KERRANG!

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


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Rolling Stone

Wartime, for everything else that's wrong with it, brings out the best in Pearl Jam: the power-chord brawn, contrary righteousness and metallic-KO songwriting sense. The band's second and third albums, 1993's bluntly titled Vs. and 1994"s Vitalogy are as good as modern rock-in-opposition gets: shotgun guitars, incendiary bass and drums, and Eddie Vedder's scalded-dog howl, all discharged in backs-to-the-wall- fury and union. This album, Pearl Jam's first studio release in four years and their best in ten, is more of that top electric combat. With a difference. The Pearl Jam on Pearl Jam is not the band that famously responded to overnight platibum by going to war with the world. Vedder, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron are now fully at war in the world, unrepenetant veterans of the campaign trail and right-wing crucifixion who have made the most overtly partisan - and hopeful - record of their lives. For Vedder, the 2004 election was not a total loss. "Why swim the channel just to get this far?/Halfway there why would you turn around? he demands in the first song, Life Wasted, in a ragged, run-on bark. And it's all forward ho from there. As immediate and despairing as breaking news from Baghdad - World Wide Suicide opens with a newspaper casualty report - Pearl Jam is also as big and brash in fuzz and backbone as Led Zeppelin's Presence. That's not just rock critic shorthand. However you define grunge music, Pearl Jam didn't play it. They were, from jump street, a classic rock band, building their bawl with iron-guitar bones and an arena vocal lust that came right from Zeppelin, early-seventies Who and mid-Eighties U2 (with distortion instead of The Edge's glass-guitar harmonics.) But Pearl Jam have not been this consistently dirty and determined in the studio since they subbed for Crazy Horse on Neil Young's 1995 Mirror Ball. I own two compelte tours worth of Pearl Jam's official bootleg series, and this record's five song blast off (Life Wasted, WWS, Comatose, Severed Hand, Marker In The Sand) is right up there in punch and crust with my favorite nights in that live series (Seattle 11/6/00 and New Orleans 4/8/03, to name two.) And whenever the guitars take over, which is alot - Gossard and McCready's slugging ACDC like intro to Life Wasted, McCready's wild wah-wah ride in Big Wave, the way he cracks Vedder's gloom in Parachutes like heat lighting - it reminds me that Gossard and McCready deserved to be on our 2003 "Greatest Guitarists" list. Permit me to admit it here: I screwed up. That's more confession than you'll ever hear out of the Bush White House. But the talk-show pit bulls will be dissapointed to find that Vedder doesn't waste his breath naming names here, except for glancing reference to "the president" in WWS. There is blame, but it's spread all around. "Now you got both sides/Claiming Killing In God's name/ But God is nowhere to be found. conveniently" Vedder sings on Marker In The Sand, from inside Gossard and McCready's crossfire saturation bombing of Ament and Cameron. There is dreed too - lots of it. "Army Reserve" is a midtemp elegy for the real Army Reserve, the wives and children who serve in worry, behind the lines. (The dark vocal harmonies crowding Vedder's low, grainy vocal feel like ghosts in waiting.) And "Unemployable" is just half a story, with a soaring-melancholy chorus. The song ends before the guy with the pink slip can find a new job. But Vedder's opening scene - the fist with the big gold ring that saves JESUS SAVES, flying with helpless anger into a metal locker - is lesson enough. In multinational capitialism run riot, the bottom line doesn't care about religion or party line. We're all expendable. And we're all accountable. The politics on Pearl Jam are not those of right or left but of engagement and responsibility. In Life Wasted Vedder at least partly mocks his old self, the one that wore success and leverage that came with it like sackcloth: "Darkness comes in waves, tell me/Why invite it to stay?" But there is only determined optimism in Pearl Jam's superb finish, "Inside Job." The song starts quietly, then climbs and peaks like a combination of "Stairway To Heaven, and The Who's "The Song Is Over" - a mirror image of Vedder's stumble through each line from night into light. "I will not lose my faith" he promises under thunderclap guitars, with such assurance that even if you don't agree with anything else on the record, you believe him. THEN UNDER KEY TRACKS FROM THIS ISSUE'S REVIEWS: WORLD WIDE SUICIDE - Who cares if the world is going down the toilet? Eddie Vedder got his mojo back!

