The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Pearl Jam · Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, Dave Abbruzzese · produced by Brendan O’Brien with the band · Epic · fourteen tracks, about 55 minutes, issued in a small bound book
Mode
Hard rock of the band’s own anthemic manner, roughened and cut with punk bursts, an accordion monologue, a chant groove and a collage of found voices
Mythos
The body read as a case history against a manual of the healthy life; the martyred artist evoked and unnamed; the faithful wife bound to the wrong husband; the man emptied by love lost
Phase
Fourteen tracks; a first half from leaving through the public and private quarrels to a short fury, a one-minute break, a second half toward exhaustion, and a closing collage that leaves the songs behind
Presentation
Album; fourteen tracks, about fifty-five minutes, issued on vinyl on 22 November 1994 and on CD and cassette on 6 December 1994, packaged as a small bound book
Register
Two guitars, bass and drums under a dry, direct production; a lead voice commanding in the slow songs and pressed into strained registers in the fast ones; accordion, loops and recorded voices at the margins
Scale
One singer and the audience that owns him, a couple endured and a love lost, a body under examination, a death without a name
Governing Proposition
A band then among the best-selling in the world dresses its third album as an old household manual of health and fills it with songs of exhaustion: a young man made public property by a mass audience tries to take back his privacy, his body and the meaning of his songs without giving up the crowd. Full songs that give the audience what it came for alternate with fragments in which the singer turns away from it, and the record ends by walking out of song into other people’s voices.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a drum pattern and a voice that seems to rise from below the mix, in a song of leaving. Last Exit has to come first: it sets the wish that runs through the album, to get out, and it sets it at speed, in under three minutes. It is followed at once by Spin the Black Circle, shorter and faster still, a punk burst of pleasure in a record turning. A band known for long, layered anthems begins its third album with two short songs that want to be somewhere else.
Epic issued Vitalogy on vinyl on 22 November 1994 and on CD and cassette on 6 December 1994: fourteen tracks in one sequence, about fifty-five minutes. Brendan O’Brien produced it with the band, which on the record is Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready and Dave Abbruzzese; Abbruzzese drums on most of it and was out of the band before it was released. The work judged here is the album as first released, in its original package. The remaster of 2011 and its added tracks are not the work.
The package is part of it. The record came as a small bound book whose pages reproduce and overprint an old household manual of health of the same name, so that a guide to the healthy life is laid over fourteen tracks of strain. The album becomes a case history, the singer’s body read against the manual’s account of vitality. That frame is the strongest pattern on the record, and it bears its load on the page more than in the sound; but it says, before a note is heard, what the songs will say: a body examined, and found tired.
Movement II
What the record discloses can be put in a sentence. A young man made public property by a mass audience finds that the attention which made him also takes his privacy, his body and the meaning of his songs, and he tries to take them back without giving up the audience. Not for You, the third track, aims this outward, at an industry that sells youth back to the young, and builds by repetition to a raw, sustained peak. Corduroy, eighth, turns it inward: a man who knows the crowd could buy him and still wants to be loved by it.
Corduroy is the height of the record. A slow guitar figure coils, Gossard’s part under McCready’s line, and then breaks into a full-band charge with the voice climbing over it. The build and the release are made with real control, and the song carries the record’s private argument with the crowd in the shape of its sound: held, then let go. O’Brien’s production serves it as it serves the whole record, direct, dry and loud without the gloss of its year, a sound that has worn well.
Elsewhere the condition is felt more than articulated. Much of what Vedder sings is half buried, and the words are often oblique to the point of withholding; the rough edges and broken fragments of the record disclose a strain the words only half name, and that is credited. But the complaint of fame is narrower than the human condition it gestures at. The voice is the record’s most distinctive instrument, commanding in the slow songs and pressed into strained registers in the fast ones, and in places it is buried past the point of intention.
Movement III
Halfway through, the record stops for about a minute. Pry, To is a single word spelled out and mangled, privacy as the whole complaint, and it breaks the album in two. The form of the record is an alternation: full songs, in which the band gives the crowd what it came for, interrupted by fragments, in which the singer turns away from it. The first half runs from leaving, through the public quarrel and two private songs, to the short fury of Whipping; the second carries Corduroy, Better Man and Immortality toward exhaustion. That shape is designed, and it is part of what the record knows.
