It's dominated by sad, personal tales, often about people unable to control their lives, and the music doesn't often invite you to explore Eddie Vedder's musings. Pearl Jam's a good band. The rockers on Binaural are well played and a few of them are quite good, even if they feel familiar. It's one of the few times on Binaural that Vedder and the band seem fully engaged. Jeff Ament's Gods' Dice, about being controlled by a higher power, is pretty basic but makes good use of the band's ability to make big, powerful music for an energizing straight ahead song like No Code's Hail Hail.
Insignificance is fairly routine hard rock, but it has good, angry lyrics.
The other rockers are not very exciting or much fun. Vedder's writing is pretty routine. On Evacuation, things are getting so bad that it's time to flee. Evacuation is an O.K. rocker with a sledge hammer guitar riff but it never really goes anywhere. Breakerfall is a hard rocker.