The Avocado Album

Track listing:

1. Life Wasted
2. World Wide Suicide
3. Comatose
4. Severed Hand
5. Marker In The Sand
6. Parachutes
7. Unemployable
8. Big Wave
9. Gone
10. Wasted Reprise
11. Army Reserve
12. Come Back
13. Inside Job


Its too bad Eddie claimed that "there ain'g gonna be any middle anymore" because that's exactly where The Avocado album fits. Right smack dab in the middle of nowhere, with a few exceptions of course. To me PJ is at its best when the lyrics are about personal struggles. Whether it be love lost or personal conflict with one's past there is no better songwriter than Ed. No one. But Ed's lyrics lack substance and are not convincing when his lyrics step into the ring of social and world politics. I'll take the internal conflict songs like Inside Job, Life Wasted, Unemployable, Gone, and Severed Hand over Ed's political mumbo jumbo.

Since I can make up my own mind about war and social issues, let's not talk about them here. Instead let's get back to the best songs of the new album. The one song I just can't stop listening to is Inside Job. Mike and Eddie nailed this one. A song like Inside Job is what makes Pearl Jam one of my favorite bands. The lyrics are literally about Mike's internal struggles with Crohn's disease over the past decade. Ed knows how to convey the pain and sacrifice of the words into positive light. Amazing.

My other favs are Life Wasted - great opener, Unemployable, and Severed Hand. Gone is another fantastic song which is getting a bad rap. Gone is an amazing mixture of influences directly from Pete Townshend and even more obviously from Bruce Springsteen. Ed describes the loneliness and desolation of driving alone in such gambling towns as Atlantic City.

I'm not one to rank albums. Thankfully or otherwise I might have to rank this one near the bottom. Instead I tend to seek out songs on albums that I like. And on the other hand I'm not afraid to discard songs I dislike. Unfortunately, this has been the trend with PJ's last two albums, Riot Act and The Avocado album. Luckily for me, Ed still has a way to connect to my inner feelings which is the reason I've loved this band for so long. Hopefully by the next album the war will be over and PJ can get back to being PJ and not some sortof half full political band.