filled with darkness. At least it’s littered
with earworms that attach themselves to the
cilia of the eardrums, rewarding each listen
with a melodic bit of hope.
– Curt Baran
7
PEARL JAM
Gigaton
(Monkeywrench/Republic)
Pearl Jam’s timing for their end of the
Pearl Jam’s timing for the end of the world
record is impeccable. The Seattle-based
quartet’s recorded output has been stalled
for nearly seven years, and apparently, they
have some shit they want to get off their
chests. The band’s eleventh record, Gigaton,
also finds its members looking for new
ways to express it. Musically, its the most
adventurous the band has sounded since
1996’s No Code. The opening one-two punch
of “Whoever Said” and “Superblood
Wolfmoon” would seem to indicate busi-
ness as usual. The former encapsulates a
frantic, attacking urgency that the band has
all but copy written throughout their career,
and the latter is a pounding 4/4 stomper
that sounds like a throwback to a younger
man’s game. But then “Dance Of The
Clairvoyants” arrives, sounding like noth-
ing the band has ever done. The elastic bass
groove (played by rhythm guitarist Stone
Gossard) dare I say, “swings,” as a Gang Of
Four guitar attack lacerates one of the most
intricate melodies the band has ever con-
structed. And prophetic lyrics like
“Numbers keep falling off the calenders
floor/Stuck in our boxes/Windows open no
more” seemingly possess eerie foresight in
the age of a pandemic. Whatever creative
wave they caught in the studio, well, they
ride it until it crests. “Buckle Up” perches
itself atop an almost nursery rhyme guitar
phrasing and parks on a groove that feels
equally fragile. Never ones to bite their
tongues, there’s still plenty of tape left over
for spleen-venting against the current
administration. “Quick Escape” envisions a
whimsical farce that finds its protagonists
escaping to Mars, the reason being “The
lengths we had to go to then/To find a place
Trump hadn’t fucked up yet.” The
soundbed that lies underneath it matches
the lyrical content's vitriol. "Seven O’ Clock”
continues with the same thematic mood and
another intricate hook that calls out the
“Sitting Bullshit as our sitting president.” At
the center of it all, is vocalist Eddie Vedder.
His rich baritone chews up scenery and
every available syllable, helping to sell the
disdain that infects our everyday lives in
this nonsensical political climate. “Stand
back when the spirit comes,” he sings at one
point. Quite obviously, his bandmates abide
by the specter’s visitation. Musically, the
band has never sounded more in the pock-
et. “It’s not a negative thought…I’m posi-
tive,” Vedder declares at one point, one of
the brief moments of light in a document
STEPHEN MALKMUS
Tradtional Techniques
(Matador)
When Pavement first entered the rock
scene nearly 30 years ago, they stood out
like a sore thumb. While they were lo-fi,
they weren’t punk, and while they had
pop melodies, those were buried under
tape hiss and inside jokes. Frontman
Stephen Malkmus never went for a stylis-
tic makeover, instead slowly fermenting
his sound into something very original.
When Pavement disbanded right on the
verge of breaking through, it was classic
Malkmus. Instead of going solo and work-
ing towards a crossover hit, he put togeth-
er a new band (The Jicks) and got more
idiosyncratic. Flirting with jam-band
whimsy, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
had the best of both worlds. Instrumental
sophistication that hit a jazz-like mael-
strom was paired with humor and a lyrical
coyness always prominent in those early
Pavement classics. Last year’s **Groove
Denied album found him testing the
waters with a jagged, electronics-based
sound. This year's Traditional Techniques
finds him (along with Matt Sweeney) try-
ing out a whole new brand of caftan. At
first glance, his “acoustic” album,
Traditional Techniques, eschews classic alt-
rocker-going-acoustic with flourishes of
sitars, dobros, rababs, and other markers
of world music-making this indeed a step
outside most alt-rock comfort zones. The
lyrics conjure (or send up?) a smarmy,
west coast elitism that mentions ganache,
shadow-banning, and “cherry ideas.”
Continued on page 24
Continued on page 24
20 illinoisentertainer.com march 2020