It is held only in part. Four pieces on the record are not songs in the band’s ordinary sense, Pry, To, Bugs, Aye Davanita and the closing Hey Foxymophandlemama, That’s Me, and they take about a quarter of the running time. Pry, To earns its place. Bugs, an accordion monologue, and Aye Davanita, a wordless chant groove, break the record without saying anything the break has not said already; they are sketches, and they could go with little loss. Satan’s Bed is a competent rocker set in the order by convenience. A required fracture would be placed and sized; these are permitted.
The turn was real, and it cost something. The band’s own manner, the big, layered hard rock of Ten (1991), roughened on Vs. (1993), is cut here with punk bursts, an accordion, a chant, a collage of found voices, a lead voice pressed into strain, a book in place of a booklet, and a release on vinyl first at the height of the CD. A band then among the best-selling in the world made a harder, stranger, less radio-shaped record while refusing videos and fighting its ticketing agency. But the experiments sit beside conventional songs rather than changing them, and the collage and the fragment were long inherited.
Movement IV
Better Man discloses something else, and it holds. A woman stays with a man she does not love because she cannot imagine a better one, and the song tells it without contempt for her. Its first verse is almost whispered, and the band enters late, a slow entry exactly judged; the song earns its lift by withholding it. The pattern is the oldest on the record, the faithful wife bound to the wrong husband, and the song keeps it particular. Nothingman, fifth, is its companion: a man emptied by the love he lost, resting on Ament’s bass and a restrained arrangement, lifting in its chorus toward lament.
These two obey a different and older law than the rest of the record. Most of the album is governed by a self pressed by what consumes it, answering by fury, by withdrawal or by grief, and its two most distant elements, the punk blast of Spin the Black Circle and the long collage that ends it, can be read as that law’s two exits, release and dissolution, held in one case by the medical frame. Better Man and Nothingman obey the law of the couple, which the record lets sit beside its own. Bugs obeys the record’s law as a joke, and Aye Davanita obeys nothing in particular. The range is wide; the binding is partial.
Better Man has had the longest life of anything on the record. Played by the band through three decades, it has passed from a song of one marriage to an anthem sung back by crowds, and each time a crowd sings it the irony of the song is reopened. Corduroy has kept the same place in the band’s concerts. These are the record’s deepest returns, and they are returns to songs. The fragments are spent in a hearing or two, and the complaint of fame, once read, does not reorganise when the record is heard again.
Movement V
Immortality is the slow close of the songs: a descending figure, a tired voice, McCready’s solo, grief more than release. It is the deepest height on the record, and its guitars are spare and right. It evokes the martyred artist, the young figure whom death makes permanent, and gives the figure weight by naming no one; the record’s year makes the evocation charged without making it built, and listeners have argued over its weight ever since. Then Hey Foxymophandlemama, That’s Me: nearly eight minutes of found voices over a loop, the record walking out of its own voice into strangers’, an institution and its inmates heard as voices. The idea is spent in two minutes, and the piece is assembled more than composed.
What the record holds is a self under attention and, around it, the market and the medium as buyer and lover, a marriage endured and a love lost, a body under examination and a death. These orders arrive song by song, joined by the voice and the frame rather than integrated in one structure, and labour, history and the natural order are absent. The record went to the top of the chart and sold in very large numbers, and Spin the Black Circle won a Grammy. It showed that a band at the summit of the new mainstream could make an abrasive, broken record and keep its audience, and it set the band’s long turn away from the promotional machine. That is a change in a career more than in the album form; the bands who followed the band’s sound followed Ten, at 8.4 on this desk, not this record.
Thirty-two years have kept the record whole: in print since 1994, remastered in 2011, its book reproduced. Better Man and Corduroy have stayed in rock broadcast, Nothingman and Immortality are heard often, and the dry sound has dated less than most of its year, though the voice and its quarrel with fame belong to their time. The album is heard less than its songs, and its fragments are often skipped. It is a serious and lasting record, commanding in its making and in four or five songs, that does not define its tradition: its experiments stand beside its songs, its disclosure is narrower than the condition it reaches for, and too much of it is permitted rather than required.
