Pearl Jam

Binaural

Boring Jam

Review Score:

(4/10)
This CD should be enough to convince anyone that Kurt Cobain had the right idea. Pearl Jam apparantly have decided to take the approach of "better to fade away than burn out" because the amount of energy in their CDs has been steadily declining their entire career. Seriously, why do they even bother recording songs if they're going to be so lazy about it? The songwriting on this CD is almost as good as any of their other stuff, but the songs were recorded in such a boring way that this CD'll just put you to sleep. Plus the song Evacuation is absolutely horrible. These songs are probably pretty great live, but Pearl Jam doesn't get that the point of recording a CD is to make something well-constructed and memorable, not just to have an electronic document of your songs. I think part of the problem is that Pearl Jam has steadily become more and more of a democracy of guys who are too afraid to take control and so they've been kind of lacking in direction and afraid to take risks. Quite annoying, because they have so much musical talent but have always been totally lacking in the motivation and vision that made bands like Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins shoot for the stars.

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