Artist: Pearl Jam
Label: J Records
Release: 2006
Rating: 3.5/5
The first obvious question that comes up with the release of the new Pearl Jam album, self-titled “Pearl Jam”, is: “How come it’s only the eighth album, fifteen years into the band’s career, that a studio album carries the self-titled name, when in most cases that kind of naming is the domain of the debut?”
The simplest explanation for this phenomenon would be that the band is going through a rebirth. After the stormy nineties, when they achieved everything there is to achieve in the music world and took the crown of the Seattle grunge scene of the day, the band is basically starting over, while that crown has also secured them a place as a sort of eternal “Grateful Dead” of the grunge era.
So, four years after their last studio album and almost six years after the tragic day at Roskilde Festival, where nine devoted Jam fans lost their lives, Eddie Vedder and the gang have sorted out some of their business troubles, put out the fire between them (or buried the hatchet, if you like) and released a super record that they simply named “Pearl Jam”. If nothing else, with this move the guys showed the world and a few million loyal fans worldwide that the old cats still have a few atoms of strength left and have no intention of giving up. Fifteen years together, 60 million albums sold and the grueling, megalomaniac tours that come with it are bound to take their toll, and Pearl Jam are no exception. On top of that, this is also a generational leap, and Pearl Jam know it well. When it comes to chameleon-like qualities they’re something special in the music world, and that’s the very essence and driving force that still keeps the band going.
Looking at the album from the outside, the cover itself doesn’t hint at anything special: it’s just a cross-section of an avocado on a blue background. Freud would have a laugh at that, but let’s get on with the review. Broadly speaking, the album is about war, life and death, love and loss, without any sporty – soccer-style anthem. Those of you who are close to Pearl Jam will say, nothing new, they’ve been singing about that for the last fifteen years. But watch out! The guys have matured in the meantime, and you can feel it while listening to the album. In a word, since the album Ten the Jam have never sounded this hard and direct. Compared to this one, Ten was more elastic, with Jeff Ament’s groovy bass line setting the main tone, while on the new Pearl Jam it’s drummer Matt Cameron who leads the way, his punchy drumming so Neil Young-esque that you’ll check more than once whether your record is skipping 😉 The special punch and message can be felt in the first stretch of the album, where the fully controlled “Life Wasted,” “World Wide Suicide,” the AC/DC-flavored “Comatose,” “Severed Hand,” and “Marker in the Sand” pile up one on top of the other, adding up their power and tempo and giving the album a sense of urgency. That feeling doesn’t fade as we move into the second half either, where the Jam calm us down with the lovely, slightly psychedelic acoustic pop number “Parachutes”. Even though the second half of the album has more variations in tempo, the album remains hard and relentless, with a clearly defined political message that Vedder & Co. have never hidden or been ashamed of. From there the album stretches from the cocky “Unemployable” all the way to the raging “Big Wave”, which together with the closing twins “Come Back” and “Inside Job” rounds out the whole. The latter is a fading cousin of the well-known “Black” and, if we talk about bringing a spiritual side into Pearl Jam’s music with that song, “Inside Job” gives us an elegantly colored, escalating, epic finale to the album.
The album is a real shot in the arm and the opposite of Pearl Jam’s early records, which were soaked in servile righteousness and political messaging in general. In this respect Pearl Jam can only be compared to bands like U2 and the like. On their latest, Vedder doesn’t stay rigidly short-sighted but turns his attention to the global level. His anger stays awakeningly aimed mostly at the “United Nations of the world” of 2006. That gives “Pearl Jam” that resonant note which is missing in the expressiveness of most protest bands of the new decade. Pearl Jam are one of a kind among such bands, and they’re the only ones able to keep a precisely colored and defined musical note without any distracting factor in Vedder’s lyrics. Song for song, this is the best record since “Vitalogy”, and the band has never sounded so convincing and determined. What can you do, Pearl Jam are exceptional, and so is the conviction with which they embraced what they do best: blending classic hard rock with heartfelt humanitarianism. They may sound a bit old-fashioned doing it, but at the same time they’ve proven to the world and to themselves that they’ve finally shaken off the last traces of the Seattle mainstream scene, after spending more than a decade trying to stay as far away as possible from any kind of popularity, which in the process landed them in the “outsider” category.
Listening to the album, we can safely say that Pearl Jam haven’t sounded this alive and compelling since the Vitalogy era, or even longer, as they do on the simply titled “Pearl Jam”.
Lineup
Eddie Vedder – vocals, guitar
Mike McCready – guitar
Stone Gossard – guitar
Jeff Ament – bass
Matt Cameron – drums
Production
Adam Kasper & Pearl Jam
Tracklist
1. Life Wasted (3:54)
2. World Wide Suicide (3:29)
3. Comatose (2:19)
4. Severed Hand (4:30)
5. Marker in the Sand (4:23)
6. Parachutes (3:36)
7. Unemployable (3:04)
8. Big Wave (2:58)
9. Gone (4:09)
10. Wasted (Reprise) (0:53)
11. Army Reserve (3:45)
12. Come Back (5:29)
13. Inside Job (7:08)
Album length: 49:00
