Pearl Jam | No Code | Empty Bottle Evenings

Feb162015February 16, 2015February 16, 2015No Commentby Beef Wellington

Pearl Jam | No Code

Posted in Music

I’m going to continue the trend Bake started a few weeks back and talk about another classic, yet under-appreciated, Pearl Jam album… No Code. Released in 1996, two years after the widely successful Vitalogy, it’s always been one of my favorite PJ albums. No Code was a definite departure from their first three albums. There’s some strange stuff on there but I think that’s what made it such a memorable album for me. It has an eclectic and sometimes experimental vibe to it that was totally different than anything they’d released up until this point. Don’t get me wrong there are still some very ‘Pearl Jamy’ songs on No Code but there’s also a lot of stuff that at the time may have been off putting if you were expecting another ‘Vs’ or ‘Ten’.

“In my Tree”, “Red Mosquito” and “Hail, Hail” definitely stand out as the most Pearl Jam sounding tracks on the album. If you ask most people what their favorite PJ song is 80% of the time it’s going to be something off of Ten. Red Mosquito is mine. The guitar riffing will melt your face off and it will forever remind me of barreling down the road in my rusted out ’89 Oldsmobile. Fuel light on, windows down, AC broken and the radio blasting.

“Habit” and “Lukin” are more punk than anything else. “I’m Open” is mostly spoken word over spacey guitars, which I know sounds a bit out there for Pearl Jam but it works. The equally strange “Mankind” features guitarist, Stone Gossard on vocals and it’s unlike anything else they’ve done I don’t really know how to describe it. Overall, No Code may not be as concise as their previous albums but that’s sort of what makes it good. It plays like an iPod on shuffle, each song is different than the last. It was proof that Pearl Jam were a lot more than the band that I had thought they were.