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From the french magazine Rock&Folk: translated by Mastaflatch

PEARL JAM
"Pearl Jam"

Among all the major early-nineties grunge bands, Pearl Jam is the last since a while. Paying the price of a frenzied medatic retreat, Eddie Vedder's band managed to not explode. Even if they most likely don't give a fuck, their place in the rock world, often renewed by many underground acts takes its answer in their eponymous eighth album, their first in four years. The first tracks tell us: no compromise. None of Pearl Jam albums had known such an abrasive and radical opening. Blame it on George Bush to have assured this band's inspiration for years. "Life Wasted", "Worldwide Suicide" - titles are eloquent and the guitars raging. Stone Gossard, by the amazing pounding of Matt Cameron, throws revolted riffs - 15 years of neglection behind - we now catch its originality. Excellent news: Mike Mcready is again the secret weapon of their first two albums - full with flaming wah-wah solos everywhere. On the first five tracks, they manage to keep an awesome equilibrum; 70's structures and punk energy with a bit of melodies. In the midst of the album, accoustic guitars come in (except for the ravaging "Big Wave"). But Pearl Jam ends it with strenght and finesse: "Come Back", a slow song that swells with joy and "Inside Job", a crepuscular roaming suddenly unnerved with electric discharges. Even tussed in their corner - they were right to go on.
4 stars (out of 5)

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Entertainment Weekly

THE REVIEWS: MUSIC
War Stories Pearl Jam's serious-minded new album brings the big guns.
CHRIS WILLMAN

28 April 2006
Entertainment Weekly
136

Pearl Jam Pearl Jam (J) Rock

The announcement that Pearl Jam have a new single called "World Wide Suicide" is the sort of thing to inspire both hope and apprehension. Their last stab at topicality, 2002's nose-thumbing "Bushleaguer," didn't exactly establish Eddie Vedder as a go-to guy for geopolitical wisdom. On the other hand, his passionate howl seems more valuable now, pitted against the navel-gazing emo whine that's commandeered the landscape. Tell us about the war, Eddie! we might even nervously ask, knowing that, in a world full of boys sent to do a man's job of rocking, Pearl Jam can still pull off gravitas.

But what we really want--and what they've been stingy with for a decade--is fast, furious, breakneck gravitas. Surprise: They stand and deliver on this belatedly eponymous barnstormer, the seriously hopped-up effort fans have been pining for since Vitalogy. Not that it's a perfect Ten. Vedder's lyrics can still be as clumsy as heartfelt, and the album's probably shorter on band perennials than punky firepower. But a shocking late-career freneticism predominates, married to a seriousness of purpose that is no longer high on pesky moral superiority.

What's got them fired up? War collateral, naturally ("Army Reserve"); the impersonality of big business ("Unemployable"); separation due to divorce or death ("Come Back"). But mostly, with apologies to Dylan Thomas, they sound like a band successfully raging against the dying of their own relevance...as well as, you know, the machine. B+

DOWNLOAD THIS: "Comatose"

ART DISS

Pearl Jam fans might like avocado in their guacamole, but judging from online blasts, they sure don't like it on the band's new CD. Designer Eddie Vedder hasn't commented on why an avocado, but bassist (and usual CD artist) Jeff Ament digs it: "I love its pop- art element. We could go to a lot of dark places. Ed went the other way." Given Vedder's support of the Green Party, could the art refer to the party's Avocado Declaration manifesto?


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Total Guitar

Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam (J)

who they? - the only seattle band to have outlived grunge (by around 13 years), it's hard to imagine their debut ten is now almost classic rock age, a fact which makes us feel very old indeed. this is their eigth studio album and their first since splitting with long-term label Epic.

Any good? - dig out your check shirts and DM boots boys and girls, grunge is back with a vengeance! after going all country on last album Riot Act (2002), Eddie Vedder & Co have rediscovered what made them such a fucking awesome band in the first place - bags of riffs, attitude and a glut of singalong choruses. Pearl Jam is packed with all three. Gone is Vedder's shoe-gazing, introspective mumbling. he's completely shrugged off his messiah complex, surfed through the band's back catalogue, picked out the best parts and used them as inspiration. it tails off a bit towards the end (come back sounds like standard black crowes blues fare) but overall it's like they have been fitted some kind of pacemaker that's jolted them from a nigh on eight-year snooze!