Act III · The Twelve
Fourteen tracks, and the subtractive test cuts deep. The core is required: Last Exit must open, a song of leaving; Not for You states the public quarrel and Corduroy the private one; Better Man and Nothingman turn the pressure toward a couple; Immortality is the necessary close of the songs. Spin the Black Circle and Whipping earn their places as bursts of impatience, and Pry, To has its reason, a single word spelled out and mangled. What holds the figure lowest of the twelve is a quarter of the running time: Bugs and Aye Davanita could go with little loss, the closing collage holds nearly eight minutes for an idea spent in two, and Satan’s Bed is a competent rocker that adds little.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: a young man made public property by a mass audience finds that the attention which made him also takes his privacy, his body and the meaning of his songs, and the record is his attempt to take them back without giving up the audience. Not for You aims it outward, at an industry that sells youth back to the young; Corduroy turns it inward, a man who knows the crowd could buy him and still wants its love. Better Man discloses something else and holds: a woman who stays with a man she does not love because she cannot imagine a better one, told without contempt for her. Held back because much is felt rather than articulated, the words are often oblique to the point of withholding, and the complaint of fame is narrower than the condition it gestures at.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation comes on six or seven of fourteen tracks, in two kinds. The driven kind: Corduroy is the height, a slow guitar figure that coils and then breaks into a full-band charge with the voice climbing over it; Not for You builds by repetition to a raw, sustained peak; Last Exit opens on a voice that seems to rise from below the mix. The grave kind: Nothingman lifts in its chorus toward lament over Ament’s bass; Immortality is the deepest, a slow descending figure, a tired voice and McCready’s solo. Better Man earns its lift by withholding it. Held from the top because the fragments stay level by design, two of the fast songs have force more than height, and the highest moments are of the band’s idiom, not beyond it.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built once, in part. The frame is the strongest pattern: the record dresses itself as an old manual of health, a book of vitality laid over songs of exhaustion, so that the album becomes a case history, the singer’s body read against a guide to the healthy life. That frame bears load on the package, less in the sound. Immortality evokes the martyred artist, the young figure whom death makes permanent, and gives it weight by naming no one: evocation, not construction. Better Man keeps the oldest pattern, the faithful wife bound to the wrong husband, particular; Nothingman is a type more than a myth; Tremor Christ and Satan’s Bed borrow sacred and infernal names more than they build from them.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own manner, the big, layered hard rock of Ten (1991), already roughened on Vs. (1993), and behind it the Seattle sound and the classic rock it drew on. The turn is real: songs cut short and fast in a punk manner, an accordion monologue, a chant groove, a collage of found voices, a book in place of a booklet, and a release on vinyl first at the height of the CD. The stake was real too: a band among the best-selling in the world made a harder, stranger record while refusing videos and fighting its ticketing agency. What holds the figure: the experiments sit beside conventional songs rather than changing them, collage and fragment were long inherited, and the best of the album is the band’s proven mode refined.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Would changing the form change what the record knows? In part. The knowledge, a self pulled between an audience and its own privacy, lives in an alternation: full songs in which the band gives the crowd what it came for, broken by fragments in which the singer turns away. The sequence is counted here, once. The first half runs from leaving through the public quarrel and two private songs to the short fury of Whipping; Pry, To breaks it; Corduroy, Better Man and Immortality carry the second half toward exhaustion, with the collage as the record walking out of song. The package says the same: a body examined. What holds the figure: the fragments break the record without each knowing why they break it where they do, and most of the songs could stand alone.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Evidence over thirty-two years, real and uneven. Corduroy and Better Man have been played by the band through three decades and keep acquiring meaning: Better Man has passed from a song of one marriage to an anthem sung back by crowds, which reopens its irony each time. Immortality has taken on a weight from its year that listeners have argued over ever since. The record as an object has been returned to as the document of a band refusing its own success. Against this, the fragments are spent on the first hearing or two, the closing collage is curiosity rather than depth, and the complaint of fame, once read, does not reorganise on return. The well is deep in four or five songs and shallow across the rest.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The field is the rock album of the mid 1990s, above all the alternative rock that had entered the mainstream in 1991 to 1993. The intrinsic force is modest but real: the record showed that a band at the summit of that mainstream could make an abrasive, broken, partly anti-commercial album and keep its audience, and it set the band’s long turn from stardom toward a working career outside the promotional machine; a reorganisation of a career more than of the album form. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record went to the top of the chart and sold in very large numbers, and Spin the Black Circle won a Grammy, but no practice can be shown to turn on it. The bands who followed the band’s sound followed Ten, and the swerves here were not widely taken up. Presence is not reach.
