hdnmickey

I agree, but I will add that when I tried to get into them (years after the fact) given all the praise, the content didn't simply live up to the hype. By the time I checked out the VU, Lou Reed had been a solo artist for longer than VU even existed. Checked out the VU as a fan of much of Reed's solo work.

I agree with those that said they certainly filled the role of being influential. But their actual content comes off like somebody trying to do something different, and ground breaking, and falling flat. Quite literally if you focus on the vocals. Just terrible, even for that genre.

inri222

Except for Cut the Crap, all of their albums are classics. My personal favorite is Give 'Em Enough Rope.

Supermallet

In my opinion, The Velvet Underground is the most important American rock band of all time. The band broke so much ground musically, lyrically, and conceptually that their influence is still keenly felt today.

Mike86

Pearl Jam has always kind of been a band that people either seem to listen to or don't know much about at all. Surprised to read that some people in here actually hate them though. I'd say they're arguably one of the greatest American bands of the past twenty-five years and one of the only long-standing modern bands who have kept most of their main lineup the same (the drummers have rotated a few times but Matt Cameron has been with them a long time and the rest of the band has stayed the same).

Spiderbite

Every time I try to listen to current Pearl Jam (or honestly anything after "Ten"), I end up wishing I was listening to "Ten."

I can't explain it and I don't feel that way about any other group.

"Ten" is so great and everything else of theirs is just so "eh."

hdnmickey

I include Vs. and some of Vitology in there, but otherwise I agree. After those first few albums they now basically seem like a singles band. One or two great songs from each album, rest... meh.

And this comes from a guy that grew up with those guys listening to their music throughout the years. Including when they went by Green River or Mother Love Bone.

Ky-Fi

I don't disagree, but I still hold that the SONGS on Cut the Crap are pretty decent--it was the terrible production with the Casio keyboards and gang-shouted choruses that really killed it.

inri222

The drum machine didn't help. Real drums please!

Mike86

I would in no way, shape, or form ever call Pearl Jam a singles band. They release singles like any band yes, but they've always been more of an album band. They're sort of an oddity in music if you ask me. To their fans they're great and are loved, but I bet if you ask the average person to name songs by them they'd struggle to come up with many yet they'd probably recognize the name. So they're not really mainstream but yet at the same time they're not entirely unknown.

As for not liking their output after a certain point I tend to find that happens with some bands. They change over the course of time but some fans just reject what a band evolves into and write them off. I can understand having favorite albums but I think not liking a band after a certain point comes down to not giving them a chance and longing for the past.

Ky-Fi

Yep. With that album, I kind of felt that Joe was trying to keep up with Mick's BAD, except the approach didn't really work with those Clash songs.

hdnmickey

For me, an "album band" has to consistently put out releases don't feel like two or three singles completed with a lot of filler that doesn't hold up to the singles. For me Pearl Jam hit that wall partially with Vitalogy (only half of that album compares Ten and Vs. in quality, rest feels like filler) and went there full time with Yield when "Given To Fly" seemed to be purposely tailored for mainstream airplay and the rest was a big step down.

Mike86

I still wouldn't agree with calling them a singles band though. They've released singles and some have caught on but for the most part they aren't very mainstream popular with a lot of radio play or music videos.

Supermallet

Pearl Jam isn't a singles band, they're just a mediocre, long in the tooth album band.

hdnmickey

Ok. But curious, which bands would be singles bands? Very few bands ever put just singles anymore like we used to see in the past. Almost all bands put out full albums whether they are truly albums in the traditional sense or not. The albums seem to exist to get the singles out there.

Josh-da-man

Mostly agreed. Ten and Vs were great albums; Vitology has some good songs on it, but it's also where they started down the road to wankery.

I would disagree about them going from an album band to a singles band, though. The first two albums were strong overall albums with good singles on them, at which point they started moving away from singles (and videos) and started putting out weaker albums. I find most of their output from the mid 90s on to be dull and unlistenable.

hdnmickey

The defining point for me is they still seem to be able to write great songs when they want to. My opinion. They do that couple times every few years, but still put out full albums of filler. The fact that they still put out full albums doesn't mean they aren't really just focusing on those two singles.