Must hear? - The sloppy powerchords and Mike McCready's jagged solo on comatose, their punkiest track since spin the black circle, and the soaring refrain of marker in the sand that has to feature their catchiest chorus since daughter all the way back in 1993!

Why buy? - It's easily Pearl Jam's best record since 1998's Yield. and with Alice In Chains reforming this year, could we be seeing a grunge resurgence this summer?


By Nick Cracknell

9 out of 10


for fans of: the who, the police, brad.

also try: stone temple pilots - core.


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From Portland State University's Daily Vanguard

The vitalogy of Pearl Jam
After a four-year recording hiatus the long-awaited eighth album from the Seattle band proves they can still rock
By Brian Smith
April 24, 2006


Pearl Jam is back. Big time.

Not that the Seattle-based five-piece ever disappeared, really. They’ve been around — you just had to look a little harder than normal to find them. To notice that the band has been rewriting the book of rock history, in their own do-it-yourself style. To notice that while the rest of the rock world has burnt out and faded with the longevity of a Gap ad, Pearl Jam has kept doing what they do best. Rocking out. Releasing records and official bootlegs. Selling out arenas in city after city. Playing two-hour-plus live shows, each one different, unique and powerful. Basically, just keeping it real.

In fact, there isn’t another rock band in the world today that can lay claim to the following: the ability to sell out multiple nights in an arena in a major-market city (which is the equivalent of selling 60,000 tickets to 60,000 unique fans in a single town), yet somehow be deemed “unpopular” or “irrelevant” by the mainstream press.

Well, that’s all about to change.

Pearl Jam’s new self-titled record (to be released on J Records May 2) is their eighth. It’s the band’s finest since 1998’s Yield. And it’s the first rock record to come out in a long time that sounds like it actually matters.

Blasting out full throttle with “Life Wasted,” a Who-ish rocker where lead singer Ed Vedder sings and screams as if his life depended on it, the band doesn’t take prisoners and refuses to look back. There are no apologies. No trick punches. No clichés. It’s just driving guitars, the best rhythm section in rock today, thought-provoking lyrics, layered melody and Vedder’s animal-like howl.

“Why swim the channel just to get this far? Halfway there, why would you turn around?” screams Vedder, part plea, part condemnation.

Beneath his soaring voice, one that almost sounds hoarse as if it has screamed these words too many times before, bassist Jeff Ament is deep in the low end, kicking through the speakers with thick notes that push and pull. Drummer Matt Cameron alternates a standard Motown 4/4 beat with hi-hat catches and quick, powerful fills that crash like waves. And while rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard chomps and devours power chords in his trademark furtive staccato style, lead guitarist Mike McCready unleashes a nasty, chaotic solo that is the musical definition of shock and awe.

And this is just the LP’s first track. It only gets better.

“Worldwide Suicide,” the album’s first single, which instantly shot to number one on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, finds the band immediately changing gears. Sounding like Vitalogy-era Pearl Jam mixed with “Green Disease” from 2003’s overlooked Riot Act, the song is Pearl Jam at its best.

Beginning backwards with a snare crack from Cameron, guitar feedback floats on top of a catchy, almost danceable snare/kick-drum pattern. Then the guitars crash in. As thick, overdriven rhythm chords dart in and out, an experimental e-bow screeches, creating an intriguing counter melody. Then a third guitar appears, catching the backbeat on a high note and, just as quickly, sliding out. And then the verse begins.

“Saw his face in a corner picture — I recognized the name. Could not stop staring at the face I’d never see again.”

This time, Vedder swings the pendulum, taking a point of view that is often ignored when discussing the perils of war — the thoughts and feelings of “those left behind.”

Once the bridge rolls around, Vedder’s voice is cracking, breaking. “What does it mean, when the war has taken over?” he shouts.

It’s one of the simplest, yet most profound statements that anyone has voiced in regards to the United States’ invasion of Iraq. In one line, Vedder says everything that the talking heads on television haven’t.

Up next, “Comatose.” Clocking in at the tightest two minutes and 20 seconds that you’ll ever hear on a rock record, Pearl Jam is simply on fire. Written when the band was headlining the “Vote for Change” tour during the 2004 presidential election, Vedder’s lyrics rip open the question of democracy in an un-democratic time. The guitars rage and soar. And the Cameron-Ament combination sounds like a freight train doused in gasoline.

