FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Fifty-Two: Pearl Jam
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I wanted to feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images
the Seattle-formed band, Pearl Jam, as their astonishing debut album, Ten, turns thirty on 27th August. It is amazing to think that Ten launched Pearl Jam into the world all that time ago! They are still going strong today – let’s hope they have many more years left in them! In terms of biography, here is some more information:
“Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The band's line up consists of founding members Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), as well as Matt Cameron (drums), who joined in 1998. Keyboardist Boom Gaspar has also been a touring/session member with the band since 2002. Drummers Jack Irons, Dave Krusen, Matt Chamberlain, and Dave Abbruzzese are former members of the band. Pearl Jam outsold many of their contemporary alternative rock bands from the early 1990s, and are considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, being dubbed as "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s".
Formed after the demise of Gossard and Ament's previous band, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with their debut album, Ten, in 1991. Ten stayed on the Billboard 200 chart for nearly five years, and has gone on to become one of the highest-selling rock records ever, going 13x platinum in the United States. Released in 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold over 950,000 copies in its first week of release, setting the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release at the time. Their third album, Vitalogy (1994), became the second-fastest-selling CD in history at the time, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week.
One of the key bands in the grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam's members often shunned popular music industry practices such as making music videos or participating in interviews. The band also sued Ticketmaster, claiming it had monopolized the concert-ticket market. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame."
Pearl Jam had sold more than 85 million albums worldwide by 2018, including nearly 32 million albums in the United States by 2012, making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. Pearl Jam was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 in its first year of eligibility. They were ranked at No. 8 in a reader poll by Rolling Stone magazine in its "Top Ten Live Acts of All Time" issue. Throughout its career, the band has also promoted wider social and political issues, from pro-choice sentiments to opposition to George W. Bush's presidency. Vedder acts as the band's spokesman on these issues”.
To celebrate their debut album turning thirty this year and nod to their amazing work, this A Buyer’s Guide is all about…
PHOTO CREDIT: Danny Clinch/Universal Music Group
THE incredible Pearl Jam.
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The Four Essential Albums
Ten
Release Date: 27th August, 1991
Label: Epic
Producers: Rick Parashar/Pearl Jam
Standout Tracks: Even Flow/Alive/Jeremy
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pearl-jam/ten-9e1b679d-3727-4559-82cb-4824c9250af7
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5B4PYA7wNN4WdEXdIJu58a?si=H4Q_sMiIQNy5poCYuMhs0Q
Review:
“Pearl Jam’s anguish was offset by their sex appeal—the throaty, virile belting; the Townshend-inspired guitar heroism; the strutting grooves. When, on the 1992 MTV Unplugged performance included here, the brooding Vedder doffs his baseball cap and carpets the stage with his curls, the female roar is ecstatic. But while there’s something of the alpha male about Vedder, his heroes on Ten are a strictly beta crowd. The album is full of maladjusted wimps beset by corrupt adults, from the girl on “Why Go” whose nonconformist streak is stifled by psychiatrists to the neglected classroom suicide on “Jeremy” to the boy on “Alive” whose mother lies to him about his dad’s identity, then invites him to bed. “Alive” is semi-autobiographical: The incest is fiction, but Vedder’s stepdad did masquerade as his real father for years. This early deception put the singer on his lifelong mission of defending the little guy, Ten’s Catcher in the Rye vision of kid-saving giving way to Kosovar-refugee benefits and songs about abused wives and police brutality. The band’s refusal to become massive rock stars stemmed, it seems, from Vedder’s constitutional refusal to become the enemy.There are four versions of this reissue, two worth exploring. For a smaller price tag, you get the Unplugged DVD, six unreleased bonus tracks and a full-album remix by longtime PJ fave Brendan O’Brien. His new take scythes through the original, revealing growls and guitars long obscured—sometimes it’s distracting, but often it lends the songs a newfound jolt. There’s also a $140 edition that adds four vinyl LPs, a reproduction of Vedder’s old notebook and a facsimile of his original demo cassette. It’s a relic and a shrine, commemorating a bygone time when music was something you caressed, dusted off and (good riddance) rewound.Ultimately, Pearl Jam’s plan worked. By the end of the ’90s they’d purged their fan base of everyone but diehards who argue about which bootleg performance of “Corduroy” is superior (“6/19/00 in Ljubljana, dude!”). Still, despite their best efforts, they could never quite make Ten go away. The album birthed many multi-platinum imitators, and, from Live to Creed, many of them made some very bad music. But that only highlights the virtuoso balance of indignation, heart and bluster that Pearl Jam pulled off her” – Blender (Deluxe Edition)
Choice Cut: Black
Vs.
