The Mammoth Task: Album Organization and Its Direct Impact on the Listening Experience

The work may be complete. For years it has bothered, even angered me, that Pearl Jam’s fifth album, Yield, was full of amazing songwriting and some of the greatest moments in their career, but sounded like the songs were just put in as they wrote them, with no regard for theme, sonic transition, or pattern. Let’s look at their original tracklist:

1. Brain of J.
2. Faithful
3. No Way
4. Given to Fly
5. Wishlist
6.  Pilate
7. Do the Evolution
8. Red Dot (called Red Bar on Spotify)
9. MFC
10. Low Light
11. In Hiding
12. Push Me, Pull Me
13. All Those Yesterdays

The biggest obstacle to reorganizing this into a cohesive storyline is the closer “All Those Yesterdays,” which is actually two separate songs with about a minute of silence between them. Originally designed as a “hidden track,” the “Humus” second half of the song isn’t hard to fit anywhere, but the whole song’s epic length (almost 8 minutes) and the garish blank section means that it will be a sore thumb basically anywhere. But let’s set up some rules…

Rule 1: No Deleting Tracks

As much as we might just straight not like a song a band has released, they did, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I despise (and I know I’m not alone in this) the hidden track that is tacked onto the final song of an album. One, it makes that song’s inclusion in any sort of playlist or collection impossible for the standard collector/listener like you and me. Of course, if Pearl Jam wanted to include the main portion of “All Those Yesterdays” on their own Greatest Hits collection, they have the track that they can cut themselves and include wherever and however they like. Alas, we don’t have that capability so it must be dealt with as is. Two, it can ruin the album as a work of art. “All Those Yesterdays” isn’t as egregious as, say, Deftones' “MX” which has nearly 25 minutes of silence, or Beach House’s “Irene” which utterly destroys an otherwise perfect album with a gross “hidden track” addition to what should have been a perfect song. Sadly, we must work with what we have.

Rule 2: Retain as much of the original order as possible

Even in the worst cases of organization, these albums are generally produced and mastered by people whose job it is to do exactly that. Songs are mixed to crossfade into each other, sound effects move from the end of one track to the start of another, and they won’t sound good if they’re split apart. Also, sometimes even the worst offenders do have tracks that just sound good together. In our example today though, such is generally not the case. The only ones I can find are “Faithful” into “No Way” and “Pilate” into “Do the Evolution”. Those are so good together they can’t really be reorganized.

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So with our rules established, let’s dive deeper into Yield.

Pearl Jam’s fifth album came out in the height of their feud with Ticketmaster (still ongoing, by the way), and after the less-than-warm reception of their previous album No Code, despite that album having their single greatest song, “Hail, Hail.” But, unwavering, the band, and more specifically Eddie Vedder, was determined to push the boundaries of what was now certainly NOT grunge into a more emotionally complex territory. And that...means slow songs.

But gone were the days of soundscape, ethereal slow songs like “Garden” or “Black”, or even the folk-influenced “Daughter” or arena ballad “Betterman.” Instead we have the inclusion of more emo-oriented songs like “Wishlist” and the country/western “Low Light” that use an almost wall-of-sound recording technique to make them feel warmer and more saturated. This bloat will need to be dealt with thematically more so than by sound alone. There simply aren’t enough heavy, fast songs to break them all up. This means forcing the album into an “act” structure.

For Act One, I suggest we start with the slow emotional songs. We can organize them to slowly build the album to a fever pitch, rather than the opposite (slow songs last), which generally makes the second half drag after hyping the audience up in the first half. That said, I do still enjoy the idea of following up fast songs with slower ones. Despite its jarring effect in the opening slot of No Code, after a trio of grunge necessities in Pearl Jam’s first three albums, I really enjoy “Sometimes” as its opener. Let’s see which song provides the best equivalent.

My choice would be “Given to Fly,” as it not only opens acoustically, but also builds to be louder and heavier by the end. Now, “Brain of J.” is a fantastic opening track, but if it’s not in this position, it needs to be in one of equal importance, so, for now we’ll move it to the closing spot. I also, at this point, recommend moving “All Those Yesterdays” to the exact middle. Pearl Jam did us a favor, giving us an odd number of songs so there’s an exact middle spot, the seventh (13 tracks: #7 is the middle with six songs on either side). This way, the minute of silence can feel like a record flip.

As much as I like the idea of the punk “Brain of J.” as the closer, it’s construction and length leaves a bit to be desired, plus it doesn’t really summarize the sonic theme of the album. The song I think does that best is “In Hiding,” which not only builds to an optimistic fullness, but also has an amazing Zeppelin-Houses-of-the-Holy-esque guitar fade-out. Of course that means our act structure of “all slow songs” at the beginning doesn’t really work, because “In Hiding” has to end it, and something slow has to come after “Do the Evolution.”

Let’s revisit that later…

In addition to the bloated carcass that is “All Those Yesterdays,” we also have to contend with the songs that Pearl Jam seemed to neglect in their later discography: the weird shit.