“Consider me an object, put me in vacuum … Feel it rising, yeah, next stop: falling.”

It’s The Clash’s “Know Your Rights” in double time, sung by The Buzzcocks. By the time that McCready rips through a solo that borders on the verge of metal, you’ll either want to re-register to vote or camp out in front of the White House.

However, as soon as the track slams to a halt, Pearl Jam’s at it again. More change.

“Severed Hand” opens with an airy, spinning, backwards sound (think the intro to Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates.”) Twenty-five seconds later, an intricate tom pattern and shimmering guitar chords emerge similar to “Light Years” off of 2000’s underappreciated Binaural. Then, a third bridge jumps out — vicious and anthemic, it sounds like 1991 all over again. And the first verse hasn’t even started yet.

“Big man stands behind an open door, says ‘leave your baby on the cement floor,’” Vedder sings, in a new-found, semi-demented voice.

This time, he’s a man who’s seen it all and has had enough. Written back in 2000 as Vedder was dealing with personal issues and the band was dealing with the aftermath of the Roskilde tragedy, “Severed Hand” is Pearl Jam recreating and reinventing itself.

“Parachutes” is perhaps the smartest track on the album. Vedder is romantic and charming, and the band sounds new and clean, while giving a nod to Lennon and McCartney at the same time. “Unemployable” is as catchy as it is socially timely. “Big Wave” is punk/surf rock with Motown backing vocals. “Army Reserve” echoes The Cure and The Smiths in their prime. And the LP’s final two tracks, “Come Back” and “Inside Job,” see the band dealing with tragedy and the grief that follows it nakedly, creating songs that mirror the ebb and flow of life.

Quite simply, Pearl Jam sounds reborn — vital and essential for these turbulent times. And Vedder, while older and wiser, has undoubtedly regained his fire. A father now, it’s as if he’s taken a good, hard look at the world and decided that it is worth saving. And on this album, he sounds like he’d be the first person in line to sign up and take on the cause.



Pearl Jam will play the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash., on July 22 and 23. Tickets go on sale this Saturday at 9 a.m. Check http://www.tenclub.net for details



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Pearl Jam is back with new vitality

By Patrick MacDonald
Seattle Times music critic

* * * * * *

Now that's more like it.

"Pearl Jam,' the band's debut CD on its new label, J Records, set for release May 2, is its best studio album in more than a decade.

It represents a new burst of energy and creativity for the grunge veterans, as they approach their 15th anniversary.

The 13-song set includes Eddie Vedder's best vocal performance ever, on an aching, slow blues called "Come Back." He embraces its dramatic lyric — one of Pearl Jam's best — with passion and deep emotion. "It's OK, it's OK," he concludes in almost conversational tones, "come back, I'll be here," before fading off with beautiful, wistful "woo-woos," reminiscent of Springsteen.

"Come Back" is one of only two slow songs, the other being the simple, almost naive love ballad, "Parachutes." It has a few clunky verses but features great musicianship, especially on guitar and keyboards, including soulful organ (the advance disc had no songwriting or other credits). The two mellow tunes will be perfect for the inevitable "acoustic set" on the upcoming tour.

The album opens with the powerful jolt of "Life Wasted," a good old-fashioned guitar romp that announces, with a bang, that the Pearl Jam of old is back. The guitar solo is bracing, and Vedder is so at ease with his vocal he even laughs. "I'm never going back again," he repeats several times, a line that underscores the sense of new beginning that permeates the recording.

"World Wide Suicide," the first single from the CD and an instant hit, is a swirling whirlwind of political frustration and anger, with Vedder doing one of his signature muddled, clenched-mouth vocals, which makes it hard to understand what he's singing. Despite its seething intensity, the song is eminently danceable and sure to be a concert favorite.

"Comatose" is equally powerful, with more great guitar, including a potent solo and creative, angular duos. The song is about the frustration of trying to escape current political realities. "Put me in a vacuum," the lyric pleads, "free of convictions." It's like a serious version of The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated."

"Severed Hand" and "Inside Job" both echo the '60s, with feedback, tape loops and classic guitar. "Severed Hand" has a distinctive, choppy guitar opening, jangly guitar textures and a sweet finale, with a nod to Hendrix. "Inside Job" has a long, pleasant guitar-and-piano opening before it heats up, with Vedder singing, clearly and movingly, about regrets, frustrations and his "broken soul."