Release Date: 19th October, 1993
Label: Epic
Producers: Brendan O'Brien/Pearl Jam
Standout Tracks: Animal/Daughter/Rearviewmirror
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pearl-jam/vs-0e1c37b2-2a43-4c89-b779-d2a84150d9de
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3BSOiAas8BpJOii3kCPyjV?si=OWjYB18zTSatRETiPbpqAw
Review:
“Pearl Jam are explosive. Few American bands have arrived more clearly talented than this one did with "Ten;" and "Vs." tops even that debut. Terrific players with catholic tastes, they also serve up singer-lyricist Eddie Vedder. With his Brando brooding and complicated, tortured masculinity, he's something we haven't seen in a while a heroic figure. Better still, he's a big force without bullshit; he bellows doubt.
Like Jim Morrison and Pete Townshend, Vedder makes a forte of his psychological-mythic explorations he grapples with primal trauma, chaos, exultation. As guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready paint dense and slashing backdrops, he invites us into a drama of experiment and strife. "Animal," "Daughter" and "Blood," their terse titles urgently poetic, are songs of a kind of ritual passion, tapping into something truly wild.
And when Vedder roars, "Saw things . . . clearer . . . /Once you were in my rearviewmirror," it seems that it's not only some personal sorrow that he's willing himself to tear beyond but the entire weight of the past itself.
Voicing the dreams and furies of a generation, Nirvana rock brilliantly in the now. They suggest a visceral understanding of rehab rites of passage and gen der overlap, stardom fantasy and punk nihilism. Their themes parallel both David Cronenberg's "venereal horror" and David Lynch's atonal wit, and their inchoate striving after feeling combats the blithe vacuity of outdated Warhol-style hipness. Blank generation? Not really, just young people fighting for some kind of meaning” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: Go
Vitalogy
Release Date: 22nd November, 1994
Label: Epic
Producers: Brendan O'Brien/Pearl Jam
Standout Tracks: Not for You/Nothingman/Corduroy
Buy: https://store.hmv.com/store/music/vinyl/vitalogy
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5pd9B3KQWKshHw4lnsSLNy?si=L2qK5B1WQAuOhWUz-2l8qA
Review:
“It isn’t merely in its music that the album is wacked out. Everywhere Vedder turns, something or someone is suffocating him, confining him, and his don’t-fence-me-in twitchiness reaches new levels of paranoia on Vitalogy (named after a dubious quasi-medical textbook published earlier this century, portions of which are reprinted in the album’s overloaded booklet). In ”Not for You,” he sits down at a table for two and has to leave because it’s too cramped. In ”Bugs,” he sees ”bugs in my ears/there are eggs in my head/bugs in my pockets/bugs in my shoes” and slowly flips out. Even in what appears to be a love song, Vedder snaps, ”You’re finally here and I’m a mess…Can’t let you roam inside my head.”
Well, at least he’s being honest. Three albums on, Vedder doesn’t sound any happier or any more at peace with himself. His sentiments can be as vague as fortune cookies (”He who forgets will be destined to remember,” ”The smallest oceans still get big big waves”). More often, he’s so bottled up that his lyrics sputter out in half-finished, inarticulate gushes; the sulking, lashing ”Immortality” appears to be a Big Statement song about death, yet you’d never know that from its obtuse lyrics. Even childhood isn’t a respite anymore. Vedder proclaims ”all that’s sacred/comes from youth” in one song, but ”Foxymophandlemama” ends with an adult (a therapist?) asking one of the ”children” if he had considered suicide. The child responds, almost playfully, ”Yes, I believe I would.” And then the album ends.
