Gigaton – Pearl Jam Album Review
The singular hesitation that I have with writing show reviews is that music is subjective and I prefer not to pass my experience off as fact. I am more than happy to share my experience, however, and in that vein, I offer this review of Gigaton, as seen through the unique lens of my perspective.
I had planned for my first listen to be in Dolby Atmos at a listening party in a movie theater on Wednesday March 25, was hoping against all odds that I may somehow find my way into the Apollo on Thursday March 26, would have definitely been at Baltimore on Saturday March 28, and MSG two days later on Monday March 30. Not to mention, I had tickets for all five California shows, one in San Diego, two in Los Angeles, and two in Oakland. Sigh. Man plans and God laughs or, in this case, shakes up the world with an exponentially reproducing and highly communicable virus. And although I hate to say it, this album dropped into the perfect environment.
Pearl Jam, forever critical of politics and eager to unify and correct the wrongs they perceive in the world, offered some eerily foreboding lyrics that couldn’t have found a more appropriate home than the fucked up state of the world in which we find ourselves. From “Seven O’Clock”:
For this is no time for depression or self-indulgent hesitance
This fucked-up situation calls for all hands, hands on deck
Freedom is as freedom does and freedom is a verb
They giveth and they taketh and you fight to keep that what you’ve earned
We saw the destination, got so close before it turned
Swim sideways from this undertow and do not be deterred
Obviously this album, Pearl Jam’s first in nearly seven years, would have a message and Gigaton delivered in spades. Stone Gossard had this to say on Vedder’s lyrics, “He’s not going to come out and say exactly in sort of very plain language maybe what you might think after reading the newspaper. But I think that his mysticism and his way of using words and art and music is a powerful sort of tonic. I think that underlying it all is going to continue to be a hopeful and beautiful, but at times tragic message.”
“Dance of the Clairvoyants,” the lead single released in January, gave the listener its first dose of reality as it warned, “So save your predictions. Burn your assumptions.” This track is a Talking Heads-esque rocker, with Eddie Vedder channeling his inner David Byrne and Stone Gossard playing bass in lieu of Jeff Ament. It’s an inside out rocker that I’d love to be seeing live right now, but it gave no clue as to what types of songs would follow in the coming days, weeks, and months. Vedder would say this of Gigaton, “It started different, it ended different, and everything in the middle was different and that’s what was great about it.” He was talking about the album process from start to finish, but the comment equally applies to the tracks themselves.
“Whoever Said”, a straight ahead anthemic rocker and the first track on the album, is a banger in the opening slot that I could just as easily picture as the opener in a show, its timely and appropriate lyrics a rallying cry of the highest order, “All the answers will be found / In all the mistakes we have made / … / Swallow my pencil and bleed out my pen / Surrender the wish we’ll be together again / But I won’t give up… No, I won’t give up / On satisfaction… Satisfaction.” And what could very easily be a lyrically artistic look at the current state of Coronavirus deaths and quarantines — and my favorite lyric on the album, “Our freedoms fraught with danger being circumscribed / A life cut short and circumcised.”
Replace the words “Superblood Wolfmoon” with Covid-19, and, though it certainly wasn’t written with this in mind, the album’s second track could just as easily be about the world and Coronavirus as the relationship that went south that Eddie originally sang about. “Once you were somewhere… and now you’re everywhere / I’m feeling selfish and I want what’s right / Focus on your focusness, don’t allow for hopelessness, I’ve been hoping that our hope does last / I don’t know anything, I question everything / This life I love is going way too fast” — this last bit reminding us that perhaps there’s a cosmic reason for this global tragedy, a lesson to be learned as we all have a forced opportunity to focus on relationships and family. And Mike McCready’s guitar shred, because if that’s not a ray of sunshine in this fucked up world then I don’t know what is.
So now two songs in, I was consuming the album like a live show which had me thinking about not just how each song fits into its spot on the album, but also how each would play live and where it would fit into a setlist. Eddie Vedder, responding to a Bill Simmons query, said, “Songs find their spot (on an album). It’s like a setlist so the guys kind of left that to me. So I put songs together in a way that has a flow and energy, like a live show, one song passing the torch to the next.” I was feeling every bit of that as the potential show opening “Whoever Said” passed its torch to the McCready burner “Superblood Wolfmoon” to the Eddie-Vedder-as-David-Byrne lead single, “Dance of the Clairvoyants”.