"Unemployable" also has a '60s feel, with a psychedelic vibe. "I've seen the light," Vedder sings, adding some "oh, oh, ohs."

"Marker in the Sand" evokes the Middle East in its title, but not specifically in the lyric, which suffers from awkward clichés, such as "walking a tightrope high over moral ground." But it, too, will work well in concert, with its dance-in-a-circle ending.

"Gone" is another restless political song, about no longer believing "this American dream." The uneven lyric has some beautiful imagery — "in the far-off distance, as my tail lights fade" — and some well-meaning but wince-worthy lines, like "gas in my tank is like money in the bank." Huh?

"Army Reserve" is surprisingly sunny, at least in its beat and in the music. But the lyrics are mostly undecipherable so, once we get a lyric sheet, maybe it won't be such a nice song after all.

The publicity juggernaut of J Records — headed by that master of hype, Clive Davis — is already in high gear, and has whetted appetites for the album online and at commercial outlets. Look for "Pearl Jam" to debut at No. 1 in Billboard, which hasn't happened since "Vitalogy" in 1994. It will surely be the band's biggest seller since that album, and maybe its biggest since its 1991 debut, "Ten" which has sold more than 12 million copies.

The band has already done more publicity for this album than for any other, and the campaign is going to continue through the whole world tour (which includes shows at the Gorge July 22 and 23).

Don't be surprised if the band gets back to making videos (Davis is probably insisting). The popularity of the album will be a good excuse to get back to them, and will help sales go through the roof.

Pearl Jam has done a good job of dismantling its career, apparently to safeguard its own sanity, but that's over. The band has grown up and embraced its destiny. Pearl Jam is back!

http://www.xpressmag.com.au/archives/20..._vedde.php

PEARL JAM - Vedder Than Ever

Pearl Jam burst back on the scene this week with their self-titled album. SEAN SENNETT reports.

Ed Vedder got it right when he recently described Pearl Jam as 'an old car with a new engine'. The new engine is the band's eighth-studio album, simply titled Pearl Jam. In New York City for a series of press commitments, guitarist and rock n' roll renaissance man Stone Gossard agrees with the sentiment.

"That's a great way of thinking about it," he confirms. "It feels like we're having an energy shift. Things are very positive right now. I think we're all looking back on the records we've made and the time we've spent together, and we're feeling optimistic. We still believe in being in a band and hanging out with your buddies. It all feels like the right place to be right now… that's for sure."

The ensuing weeks will include appearances on everything from Saturday Night Live to Later With Jools. They'll play London for the first time in six years, while the single, World Wide Suicide, is popping up on rock and alternative radio play lists all over the planet.

The album, released on Tuesday, May 2, doesn't pull punches. There's an immediacy in the playing that evokes the energy of a band cutting their second or third album.

"Yeah, it's up-tempo," enthuses Gossard. "That's a classic word to use if you're an old guy, 'up-tempo'. It's a heavy record. It sounds aggressive. The first four or five tracks are pretty slammin'. Sometimes it feels good to play slow, sad blues and some swing, but this feels like a good time to be playing rock music."

Recorded at Seattle's Studio X, the band enlisted the help of an old ally, Adam Casper, for production duties. Casper engineered the band's last studio effort, Riot Act in 2002. "He's worked with Foo Fighters before, and Queens Of The Stone Age," continues Gossard.

"He's an old friend. We've all made a lot of records and have opinions about how things should go, but a producer's job is to get everybody through that process… and to help steer it. By engineering it and sitting in the producer's chair he did a lot of work on this record."

The band worked extensively on demos prior to recording. They were quite happy to watch deadlines come and go in an effort to make a superior album.

"We rehearsed for a week and we worked up seven or eight things," explains Gossard. "Everyone had at least three or four new ideas lying out the back. We started cutting demos over the course of a couple of weeks and then we'd leave it a couple of weeks and maybe come back in a month and cut a couple more. Sometimes we'd re-do a tune we already did. We just repeated the process until we kept coming back to the songs we liked. We were like, 'if it isn't broken, let's keep it'.

"We don't worry about the deadlines, we trust the process and go another session if we have to and see what happens. Ed would take the songs away and work on his poetry until it felt right. That can be time consuming, but when you hear the results of his hard work you can tell he put a lot into it.