Mike86

I guess it just comes down to a matter of taste. Personally I like what they've evolved into and that they don't necessarily cater to what's popular or to the mainstream. I think they had a stretch of somewhat more experimental albums (Yield, No Code, and Binaural) that maybe turned off some people and those fans may have not gone back since. I like those albums but it's because I'm a fan of them overall and can see how some might have been turned off. I think they came back in full form with 2006's self-titled album and have had solid output since.

Spiderbite

Foo Fighters is another group that I feel takes a step down after every album they release. I find their recent stuff almost unlistenable. It all sounds the same and has become monotonous.

cdollaz

As to Pearl Jam, I think that Yield and Backspacer are their best two albums and the only ones that I listen to more than once every five years or so. I have no interest in hearing Ten anymore as that one hasn't aged very well.

As for The Clash, I am OK with everything thru London Calling, but Sandanista is just too long with a lot of shit on it, and Combat Rock is mostly completely boring shit.

Mike86

Funny I'm the opposite. I think they've gotten better with time. Their older albums are good too but I find myself wanting to listen to In Your Honor and everything after as opposed to their first few. Not that I dislike those albums I just have to be in the right mood.

Ten is great but I can see getting tired of it if it was overplayed. Still though there's a ton of solid songs on that album.

Hiro11

OK, I've figured out a few here:
I find Pearl Jam really boring.
I find ELO too cheesy / goofball theatrical or something.
I find "beautiful" folky indie rock like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Iron and Wine, Father John Misty etc to be meandering, pointless and pretentious. I already made a thread about this.
I don't like anything Bjork has done since Homogenic. I'm not sure most people do though, so this isn't saying much.

slop101

Where's your thread? See, while I agree that some of those bands can be like that, I think, besides being mostly acoustic, those bands are diverse and can be so different from each other, lumping them together is like saying all rock bands are pointless and pretentious.

UAIOE

I never really liked Eddie Vedder's voice. It's not that I think he's a terrible singer or anything, I just don't like it.

Hiro11

You're right, I'm taking a broad swath. To generalize even more: there seems to be a large trend of indie acoustic folk - based music created by artist / songriters. This spans everything from the hippy-dippy Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros to gruff folk rockers like Ray Lamontagne to the lushly orchestral Fleet Foxes to the afro-stylings of the Do-Dos to thinly disguised stadium rockers Mumford & Sons. These are guys (almost always guys) who have a record collection stuffed with Nick Drake, Tha Band, Fairport Convention, Gram Parsons, Paul Simon, Michael Chapman, Richard Thompson, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, CSN, Bert Jansch, The Byrds etc. They may also have retro R&B stylings or reference 70s singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne or Harry Nilsson. Note that these references are all bands who's music I often simply love. The general trend is that they eschue electronic instruments, the vocals are front and center, Americana instrumentation predominates and the melodies are folk-based.

The problem I have is multifold:
1. The songs simply aren't there with a lot of these bands and too infreqently they're not called out for it. The style can be done well (I like a lot of Kurt Vile / Steve Gunn) but too often the folky / retro trappings are covering up for some weak melodies and arrangements that go nowhere. Critics and popular sentiment seem to forgive a lot with thse bands, stuff they're more than willing to call out in, say, pop.
2. The music often seems deliberately retro and straining to be "authentic" in a way that sounds awfully inauthentic. Lots of banjos, beards and kick drums. Sometimes I feel that these bans are straight-up ripping off older artists but in a bloodless / anodyne / "let's pray the kids haven't heard 'Deja Vu'" kind of way.
3. There's a hell of a lot of bandwagoning going on here. Whenever I sense a "movement" with signifiers ('oh, they're that type of band') I start to get a little twitchy. References become shorthand. Being "influenced" by a band becomes simply stealing an earlier (and better) band's ideas.

Mike86

Yeah I know that some people do say that. I like it as I think you can hear him conveying a lot of emotions in the way his voice sounds.