(Record review: Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam [the avocado album], 2006.)
Along with Neil Young’s new album, Living with War, Pearl Jam is the most exciting new rock album of the year. (Ten years ago, Pearl Jam was Young’s backing band for Mirror Ball, and both have done well since.) Although the lyrics are typically more oblique than on Young’s album, some of Pearl Jam is dedicated to political protest—“World Wide Suicide” is pretty straightforward:
“It’s a shame to awake in a world of pain
What does it mean when a war has taken over
It’s the same everyday in a hell manmade
What can be saved, and who will be left to hold her?
The whole world–world over
It’s a worldwide suicide!”
Some of the songs tend more toward the longing and impassioned expression of Pearl Jam’s long-established style. The songwriting is outstanding and distinctive, and Mike McCreedy and Stone Gossard along with Eddie Vedder still provide the heavy, rocking rhythm guitars that are expected. The rhythm section is well established now that the long tenure of Matt Cameron on drums (after serial replacement drummers earlier in the band’s history) has given bassist Jeff Ament a consistent partner to work with.
Pearl Jam’s frequent touring and musical talent can be heard in the album as the loose feel is held together by tight rhythms and skillful playing. Eddie Vedder now sounds more like Tom Waits than the Eddie Vedder on the band’s first album, Ten. Pearl Jam might be the best rock band in the world all over again.
Many of the songs mix Pearl Jam’s claustrophobic emotional style and anxieties about the war. “Army Reserve” is one example, and it uses a distinct change from verse to chorus, going from a fast tempo and interweaving guitars to a sluggish chorus featuring rueful harmonies.
Most of the songs on Pearl Jam are heavy rockers, delivering big riffs and screaming choruses most of the way through a coherent, well-flowing album. “Gone” is a bit different, with a rocking chorus but very slow, brooding verses, featuring these lyrics that seem to be about suicide, a noted Seattle problem:
“No more upset mornings/No more trying evenings/This American dream/I am disbelieving
When the gas in my tank/Feels like money in the bank/Gonna blow it all this time/Take me one last ride
For the lights of this city/They only look good when I’m speeding/Gonna leave ’em all behind me/Cause this time
I’m gone”
Just because it was the right thing to do, Vedder also does one of his rhythm vocal outbursts at the end of “Come Back,” mixing yelling the song title and the classic “Hoo-ooo-ooo-ooo/hoo-oo-oo-ooo!”