From the beginning, Vedder’s return-to-the-womb scream has clearly connected with a lot of people, particularly those who might feel disenfranchised or discombobulated. That fact is sadly telling (and understandable), but it’s also disquieting. Kurt Cobain had a similar mind-set, but he was also self-deprecating and had a sense of humor. Vedder doesn’t allow himself those feelings; he seems incapable of expressing joy or happiness, or even figuring out why he can’t. For his torment, he’s become a hero and icon. We cheer his every mumbled, incoherent statement and live vicariously through his pain. So, despite its musical advances, Vitalogy leaves an odd, unsettling aftertaste. You walk away from it energized, but wondering what price Eddie Vedder, and Pearl Jam, will ultimately pay for it. B+” – Entertainment Weekly
Choice Cut: Spin the Black Circle
Pearl Jam
Release Date: 2nd May, 2006
Label: J
Producers: Adam Kasper/Pearl Jam
Standout Tracks: Life Wasted/Comatose/Gone
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pearl-jam/pearl-jam
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5PY2mZGCOMezmWH7hiCwFH?si=Js2Y1AatQbSTsyefvhfuvg
Review:
“Nearly 15 years after Ten, Pearl Jam finally returned to the strengths of their debut with 2006's Pearl Jam, a sharply focused set of impassioned hard rock. Gone are the arty detours (some call them affectations) that alternately cluttered and enhanced their albums from 1993's sophomore effort, Vs., all the way to 2002's Riot Act, and what's left behind is nothing but the basics: muscular, mildly meandering rock & roll, enlivened by Eddie Vedder's bracing sincerity. Pearl Jam has never sounded as hard or direct as they do here -- even on Ten there was an elasticity to the music, due in large part to Jeff Ament's winding fretless bass, that kept the record from sounding like a direct hit to the gut, which Pearl Jam certainly does. Nowhere does it sound more forceful than it does in its first half, when the tightly controlled rockers "Life Wasted," "World Wide Suicide," "Comatose," "Severed Hand," and "Marker in the Sand" pile up on top of each other, giving the record a genuine feeling of urgency. That insistent quality and sense of purpose doesn't let up even as they slide into the quite beautiful, lightly psychedelic acoustic pop of "Parachutes," which is when the album begins to open up slightly. If the second half of the record does have a greater variety of tempos than the first, it's still heavy on rockers, ranging from the ironic easy swagger of "Unemployable" to the furious "Big Wave," which helps set the stage for the twin closers of "Come Back" and "Inside Job." The former is a slow-burning cousin to "Black" that finds Pearl Jam seamlessly incorporating soul into their sound, while the latter is a deliberately escalating epic that gracefully closes the album on a hopeful note -- and coming after an album filled with righteous anger and frustration, it is indeed welcome. But Pearl Jam's anger on this eponymous album is not only largely invigorating, it is the opposite of the tortured introspection of their first records. Here, Vedder turns his attention to the world at large, and while he certainly rages against the state of W's union in 2006, he's hardly myopic or strident; he's alternately evocative and specific, giving this album a resonance that has been lacking in most protest rock of the 2000s. But what makes Pearl Jam such an effective record is that it can be easily enjoyed as sheer music without ever digging into Vedder's lyrics. Song for song, this is their best set since Vitalogy, and the band has never sounded so purposeful on record as they do here, nor have they ever delivered a record as consistent as this. And the thing that makes the record work exceptionally well is that Pearl Jam has embraced everything they do well, whether it's their classicist hard rock or heart-on-sleeve humanitarianism. In doing so, they seem kind of old fashioned, reaffirming that they are now thoroughly outside of the mainstream -- spending well over a decade galloping away from any trace of popularity will inevitably make you an outsider -- but on their own terms, Pearl Jam hasn't sounded as alive or engaging as they do here since at least Vitalogy, if not longer” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: World Wide Suicide
The Underrated Gem
Riot Act
Release Date: 12th November, 2002
Label: Epic
Producers: Adam Kasper/Pearl Jam
Standout Tracks: Love Boat Captain/I Am Mine/You Are
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pearl-jam/riot-act
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7AOWw68DEPnDmTpquZw8bG?si=ZbgJxy4uTum4MVXx3WG4Uw
Review:
“The moment that you realise the new Foo Fighters single is as good as the Great Lost Nirvana Classic that Lady Courtney’s promised is the moment that you realise that what they called ‘grunge’ – as concept, sound, nostalgia trip – is spiritually dead and buried. Pearl Jam always seemed eager to slip the genre’s yoke. But their string of irrelevant mid-’90s albums defined The Grunge Retirement: a tediously rockist mentality characterised by Neil Young solos, pointless live records and hippy proselytising. Yet Pearl Jam did not go down with grunge’s ship. 2000’s brooding ‘Binaural’ was steeped in rock classicism in the best possible way. And this, the band’s seventh studio album, goes deeper still. Right now, The Music might dabble in the ancient arts Led Zeppelin once practised, but Pearl Jam sound like full-on high priests. Mike McCready’s guitar solos are accomplished but never overwrought, and the awesome rhythm section of Jeff Ament and Matt Cameron tether Stone Gossard’s primal amp roar down into songs of undeniable might.
Straight out of the trap, there’s two that rank with Pearl Jam‘s best. ‘Save You’ is a magic carpet ride of bucking riffery and thrashing bead-shakers. Meanwhile, the Mellotron-ridden ‘Love Boat Captain’ is a gorgeous example of Pearl Jam‘s gnostic expansiveness done right, Vedder singing “To the universe I don’t mean a thing/ And there’s just one word I still believe/ It’s love”. Complaining that Eddie Vedder is morose is like complaining that Johnny Cash has a mostly dark wardrobe. Get over it: it’s what he does. His range has expanded, though: with a touch of Michael Stipe’s cryptic wisdom, ‘You Are’ and ‘I Am Mine’ unfurl grandly, while ‘Bushleager’ fields a spoken-word attack against Dubya, Vedder growling like William Burroughs: “He’s not a leader, he’s a Texas leaguer/ Swinging for the fence, lucky he got a strike”.
