Album : Backspacer
Year : 2009
Released : September 20, 2009
Producer : Brendan O'Brien
Length : 36:38
Recorded : February 16 – April 30, 2009
@ Henson Recording Studios, Hollywood, California, USA
& Southern Tracks Recording and Doppler, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
about the album :
Backspacer is the ninth studio album by the American alternative rock band Pearl Jam, released on September 20, 2009. Pearl Jam began work for the follow-up to its previous album, Pearl Jam (2006), in early 2008. In 2009, the band began to build on instrumental and demo tracks written during 2008. The music on the record features a sound influenced by pop and New Wave. The band released the album through its own label Monkeywrench Records in the United States and through Universal Music Group internationally.
The album title Backspacer is a tribute to a typewriter key that went out of use in the 1950s. Vedder is known to use typewriters when writing lyrics and letters. Vedder said, "Backspacer [means] actually you kind of have to go back and look at your mistake." Gossard said, "There's some retrospective moods on this record, where Ed is looking at both his past and his future." The album title Backspacer was also used for the name of a leatherback turtle that was sponsored by Pearl Jam for Conservation International and National Geographic's Great Turtle Race.
The artwork for the album was handled by editorial cartoonist Dan Perkins, who goes by the pen name Tom Tomorrow. Perkins spent six months working on the artwork. In 2009, Village Voice Media, publishers of 16 alternative weeklies, suspended all syndicated cartoons across their entire chain. Perkins lost twelve client papers in cities including Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City and Seattle, prompting his friend Vedder to post an open letter on the Pearl Jam website in support of the cartoonist. Perkins referred to the artwork as "dreams and memories," while Gossard referred to the artwork as a "bizarro otherworldy dreamscape." The album's cover art features nine images created by Perkins, and was revealed through a contest on the band's official website. The nine images were hidden on various websites, and the contest asked internet users to search for the websites containing the images, whereby the images would be placed on a grid on the Pearl Jam website after clicking on them. After finding all of the images, users were rewarded with a demo version of the song "Speed of Sound".
about the music & lyrics :
Musically,
- McCready said, "I'd sum it up as kind of a tight, concise, rock 'n' roll record with kind of pop or maybe new wave elements to it... It's a really quick record, but I like that element to it. I like the sparseness of the songs and the way that Brendan pulled us together and made us play as good as we could."
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic said that "prior to Backspacer, Pearl Jam wouldn't or couldn't have made music this unfettered, unapologetically assured, casual, and, yes, fun."
- Vedder stated, "The new record feels good so far—really strong and uptempo, stuff we can sink our teeth into." Gossard said, "There's plenty of ballads, too... And there's some shifts in how Jeff and Matt and I are all relating—I think this record's got a chance to sound significantly different."
- Ament said, "There's a couple of great things that Ed brought in that could be real departures for us. Whatever wave Ed caught with [his soundtrack for] Into the Wild has taken him to different places."
Lyrically, Backspacer displays a more positive outlook than the band's last few albums.
- Vedder credited the election of President Barack Obama as inspiration for the optimistic lyrics. Regarding the lyrics, Vedder said, "I've tried, over the years, to be hopeful in the lyrics, and I think that's going to be easier now."
- Gossard stated, "We've made a couple of political and pointed records, the last two in particular, and just to move away from that is great, because it allows you to go back to that when you need to and it refreshes everybody, and it comes down to a beat and a melody and your friends and a lyric and a poem and something that's important to you."
- Backspacer is the first Pearl Jam album to feature lyrics exclusively written by Vedder since the band's 1994 album, Vitalogy.
track listings
All lyrics written by Eddie Vedder.
| # | Title | Music | Length | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Gonna See My Friend" | Vedder | 2:49 | ||
| 2. | "Got Some" | Jeff Ament | 3:02 | ||
| 3. | "The Fixer" | Matt Cameron, Mike McCready, Stone Gossard | 2:58 | ||
| 4. | "Johnny Guitar" | Cameron, Gossard | 2:50 | ||
| 5. | "Just Breathe" | Vedder | 3:36 | ||
| 6. | "Amongst the Waves" | Gossard | 3:59 | ||
| 7. | "Unthought Known" | Vedder | 4:09 | ||
| 8. | "Supersonic" | Gossard | 2:40 | ||
| 9. | "Speed of Sound" | Vedder | 3:34 | ||
| 10. | "Force of Nature" | McCready | 4:04 | ||
| 11. | "The End" | Vedder | 2:58 |
"Gonna See My Friend" is a "drug song," but elaborated that the song is about going to see a friend to stay off drugs
"Got Some" is about a "drug dealer," but added that the drug the dealer is selling is actually a great rock song
"Johnny Guitar" Vedder was inspired to write the lyricsafter viewing a collage of album covers that is pasted on the bathroom wall of the band's rehearsal space. He noticed the album cover for Johnny "Guitar" Watson's 1979 album, What the Hell Is This?, and imagined a man who becomes attracted to one of the various women on the cover and then wonders why this woman would rather be one of Watson's many girlfriends instead of his only one
"Just Breathe" is "as close to a love song as we've ever gotten," and said that the subject of the song is the happiest times of people's lives when they should just take in the moment and "breathe for a minute."
"Unthought Known" concerns the human psyche
"Supersonic" is about the love for music
"Speed of Sound" is a song taken from the perspective of a man who is still sitting in a bar after everyone else has left, but he added that even though the song is sad it became more "confident" when played with the whole band
"Force of Nature" is "about the strength of one person in the relationship, when they can withstand some of the faults in another
"The End" has been described as an "aching love song
audio clips :
Professional reviews :
- Allmusic
- Entertainment Weekly (B)
- The Guardian
- Los Angeles Times
- The New York Times (mixed)
- Pitchfork Media (4.6/10)
- Q
- Rolling Stone
- Spin
- Time (favorable)
The Making Of : Backspacer
Insights Into The Inspiration Behind Backspacer
Just Breathe (Los Angeles - 30 Sep 2009, @ Gibson Amphitheater)
Lead-off Single : The Fixer
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