Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Pearl Jam
Label: Virgin EMI Records
Release: 2017
Length: 79:50
Rating: 4/5
»Let’s Play Two« is really the soundtrack to a film about the triumph of the Chicago Cubs baseball club, who in 2016, after 108 dry years, won the championship ring again by beating the Cleveland Indians in a seventh game. The recording captured on this soundtrack for the film »Let’s Play Two« comes from two consecutive concert nights Pearl Jam played at Wrigley Field in Chicago, which happens to be the Cubs’ home turf. Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, who lives in Chicago, is a die-hard fan of the team, and back in 2008 he even wrote one of his songs, All the Way, and dedicated it to the Cubs. Anyway. What I’m holding in my hand is just the soundtrack to a movie. So there’s a film too, but this time we can only talk about the music. Besides the single CD, there’s also a double vinyl edition.
It’s a selection of seventeen songs from two marathon concert nights that Pearl Jam played at Wrigley Field in August 2016. Pearl Jam are known for playing anywhere from 35 to 40 songs per show. The two gigs also had radically different set lists. Both nights sold out, which is nothing new for Pearl Jam concerts in their current era. So Cubs fans and Pearl Jam fans came together in one place.
The music selection for this disc’s soundtrack was made by the film’s director, Danny Clinch. The funny thing is that Clinch made this selection before anyone even knew the Cubs would become world champions in baseball. Clinch went to the band with his selection and asked what Pearl Jam thought of it all. The band was thrilled and just told him that it’s his film anyway and that the song selection works more than great for it. Given that the Cubs did become champions later, the whole run of songs plays like a gradual build in energy and atmosphere, resolving into its final peak with All The Way and the cover of The Beatles’ Iv’e Got a Feeling, which gives the team’s moment of triumph an extra stamp of mood and hunger. Bold and visionary, no doubt! Clinch was also quite subtle about it, gathering material from across the band’s discography, so naturally the favorites from the notorious debut »Ten« (Go, Jeremy, Black, Release, Alive) are all here, saved by Clinch for the second half of the album, when the course of events in the triumphant Cubs film swells into a dramatic climax. The set also includes two songs that don’t appear on the band’s studio albums, Crazy Mary and Black Red Yellow.
You should definitely get the film and enjoy the music and the movie together, since the emotions hit the viewer harder that way. Especially if you’re both a baseball nut and, of course, a Pearl Jam fan. Naturally, this release will sell best in the US, since baseball is way more popular there than on the old European continent. The soundtrack includes pauses between songs (cuts of pure silence, with no wave of crowd enthusiasm). That’s another thing that actually dispels the real concert magic, so the release will be really interesting only to the band’s most devoted fans, who have to own everything Pearl Jam have ever put out. It’s a shame that the recordings from both concert nights don’t come out in full. Maybe one day we’ll get that too.
The band is once again, almost proverbially, outstanding, which makes it all the more bitter that we can only enjoy this record in part and can’t follow the whole show, from the first to the last song played on 20.8. and 22.08.2016. Pearl Jam haven’t lost any of their dynamite or their incredible focus in performance, and there’s that teasing touch of mature exploration that shows how the songs grow over the years and take on a completely new and different character when the band plays them on stage in 2016, compared to when they were written. A band once again showing off all the virtues that made it universally respected, hugely in demand and highly esteemed worldwide. Vedder remains the unmistakable, distinctive wizard of a singular vocal delivery. In short, live the moment of those two magical concert nights in Chicago at Wrigley Field yourself. In the hope, of course, that they’ll one day come out as complete concert recordings.
Lineup
Eddie Vedder – vocals, guitar
Stone Gossard – guitar
Mike McCready – guitar
Jeff Ament – bass guitar
Matt Cameron – drums
Tracklist
1. Low Light
2. Better Man
3. Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
4. Last Exit
5. Lightning Bolt
6. Black Red Yellow
7. Black
8. Corduroy
9. Given To Fly
10. Jeremy
11. Inside Job
12. Go
13. Crazy Mary
14. Release
15. Alive
16. All The Way
17. I’ve Got A Feeling