"We took more time on it than any record we've ever made. I think that's why it turned out as good as it did. We tend to, and this is my own personal opinion, to get 12 or 13 songs and say 'well this is us'. Which, in the past, has taken us a long ways towards not being self-conscious about our process.

"On this record we finished three or four songs that wouldn't have happened if we'd done what we'd normally done and closed early. Comatose got written right at the end of the record and so did Big Wave. Inside Job came late too. We took our time and it worked out."

At the heart of Pearl Jam remains a strong social conscience and a voice that's ready to shine a light on political shortcomings. The titles say a lot; Life Wasted, Wasted Reprise, Army Reserve and Gone provide a clue to Mr. Vedder's current thought process. The last time Pearl Jam toured Australia, Eddie quite happily spiked a George Bush mask on his mic stand. Things haven't changed.

"There's some cohesion in the types of characters and situations that Ed's talking about," continues Gossard, "and obviously there's some overt political commentary. There's also stories about people on it, and people in difficult situations. The reason they're good lyrics is they have a universal quality to them that you can relate to a lot of different things. Sometimes the things, like wars and politics, are actually happening now.

"That's my guess," he adds. "I only just got the lyric sheet. I have to interpret Ed's lyrics. I can hear something 10 years from now and think it's about something else."

The power of Pearl Jam is that incendiary combination of Vedder's voice and the band's commitment to rock the studio, the concert hall and anywhere else they can lay their hands on electricity. "A good song is always going to be a combination things," Gossard confirms, "You gotta have something you can dance to."


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From The Independent

Pearl Jam, Astoria, London
The future of rock is safe
By Pierre Perrone
Published: 25 April 2006

It's easy to become blasé about world-class acts playing small, sweaty gigs, but Pearl Jam's first London appearance in six years, to herald the release of their eighth studio album, topped concerts by The Rolling Stones and U2 in the same 1,600-capacity venue. Wearing a Plasmatics T-shirt, the band's front man, Eddie Vedder, seems genuinely taken aback by the warmth of the reception throughout the long set.

Blasting into the mean, tight, punky riff of "World Wide Suicide" and the urgent, edgy "Life Wasted", Pearl Jam sound as though they've never been away and remain as vital and relevant as when they first played the UK in 1992. The guitarist, Mike McReady, is a veritable livewire, darting all over his side of the stage while the ace drummer, Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, and the bassist, Jeff Ament, anchor the group's swirling sound. With its Who-like intro and cyclical chorus, "Severed Hand" fits Vedder's trademark gesture as his right arm cuts and slices across his left.

The singer never wanted to become spokesman of the grunge generation but, with his beard and long hair, he can't help cutting a messianic figure as "Even Flow", from their Ten album, which outsold Nirvana's Nevermind in 1992, has the whole place singing. Pearl Jam's angsty, brooding debut defined the Seattle scene as much as Kurt Cobain's group, but Vedder and co survived the pressures, diversifying into side projects (Brad, Mad Season) and collaborating with Neil Young on Mirror Ball, while keeping a steady release of studio albums and official live bootlegs.

"Army Reserve", another new track, works even better live, with its insistent groove and a lyrical guitar flourish worthy of Jimmy Page. Vedder even cracks a joke about his "private reserve" while swigging from a bottle of red wine and laughs out loud when he loses his spot for a split second after an extended and umprompted singalong into "Better Man".

Audience and band are becoming one in a manner reminiscent of Vedder's heroes The Who in the early Seventies and, fittingly, the singer dedicates "Man of the Hour", first song of the first encore, to The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend. When a Scot in a kilt flashes at Vedder, the front man quips that he now knows "what to write about in the postcards home".

In the internet age, this is an endearing admission from a group who may be steeped in rock's finest traditions but keep moving forward while sticking to their beliefs. They mess up the intro to "Comatose" and follow this spunky burst with a barnstorming version of "Leaving Here".

A minor Motown hit in the US for Eddie Holland and a Mod favourite in the Sixties, this track has also been covered by Motörhead and fits the garage-rock spirit of the second encore, which concludes with "Yellow Ledbetter", complete with a snatch of Led Zeppelin's "Nobody's Fault but Mine", since Robert Plant is in the balcony.

They salute, and the second guitarist, Stone Gossard, begins walking off but is beckoned back by Vedder for a final "Alive", during which the singer twirls the mic-lead around his body à la Roger Daltrey while McReady plays guitar behind his head like Jimi Hendrix. The future of rock is in safe hands.

