Man, is Nick Barat getting his Christmas on or what? It's all about Christmas over at Catchdubs these days and after recommending truckloads of Christmas albums and Christmas specials and explaining why Kwanzaa is some made up shit Nick went into his studio and recorded a bunch of Christmas songs. Some of them even have a Fountains of Wayne vibe, which is always appreciated. You can find two tracks here and two other tracks here. Now, would someone give this kid a record deal already!

You know how there are some bands' CDs you just buy without checking them out first? They might not even be bands you follow in a teenybobber sort of way. It's just that you have all their other CDs and you kinda always know what you get, when you pick up one of their CDs. So even though you don't necessarily think their last couple of CDs were that great you'd still feel weird about consciously just boycotting them from now on. Especially since you haven't even heard their latest. That's how I feel about Pearl Jam.

I have all their records and have bought them when they came out. Although there are great songs on all of their last four CDs (from Vitalogy to Binaural) none of the albums stand out like the first two. And as the band got more and more conscious about not becoming Nirvana their albums got weirder and more experimental. This is probably why they're still around, but it also meant that (at least to me) these albums aren't as memorable as their first two.
But just like always I picked up the new Pearl Jam album, Riot Act, and this time around it sounds a lot more like a real album than the previous ones did. There aren't any weird little tracks in-between the real songs and there aren't any pointless noisy pseudo-punk tracks on there, either. It's just a bunch of songs, which together make the album sound a lot more homogenic than the previous ones did.

I still think Eddie Vedder has one of the most interesting voices in rock and therefore a track like Bushleaguer especially stands out, because he mixes singing with talking in that deep voice he has.
Someone asked me awhile back, who I thought were rebellious musicians these days. It's hard to find any, because I think when it comes to pushing the boundaries of noise they've already been pushed pretty much as far as they can go. When it comes to sex nothing seems to be taboo any more and when it comes to piercings, tattoos, drugs, drinking, and breaking stuff it's all been done to the point where it almost seems pointless now. So to me it seems like the only rebellion there is left in the music industry is trying to maintain artistic integrity and getting your music heard by millions at the same time.
I think Pearl Jam are a good example of someone who tries to remove the things from their career, which they feel are superfluous (interviews, videos, singles) and concentrates on putting out albums and touring. One of the reasons they have such a solid fanbase, is because they put forth an extra effort to let the fans know they appreciate them. And their work against the high ticket prices was another way of sticking it to The Man that a lot of people thought of as fairly rebellious. They're involved in politics and environmental issues, but in a more discreet way than say U2, which I think most people can appreciate.

People like Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, and Rammstein might shock more people than Pearl Jam does, but shocking uptight, self-righteous people is about as hard as getting wet in the rain, so where's the fun in that? So that kind of rebellion doesn't really impress me. But trying to stick to your guns and put out decent music even though you have a major label hounding you to get on MTV impresses me a lot more.