Score: 7.1 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirty-two years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as released, in print since 1994, remastered in 2011, and the book package has been reproduced. Presence is wide and continuous for the songs: Better Man and Corduroy have stayed in rock broadcast and in the band’s concerts for three decades, and Nothingman and Immortality are heard often. The album as a whole is heard less than its songs, and the fragments are commonly skipped, which is charged. The fabric is less fixed to its year than most records of 1994: the dry, live sound avoided the period’s gloss, though the voice and its quarrel with fame belong to their years and are heard as such.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, read to the same anchors as every desk. At its best the band plays as one body: Corduroy’s guitars, Gossard’s figure under McCready’s line, build and release with real control; Nothingman rests on Ament’s bass and a restrained arrangement; Better Man’s slow entry of the band is exactly judged; Immortality’s guitars and solo are spare and right. O’Brien’s production is direct, dry and loud without gloss, and has worn well. Vedder’s voice is the most distinctive instrument, commanding in the slow songs, deliberately strained in the fast. The faults weigh on a quarter of the record: two sketches, a collage assembled more than composed, generic arrangement in places, and vocals buried past the point of intention.
Score: 7.9 / 10
One law governs most of the record: a self pressed by what consumes it, answering by fury, by withdrawal or by grief. Take the two most distant elements: Spin the Black Circle, a short punk blast of pleasure in a record turning, and Hey Foxymophandlemama, nearly eight minutes of found voices over a loop. The first is a release from the pressure, the second its dissolution, a record walking out of its own voice into other people’s; read that way the extremes are the law’s two exits, and the medical frame holds them in one case. But the law is stated more than it governs: Bugs obeys it as a joke, Aye Davanita obeys nothing in particular, and Better Man and Nothingman obey an older law, the law of the couple. The range is wide; the seams show.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held fully: a self examined under attention. The market and the medium are held in Not for You and Corduroy, the audience as buyer and lover at once. The couple and the household are held in Better Man and Nothingman, a marriage endured and a love lost. The body is held in the package, a manual of health laid over a record of strain; death in Immortality. An institution and its inmates enter as voices in the closing collage, and the sacred is named in two titles more than held. What holds the figure: these orders arrive song by song, joined by the voice and the frame rather than by one structure, and labour, history and the natural order are absent.
Score: 7.1 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Made at 7.9 and The Sublime at 7.8. A recording whole and in print after thirty-two years, its songs in continuous broadcast and concert, its dry sound less fixed to its year than most; a band playing as one body in Corduroy, Nothingman, Better Man and Immortality under a direct production that has worn well; and height on six or seven of fourteen tracks, driven in Corduroy and Not for You, grave in Nothingman and Immortality.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.0: a quarter of the running time permitted rather than required, two sketches, a closing collage nearly eight minutes long for an idea spent in two, and a rocker that adds little. Then Pressure on Tradition and The Encompassed at 7.1: a turn in a career more than in the album form, with presence in place of reach and no practice shown to turn on the record; and orders that arrive song by song, with labour, history and the natural order absent. Then The Archetypal Deep at 7.2, a frame of the body as case history that bears load on the package more than in the sound.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.0, against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.4, The Made at 7.9, The Inner Law at 7.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable meets the bar of 8.5 exactly at 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 7.6, The Swerve at 7.4, The Archetypal Deep at 7.2 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.1 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Inevitable, 7.0, Pressure on Tradition, 7.1, The Archetypal Deep, 7.2, The Inner Law, 7.3, and The Swerve, The Living Form and The Bottomless Well, 7.4, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.1. Two of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.5, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Epic, on vinyl on 22 November 1994 and on CD and cassette on 6 December 1994, fourteen tracks in their original order, about fifty-five minutes, produced by Brendan O’Brien with the band, in its original package, a small bound book reproducing and overprinting an old household manual of health of the same name; judged from knowledge of the recording, its package and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. The remaster of 2011 and its added tracks are context, not the object. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted: much of what is sung is half buried, and its words are uncertain even to close listeners. Facts that could not be verified, among them the dates and places of the recording sessions, the players on each track beyond the change of drummer, the drummer on the closing track, the subject of Whipping, the singer’s view of how Immortality has been heard, the record’s later standing among the band’s albums and any part its vinyl issue played in the later life of the format, are not given.