While a lot of people greatly dislike the more experimental tracks from Vs. and Vitalogy (I’m looking at you, “Bugs”), they are an integral part of what Pearl Jam was in their heyday: a group of people with so many influences they needed 70s puffy sleeves to wear them all. This was reflected in their forays into country, classic rock, heavy metal, punk, psych rock, whatever “Bugs” is, and on our subject most importantly, both industrial and primitive noise. The samples and frenetic editing of “Push Me, Pull Me” and the hand-held percussion and chanting of “Red Dot” mean they need to be placed very carefully within the running of Yield in order for their sounds to feel ingrained rather than forced. What’s strange is that this wasn’t the case with the original tracklist.

“Red Dot” is by far the strangest, so it’s only use is to inflate the ego of the band creating it. Well, okay, its other use is as a palate cleanser between two otherwise disjointed songs. Basically, we’re pulling it out and setting it aside for later.

Despite the noisiness of “Push Me, Pull Me,” it's the only characteristic that makes the song stand out, as it does have a very standard song structure; essentially, it’s the chameleon. So, if it’s placed properly, it can be a palate cleanser like “Red Dot,” an emotional arc, a launch pad, or even a great set-up song. Given we have the build of “Given to Fly” opening, let’s put it in the on-deck spot. Then, considering “Faithful” was designed to follow a heavy song, we have our #3 and #4, remembering that “No Way” MUST follow “Faithful.”

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So we have 1-4 locked in, as well as 7, 12, and 13. We’ll need to look at the sonic theme and more specifically how the remaining songs end from a technical aspect. Do they cut or fade? Do they build to something or is their trajectory generally flat? Are they warm or empty in the mix? Plus, remember, “Pilate” and “Do the Evolution” have to stay together AND “Do the Evolution” has to have a slow song after it.

Right off the bat, because I still like the idea of the first half being more about building, I think “Do the Evolution” should be in the second half, which means “Pilate” must be as well. So we have 8-9 or 9-10. Now we have four songs that are unattached and could technically go anywhere. First let’s find a slow song to go after “Do the Evolution.” Immediately I thought of “Low Light” because not only is it a sonically interesting juxtaposition to hear western-inspired acoustic guitars after the harsh, gritty chug, but it's also a fairly flat song from a musical storytelling perspective (it doesn’t get faster or heavier as it goes along, or build into something different from its start).

Now we have three songs that must be attached and must be in the second half, so they’re either in the 8-10 slot, or the 9-11 slot. I think it would be WAY too jarring to hear “Brain of J.” after “Low Light” so...in comes the palate cleanser, “Red Dot.” So our entire second half is full. Act Two is complete.

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Only two songs remain and only two slots: “Wishlist” and “MFC.” Oddly, this is the best order for them to stay in, and let me explain. “No Way” is in our #4 slot. It is Pearl Jam’s best attempt at recreating the feeling of Vitalogy’s inimitable “Tremor Christ,” and of course it pales in comparison, but it is a great song on its own. But like “Tremor Christ,” it needs to be followed by a warm, emotional song, meaning “Wishlist” (which may be their biggest eyeroll moment, but remember we can’t delete). So the guitar heavy “MFC” goes in the #6 spot and actually serves as a great transition from “Wishlist” to the first half of “All Those Yesterdays.” And now Act One is complete, as is our reorganized album:

1. Given to Fly
2. Push Me, Pull Me
3. Faithful
4. No Way
5. Wishlist
6. MFC
7. All Those Yesterdays
8. Pilate
9. Do the Evolution
10. Low Light
11. Red Dot
12. Brain of J.
13. In Hiding

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In summary, in Act One we’ve kicked our album off with a strong thematic statement: emotional struggle; and built around it to lead to a great half-time closer. Act Two begins with it’s own theme: frenetic experimentation, which we’ve followed by including most of the faster, angrier tracks, as well as the most experimental one. Then we ended the album with a closer that seems to summarize a character’s journey through the album, having come out stronger on the other side.

We did this by examining arcs within song structure, production techniques, and most importantly, transitions between songs. A LOT of this is by feel, and everyone experiences music differently. You may listen to Yield in its original form and think it’s perfect. You may think the songs I chose as needing to stick together are terrible together. Music is entirely subjective. I highly recommend you try doing this on your own. Take an album you always thought didn’t FEEL quite right, and mix up the order. Try to get the songs to tell a more cohesive narrative, and listen to the transitions. There’s a lot of great albums out there hiding inside mediocre ones, all they need is a little cleaning up.

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Also, feel free to listen to our new playthrough of Pearl Jam’s Yield on Spotify, as well as others I’ve tried to improve like Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris, Crystal Castles’ Crystal Castles (II), and Drenge’s latest Strange Creatures. Yield was, by a wide margin, the most work I’ve done reorganizing an album for quality. Of course not every album is fixable this way. Like Ice-T says in Rick and Morty, “a bad song’s a bad song” and sometimes it’s just not salvageable. Nothing will fix Corey Feldman’s Angelic 2 the Core...nothing.

Era Vulgaris: Reorganized
Strange Creatures: Reorganized