This may have been posted. I don't know how long this current issue of 'Classic Rock' has been out for. There's also a full page ad for the album in it. The photo accompanying the review is old ('Riot Act' promo shot, I think).
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Been there, done it
The sound of a band with nothing to prove and only themselves to please.
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam
J Records
Last year when the Foo Fighters were readying themselves to release their sprawling 'In Your Honor' album, band leader Dave Grohl had this to say:"Wouldn't it be great if people were to ask me what kind of music my band plays and I was able to answer, 'Just music'." Nobody really noticed those comments at the time. But how about this for an irony: what the one-time drummer of Nirvana was saying was this: 'The band I really want to be like is...Pearl Jam.'
While all this was going on, Pearl Jam themselves became the new Grateful Dead. It may seem like a world away that Pearl Jam and their debut album-the 15 million-selling 'Ten'-stood like The Beatles to Kurt Cobain's Stones in the summer ofgrunge (the term suited neither band), but while Pearl Jam's media profile may have shrunk, their core appeal hasn't.
On their last tour they were still playing such large venues as Madison Square Garden (two shows of which were recorded and formed part of their memorable ensembe of 'bootleg' live albums) and the Manchester Evening News Arena. Proof, if proof were needed, that while most of the class had faltered, Pearl Jam were very much (ahem) alive.
This, their eighth studio album, is the sound of people who are concerned with pleasing only themselves and whichever fans care to listen. This is not a group who have eight million friends on MySpace. Not a group who are likely to earn their summer spends by playing an hour on the Ozzfest or the Warped tour. It is, though, the sound of a band whose music stretches from the stubborn and the caustic (lead-off single 'Worldwide Suicide' is unlikely to be pestering the ringtone chart) to the gorgeous and the sublime (the fabulously delicate 'Parachutes,' for one). It seems typically contrary of the ageing Pearl Jam that the most immediate piece of music on this album is the 53 second-long 'Wasted Reprise,' but the overall feel here is very much their own.
RIffier, bluesier, punkier-hell, grungier-than their recent efforts, it's the sound of a band who have been there, done that and sold about 30 million t-shirts; it's the sound of a band who have nothing to prove except their own worth to themselves.
8 out of 10.
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When I read the headline and subtitle, I thought this was going to be a bad review.

me too. Now I need to dig up that sticky thread.

Gross.

relax, i'll wear gloves