the middle of it so share all the light you want, we still have to get past the next round of terrible candidates before the round after that. I'm done, I'm just rambling, man this is a downer of an album. Not bad, but underwhelming. I feel like it won't age very well at all, and that's a shame. Oh well, won't let it get us down. Just have to try something else tomorrow.