:: 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


:: Record Review

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam
(J; 2006)

Rating: 80%
Combined Rating: 74%


26-years old, Caucasian, and weaned on classic-rock radio and his father’s Who and Neil Young records. Yours truly is all of these things, and thusly, a card carrying member of Pearl Jam’s target audience. The obsession began at overnight camp in the summer of 1992, where I had a walkman with yellow Memorex copies of Mr. Big’s Lean Into It, Bon Jovi’s Keep the Faith, the Chili Peppers record with “Under the Bridge” on it, and of course, Ten. Not only did the latter serve as a welcome respite from the nonstop cabin boombox onslaught of Use Your Illusion II, but really spoke to a precocious twelve-year old attempting to distance himself from shitty AOR, but still found Nirvana to be too heavy.

Never underestimate the staying power of pre-pubescent puppy love; combined together, I’ve listened to the first four Pearl Jam albums more so than anything else in my collection. Their individual songs have created a mental tapestry of my high school and early college years that’s impossible to shake, and I’m guessing that any number of folks who came of age during the grunge era will be able to relate. As such, this makes it somewhat difficult to approach Pearl Jam’s late '90s, post-No Code output with anything approaching objectivity, but I’ve since come to accept the general consensus that both Yield (1998) and Binaural (2000) are merely decent recordings (the former being the slightly stronger of the two), while 2002's Riot Act is the closest that Pearl Jam have come to producing a truly “bad” album; its handful of decent rock songs obscured by a confusingly scattershot second half that could well have been salvaged by the inclusion of some choice B-sides, most of which surfaced on odds and sods collection Lost Dogs. While it’s to be commended that the latter half of the ‘90s found Pearl Jam essentially turning their backs on their primary fanbase in favor of expanding their decidedly 1970s classic rock sound (something which had admittedly already begun on No Code), this approach seldom found them playing to their strengths, although this in no way affected their ability to sell out hockey arenas in seconds.

Though Binaural and Riot Act were less than hot, neither was nearly awful enough to consider writing Pearl Jam off completely (cough, Make Believe, cough, cough), so I still approached their new self-titled deal with measured anticipation, as would most mid-20s guys with slow dance memories of “Black” at their Jewish Youth Group formals. And wouldn’t ‘cha know, Pearl Jam is actually the very good album that every new Pearl Jam disc is initially rumored to be, except that its “very good” in the objective use of the phrase, not just because it makes me nostalgic for clambaking my buddy’s Ford Taurus while singing “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” with four other dudes in perfect harmony.

Pearl Jam hardly breaks any new ground for Seattle’s Last Band Standing (apologies to Mudhoney), but it more or less confirms that they were sleepwalking through their last two albums. Maybe numerous gigs alongside Sleater-Kinney forced them to accept the fact that Riot Act didn’t exactly rock, but they simply sound hungrier here than they have in ages, and the difference is immediately evident on “Life Wasted,” hands down the finest opening salvo on a Pearl Jam album since Vitalogy’s “Last Exit.” “Life Wasted” is vintage Jam, featuring Eddie Vedder growling wordy verses over Stone Gossard’s speedy AC/DC-style riff leading into the sort of instantly memorable chorus that Pearl Jam could crap out in their salad days, but has recently been in short supply. Someone’s finally decided to turn up Matt Cameron’s drums too, and while its still unlikely that anyone will place him in the upper pantheon of Pearl Jam’s 17 or so drummers (Dave Abbruzzese, you can ride my high-hat anytime), his added presence in the mix and more frequent use of fills will help stave off naysayers like my college roommate who insist that he “ruined the band” (although he did pen “Evacuation”).

But it’s hardly a revelation that Pearl Jam basically lives and dies upon the pipes of one Eddie Vedder, so it’s appropriate that for the first time in years, Eddie sounds like he’s unafraid to shred his vocal chords. While he seemed perfectly content to mumble, whisper, and singspeak his way through most of Riot Act, he finally lets loose with his trademark “yeeeahhhs!” that populated his band’s best work. We all know by now that Eddie’s more than capable of carrying a tune, but he remains at his most effective when he’s going off, and the grunge kids wouldn’t have it any other way. Such growling is used to especially fine effect on any one of Pearl Jam’s first five songs, all immediate rockers, and all of which hold their own against any of Pearl Jam’s '90s singles. “Comatose” in particular bears a welcome resemblance to Vitalogy’s punk screed “Spin the Black Circle,” while “Severed Hand” is to Ten’s “Porch” as The Stooges’ “Down on the Street” is to “Loose”; an identical riff with only the accents differing, but equally powerful, if not more so.

The more measured tempos of Pearl Jam’s second half keeps the album from getting monotonous, but the slower speeds no longer instantly signify boring songs. The mid-tempo “Unemployable” might actually be Pearl Jam’s finest track, as much for its detailed Springsteen-style story of a blue collar worker as the melodic, melancholy harmonies in its chorus, and Vedder’s “whoa-oh-oh” hooks towards the end. The Beatles-y meander of “Parachutes” serves as a fine contrast to the five rockers which precede it, “Come Back” is an affecting late album waltz, and Pearl Jam concludes with the only song to which Eddie didn’t write the lyrics: the Mike McCready penned “Inside Job” -- a partially instrumental, multi-part suite with a deliberate build reminiscent of “The Long Road.” McCready’s triumphant soloing at the song’s climax serves as a fitting conclusion to the proceedings, and “Inside Job” will unquestionably become a welcome staple of Pearl Jam’s live show.

If there’s one recent album to which Pearl Jam resembles, it’s The Cure’s 2003 self-titled effort. Nobody questions that album leaned heavily on The Head on the Door for inspiration, but it was regardless their most enjoyable record since Disintegration because it was focused, and featured a band clearly unafraid to play to their strengths. A cadre of kill joys will attempt to spin Pearl Jam as the sound of an aging band staving off irrelevance by rehashing their glory days, but let’s face it; “experimentation” is wildly overrated, unless you can convince me that Wild Mood Swings kicks ass. I can’t imagine anybody who holds Pearl Jam’s classic output in high esteem not enjoying Pearl Jam, which can’t necessarily be said for their recent studio output. And while it most certainly does fill this grunge kid with nostalgia for a simpler time, it’s the first latter day Pearl Jam album that is plenty good enough to stand on its own.

David M. Goldstein :: 4 May 2006 |