The politically charged “Quick Escape” deftly grabbed the torch, and as well as it fits here on the album, I imagine Eddie on his second bottle of Barolo before going after this one, perhaps somewhere deep in the first set. (Mathematically, if this song showed up as song twelve of thirty-five song live setlist, that’s almost proportionally equivalent to four of twelve on the album — I’m a math teacher by trade, sorry for that.) Mysticism and hidden messages be damned, this one is full speed ahead, lyrically and musically…vintage Pearl Jam! “The lengths we had to go to then / To find a place Trump hadn’t fucked up yet.” Nothing cryptic there.
“Alright”, penned by bassist Jeff Ament, could easily be a second set opener, Jeff and Eddie seated together beneath the lowered globe lights. To continue the live show metaphor, the band would then rejoin in full for “Seven O’Clock”, as straight to the point as it gets, “Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse come forged the north and west / Then there’s Sitting Bullshit as our sitting president / Talking to his mirror, what’s he say, what’s it say back? A tragedy of errors, who’ll be the last to have a laugh? His best days gone, hard to admit / Throwing angry punches with nothing to hit / Luminous thoughts were once all he had / Fading lights, lost eloquence.” The album’s centerpiece that would likely serve the same role on a live setlist, bridging the gap from the subtle “Alright” to the hard-charging “Never Destination”, also somewhat eerily prophetic given current times, “Don’t wanna believe it… These endless miles / Never destination, just more denial.”
“Take the Long Way”, written by drummer Matt Cameron is Pearl Jam at its energetic best, with tantalizing guitar riffs to match. “Buckle Up”, penned by Stone Gossard while playing musical chairs with Jeff Ament on keys, slows the album back down somewhat emotionally before “Come Then Goes”, the quasi-mandatory acoustic Vedder track about lost friendship that would be equally appropriate on the “Into the Wild” soundtrack.
“Retrograde” brings us back to the grimness of our environmental reality, albeit tinged with a glimpse of hope, “The more mistakes, the more resolve / It’s gonna take much more than ordinary love / To lift this up.” I thought there would be a lot more of this end of the world stuff with respect to climate change, though in fairness there may be and I’m just missing it as I interpret songs through the lens of the biological pandemic that has climate issues on the back burner temporarily.
Even with its unmistakably political message, “River Cross” is a call to arms strife with double meaning, as the opening verse could just as easily be referring to quarantines and social distancing as political discontent. “I always thought I’d cross that river / The other side, distant now / As I got close, it turned and widened / Horizon now fading out.” The lyrics, however, unmistakably return to the singularity of their focus and Pearl Jam’s message, “Let it be a lie that all futures die / While the government thrives on discontent / And there’s no such thing as clear / Proselytizing and profitizing / As our will all but disappears.” As the track fades out, and the album with it, Pearl Jam unites us all in the rallying cry that very noticeably changes from the first to the third person, “Here and now / Here and now / Can’t hold me down / Can’t hold me down / Won’t hold us down / Won’t hold us down.”
I confess that I’ve been listening to this album for nearly a week, having somehow gotten a copy late last Sunday night. Fear not, I didn’t cheat the band as I still bought a copy on vinyl. The point is, while some songs immediately registered, the album as a whole didn’t immediately resonate. But time takes time, and this band has earned my trust, and as I listened again and again and peeled back more and more layers, Gigaton revealed itself to be exactly the album I needed at exactly the time I needed it. This too shall pass, but not on its own. The singularity of our focus and the unity of our effort are required. See you out there soon – stay safe and responsible.
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Share the light
Won’t hold us down
Hold us down
Nice work!
Thanks, Bill. Really appreciate that you took the time to read!
Very nice! I still need to listen uninterrupted, as in a child doesn’t start crying, but I like this album so far. And I agree that I didn’t know what to expect after they made Clairvoyant their first single. The bass does sound different, which now makes sense. Initially I thought they used a drum machine but after having heard it more – nope. That’s a person. BUT I still can’t tell if he uses a crash cymbal sparingly OR if he just opens up his hi hat and let’s it ring out. Regardless, the fact that the drums are so present with only using three (maybe four) pieces only solidifies, and dare I say adds to, Cameron’s talent. He’s like a chef that can cook something banging using three ingredients. Less is more. I think you get it.