Pearl Jam sound content, and usually that’s the kiss of death to a rock band. Those waiting for another record as challenging as ‘Vitalogy’ will be left disappointed. But ‘Riot Act’ is the sound of a band entering a powerful middle-age. They still deserve your attention” – NME
Choice Cut: Save You
The Latest Album
Gigaton
Release Date: 27th March, 2020
Labels: Monkeywrench/Republic
Producer: Josh Evans
Standout Tracks: Superblood Wolfmoon/Take the Long Way/Retrograde
Buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigaton-VINYL-Pearl-Jam/dp/B083T63QXM
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5bTixyz2GHx1YUqNUdzfut?si=hhL3TbDwSrK_CowJA0hm_Q
Review:
“Elsewhere, Gigaton sounds more vital and unexpected. In the six years since their last studio album, a lot has happened in US politics and it’s tempting to suggest that might have something to do with it. Always good at rabble-rousing and nothing if not politically committed, you get the feeling that a certain urgency about getting their message across might have given Pearl Jam’s music a renewed sense of vigour. The burst of widdly-woo guitar shredding on Superblood Wolfmoon is precisely the kind of thing that would have caused Kurt Cobain to roll his eyes, but the track comes at you with such force that it’s irresistible. The pump organ of closer River Cross recalls sometime Pearl Jam collaborator Neil Young’s use of the same instrument, but its wheezing, hymnal quality is a perfect backdrop for Eddie Vedder’s impassioned vocal: punctuated by bass guitar and thundering drums, it keeps threatening to surge into lighters-out territory, but never takes the leap, as if to underline that the song’s message of optimism is cautious at best. Quick Escape does a lot of Pearl Jammy stuff – big soaring chorus, more guitar histrionics – but sets them against an atmosphere that’s authentically spacey and strange, as again befits lyrics that have taken on an entirely unwitting kind of currency. If you’re going to release a song about the human race facing such catastrophe that escaping to another planet feels appealing, now is probably the moment to do it.
The same impulse seems to have fuelled a desire to make music that reaches beyond the diehards. Dance of the Clairvoyants pitches angular post-punk guitar against limber electro-pop. Moreover, it does it really well. Never Destination stirs a small but nevertheless noticeable dash of impassioned soul influence into its punky stew, and Buckle Up is appealingly warm, off-kilter psychedelia with another lyric about uncertain futures: “Do no harm,” it counsels, “and buckle up.”
As for the rabble-rousing message, it’s more potent and engaging than you might expect. You don’t have to be a Breitbart subscriber to feel a little deflated by the prospect of another album telling you Donald Trump is an arsehole: unless your tastes in American rock tend to Ted Nugent and Kid Rock, it’s a point you’ve heard umpteen times. It says something about Pearl Jam’s renewed dynamism that they’ve found original ways of putting it. The humans departing earth on Quick Escape wearily complain about “the lengths we had to go … to find someplace Trump hadn’t fucked up yet”. Seven O’Clock’s gag about Trump as an indigenous American leader, “Sitting Bullshit”, is pretty good: the way the lyric slips from poking fun to a haunting fantasy of him as a wounded, depleted force, “throwing punches with nothing to hit” even better. Almost 30 years into a career you would once have put money on ending within five, Gigaton suggests Pearl Jam might still be around long after Trump is a distant memory” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Dance of the Clairvoyants
The Pearl Jam Book
Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense
Author: Ronen Givony
Publication Date: 29th October, 2020
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Synopsis:
“There has never been a band like Pearl Jam. The Seattle quintet has recorded eleven studio albums; sold some 85 million records; played over a thousand shows, in fifty countries; and had five different albums reach number one. But Pearl Jam's story is about much more than music. Through resilience, integrity, and sheer force of will, they transcended several eras, and shaped the way a whole generation thought about art, entertainment, and commerce. Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense is the first full-length biography of America's preeminent band, from Ten to Gigaton. A study of their role in history - from Operation Desert Storm to the Dixie Chicks; "Jeremy" to Columbine; Kurt Cobain to Chris Cornell; Ticketmaster to Trump - Not for You explores the band's origins and evolution over thirty years of American culture. It starts with their founding, and the eruption of grunge, in 1991; continues through their golden age (Vs., Vitalogy, No Code, and Yield); their middle period (Binaural, Riot Act); and the more divisive recent catalog. Along the way, it considers the band's activism, idealism, and impact, from "W.M.A." to the Battle of Seattle and Body of War. More than the first critical study, Not for You is a tribute to a famously obsessive fan base, in the spirit of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. It's an old-fashioned - if, at times, ambivalent - appreciation; a reflection on pleasure, fandom, and guilt; and an essay on the nature of adolescence, nostalgia, and adulthood. Partly social history, partly autobiography, and entirely outspoken, discursive, and droll, Not for You is the first full-length treatment of Pearl Jam's odyssey and importance in the culture, from the '90s to the present” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/not-for-you/ronen-givony/9781501360688