Pearl Jam

Being a TenClub member, I had the distinct pleasure of receiving the eponymous new Pearl Jam album on Saturday, along with a bonus CD. The bonus was a December 31, 1992 show in New York City.

The album grows on me more and more with repeated listenings. My first impression was of something that was simply too punk-like, too reliant on The Ramones for inspiration. But those were only the first few tracks, and that was only the first time through the album. After six or seven times of hearing the entire piece, I can discern so many more textures to the sounds and I appreciate the vocals in particular much more than I did initially.

The first few tracks - Life Wasted, World Wide Suicide, and Comatose - are indeed pretty hard-driving, aggressive songs. But like a good band will often do in concert, things are pulled back a bit by the the fourth, fifth, and sixth track. Waiting for a Zeppelin parallel? Okay - in 1971, the band would open with Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, and Black Dog and then pull back for the intense blues of Since I've Been Lovin' You. By the latter part of the next year, they usually added the light-and-shade/tight-but-loose dynamics of Over the Hills and Far Away after 'Since...' And that's kind of what this album invokes for me. It is, like any of the preceding Pearl Jam albums, a work meant to be savored and taken in as a whole. The band does release singles and they stand firm on their own, but when the album is taken as a complete entity - this is when the band can really shine and present the whole case to the jury.

Tracks like Marker in the Sand, with a pretty infectious chorus (which you may end up just humming along to if you don't have the lyric sheet with you), will probably help the album do better on the charts than Riot Act or Binaural, though of course chart success does not have a direct relationship with quality of the music, since both of those albums were welcome additions to the PJ catalogue as far as I'm concerned....

Other highlights for me are Unemployable, Gone, and Army Reserve. Favorites often change with repeated listenings, but those are really strong tracks for me.

The bonus disc of Pearl Jam performing on New Year's Eve is highly entertaining. Anyone expecting the sound quality of the 2000 and 2003 tour 'official bootlegs' will be disappointed, but the atmosphere is great. To remind us all of what was going on in the music world of the time, Vedder takes time out after the first song to call out Marky Mark as a no-talent hack. Pretty funny stuff. Alone - a song that didn't see too much daylight until Lost Dogs is performed, as is Dirty Frank, along with probably one of the shortest-ever versions of Daughter (no improvisational ending leading into other songs this time). Alone is a really great song and I'm genuinely curious how it didn't wind up on a regular studio album. All in all, a great show from the very young band. I saw the video for Jeremy tonight on VH1 Classic. To think that's 15 years old is very odd. We're very lucky this band is not only still 'around' but as strong as it ever was.

Turck and I will be in attendance next week at the first two shows of the PJ's '06 North American tour, in Toronto. I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm also eagerly anticipating the new Tool album, 10,000 Days, which I have not had a chance to purchase yet.