No Code

Discography Diaries #10: Pearl Jam
Album #4: No Code
Genre: Alternative Rock
Date: 14/03/2022
Time: 6:45 PM

We're getting back on track with the Pearl Jam discog diaries with the bands 4th album, 1996's 'No Code' which is an album that left a bit of a retrospective divide on Pearl Jam's discography since it's the album that's often seen as the one where the band just fell off and never recovered back to the quality that their early discography had. So far I've enjoyed at least every Pearl Jam album I've heard, I've come back to a lot of tracks from them since my initial listens and all I hoped for after this point was some more worthwhile and quality tracks if we weren't gonna get another good Pearl Jam album. Well after listening to it, 'No Code' certainly has some solid tracks to its name but as a whole 'No Code' seems like a misstep for them.

Pearl Jam decided to stray even further from the sounds that they broke into the mainstream with, that was starting to seem evident on their previous album 'Vitalogy' but this time the band have just moved toward a more mellow, textured sound with less "Grunge" and Hard Rock aspects but with more of a straightforward Alternative Rock feel. There's the rare tracks here that feel like they're trying to go for something a bit more heavy but unfortunately they just don't really have the memorability or the hooks to suffice, even then music of that memorable and hook-y nature are pretty much absent throughout 'No Code'. It's a mellow album like I mentioned and it feels like it's just trying to be a slow burner but for me it just doesn't work half of the time since the tracks on here just feel so void of anything interesting, like it's produced and textured well and the general sound seems fine but everything else about it just doesn't really stand out or give way to anything interesting. Eddie Vedder still sounds like Eddie Vedder but there's rarely a moment where he hones that great, raw conviction that I liked about his voice on earlier albums, whenever he attempted to do that on here he didn't sound that great and whenever he doesn't he just sounds really soulless and bored. The instrumentation from the band is fine but it's just very bog-standard Alt Rock pastiche with nothing really that memorably catchy to hold onto, that combined with Vedder's vocals makes for a bit of a consistent bore-fest with maybe 3 or 4 decent tracks to save it from total mediocrity. Lyrically this isn't very interesting either, just.... I don't know.

I don't really have much else to say about 'No Code', it's a very average Alt Rock album all in all and it just seems like Pearl Jam are running out of the fire and intrigue of their early stuff. Like it's a fine album sonically but it's just got so little going for it. And that's it I guess..... yeah.

Best Tracks: Sometimes, 'Hail, Hail' and 'Habit'
Worst Track: I'm Open