This review is from that awful KERRANG! magazine, but it's a pretty stellar one anyway.

SEATTLE GRUNGE-SURVIVORS REVIVED FOR THEIR EIGHTH ROUND SLUGFEST WITH ‘THE MAN’

PEARL JAM
PEARL JAM
(J Records)

KKKKK (5 out of 5)

ALMOST 15 years after grunge ‘broke’, and, aside from genre kick-starters Mudhnoney and a reconstituted Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam are The Last Men Standing. The truth is they’ve never even flinched. Wrongfully branded sell-outs by their Gen. X peers for being the band they were – experienced musso’s with fiery classic rawk chops, fronted by a poetic fuck-up who couldn’t choose between being Ian MacKaye of Bruce Springsteen – Pearl Jam were (and remain) a corporate rock group with a most punk rock sense of ethics, dealing with the industry on their own fiercely defended terms.
Their eponymous eighth record, their first for new label J Records, is very much a late-period Pearl Jam album. Gone are the metallic flourishes of ‘Ten’, the bolshy impetuosity of ‘Vs.', the artful self-sabotage of ‘Vitalogy’; in their place rages a timeless rock hewn from the classic twin-guitar attacks of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse, of the Rolling Stones, given a very punk rock adrenalisation. But there’s a purpose, a drive to ‘Pearl Jam’ that was lacking in 2000’s ‘Binaural’ or 2003’s ‘Riot Act’, finely troubled albums though they were.
Gossard and McCready’s molten guitars mesh electrifyingly for an opening brace of rockers shot through with air-punch hooks and Eddie Vedder’s valiant howling-into-a-hurricane croon, songs that tap into the insanely-catchy fervour of the 60’s American garage-rock to rouse their revolution rock. The in-the-red rock out’s reach boiling point with ‘Severed Hand’, a wah wah-heavy crush of epic riffage recalling Screaming Trees, before ‘Parachutes’ – a playful, lilting ballad that sounds centuries old – offers a fleeting pause for breath.
‘Unemployable’, one of Vedder’s trademark songs-for-the-dispossessed, switches the amps back on, deftly rewriting the riff to 60’s super-group Cream’s ‘Badge’ for a blast of pure 70’s radio-rock nostalgia. From here, it’s a breakneck riff-rock dash to ‘Come Back’, an aching gospel-soul lament and ‘Inside Job’, a slow-burning but ultimately uplifting that sits well amongst previous last-sighs ‘Release’, ‘Indifference’ or ‘Immortality’.
‘Pearl Jam’ is an album that captures a band who have changed and not changed. Their fire and drive remain, their abilities expanded. But there’s a rediscovered sense of urgency and purpose to these songs, a renewed ambition, a hunger for a place in rock they perhaps withdrew from a couple of albums back: for the ear of the mainstream. Bands rarely sound so alive, so eager to cut-to-the-chase on their eighth album. But doing things by the Rock Industry’s rules have never been a part of Pearl Jam’s game plan, and this album proves both their integrity and desire to kick out some jams remain gloriously intact.

DOWNLOAD:‘Severed Hand, ‘Unemployable’, ‘Come Back’.
FOR FANS OF:Audioslave, Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

STEVIE CHICK

thanks

So far we've seen 3 reviews

random french mag 4 stars
RS 4 stars
Kerrang 5 stars


Nice job boys!

Kerrang is terrible. Good review anyway. but they give 5 K's to some serious shit sometimes lol. (but not in this case )

Excellent

We need another ! in the title though

Suggestion: locked sticky in this forum containing posts with each review. No discussion in the thread, just the text of the reviews.

i think thats a really good idea

Nice review, i just had the thought of ALMOST FAMOUS running through my head while reading that. i was waiting for incendiar to pop up or how ever it you spell it...good read though. it almost sounds like the same people that bash them for doing their own thing over the years are Hoping for them to step back out n the lime light again ..

that is a good idea. Once again Ensign9 reveals himself to be the power behind the thrown. He, B, and Cal are in a 3 way battle for control of RM. the rest of us are their pawns.

I can see it cooooooooming!!!

***waits for teen mag review***

*throne

Thrown?

You're assuming B, Cal and myself are three different people.

A strange recurrance these last few albums has been a growing appreciation for the band among the Brit press. Up from...well....nothing.

Why?
Sentences like this:
Gossard and McCready’s molten guitars mesh electrifyingly for an opening brace of rockers shot through with air-punch hooks and Eddie Vedder’s valiant howling-into-a-hurricane croon, songs that tap into the insanely-catchy fervour of the 60’s American garage-rock to rouse their revolution rock.

That's actually right on.

ok

I agree with you. Who cares what a magazine that I've never heard of has to say about a band that I will always love.

That's a well-written graph.

I like to read what other people have to say about this band. I don't form my opinions based on what they say, but I think it's cool to read/see/hear things from a different perspective. Good or bad.