Pearl Jam play the Reading/ Leeds festival, 27 & 25 August




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Life on the edge
Kathy McCabe April 27, 2006

ED VEDDER'S quest to take himself out of the comfort zone can land him in life-threatening situations.

The Pearl Jam frontman, who is also an avid surfer, has been dramatically rescued twice in rough conditions – once off the New Zealand coast and more recently in Hawaii – pursuing his quest to "stay out there for a while".

"At least in New Zealand there were lifeguards," Vedder chuckles.

"I probably could have got out of that riptide myself but we'd played the night before and drank 'til late and I had another gig in a few hours so I said 'Please help'."

There has been some dispute over whether Vedder was suitably thankful for being rescued.

"I thought I'd thanked them," he says. "But apparently they were pissed off with me. Maybe I was so happy, I just ran off the beach. Of course I was thankful."

To continue the analogy, Vedder says he has taken himself out further than he has ever been before to write the songs on the band's self-titled eighth studio album – although this time there has been no need to call for lifeguards.

"If I swam out a couple of miles on the last few records, this time I was way out in the middle. In a way, I'm at home out there," he says, explaining that songs simply do not spring from his comfort zones.

"Life in general and responsibilities and your daily goings-on, I don't write from that place. I have to go somewhere else and that place is pretty far away. It's not something you can go do for an hour. I just need to stay out there for a while and luckily the ones that I live with and love with, they understand this and they are pretty patient."

Pearl Jam has carved a reputation for being uncompromising when it comes to their art and their fans.

At times during their career, the fans' fierce loyalty has been put to the test, whether it was the band's brave attempt to take on Ticketmaster's control of venues in the US or the wavering form they've shown on their past couple of albums.

The new album Pearl Jam finds the band back to its best; an eclectic collection of songs which straddle the punk attack of new single World Wide Suicide and Comatose and the heartwrenching balladry of Come Back and Parachutes.

Assembled at the band's new warehouse just outside Seattle, the five members – Vedder, guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron – seem to be quietly confident about the album and eager to take it out on the road.

The state of world politics and its impact on the everyman dominates. But Vedder's newfound happiness with partner Jill McCormick and their daughter Olivia has probably informed the uncharacteristic love songs which pepper the album.

While the band retain a stoic democracy on all decisions related to their career, one senses that the singer probably has the casting vote on what songs are eventually recorded for Pearl Jam albums.

That vote is primarily for practical purposes – he has to write lyrics to the musical ideas and sing them.

Mike McCready wrote the lion's share of music for the album. He and Gossard say the litmus test for a musical idea to be fleshed out is if Vedder can sing something over the top of it instantly.

"You hope Ed latches on to what you've come up with, that he will get excited about it," McCready says.

Gossard adds: "Every time you write a song that gets Ed excited to sing over the top, you feel good about that. We recorded Parachutes in one day and he threw a vocal over it the next day. He has an amazing ability to write lyrics on the fly."

Before talking to the band members, interviewers are shown a short video during which Pearl Jam individually discuss recording the album and their relationship with each other.

More than a few times, the volatility of their communication in the early years comes up. You get the idea they had some epic shouting matches.

Vedder, Gossard and McCready don't want to make too much about it but – older now, wiser and still together – they have obviously found a way to redirect their passionate natures into the music.

"We've gotten better at it, I think. We sit down and have meetings about that. If we have issues we sit down and talk it out. I'm less neurotic and crazy than when I was 26. Now I'm close to 40 – and feel like a preserved moose," McCready laughs.

Gossard continues: "We are all getting close to middle age and looking back you realise how lucky you are to have our friendships intact and our band intact.

"We are very grateful we worked it out with each other, can write songs together and people still care. It keeps us wanting to work it out with each other. What would we be doing individually that would be as much fun as this?"

And it is about the fun, the creative expression and the day job.Even with a new one-off label deal with Clive Davis' esteemed J records, matching the album sales of their monstrous first three albums – Ten, Vs. and Vitalogy – is not a goal.

"I can honestly say I don't give a flying f--- for any kind of commercial success. That has no relevance to my participation in the band whatsoever," Vedder says. "The idea is to maintain relevance and feel like your work is valid so you can play shows with new material that has current emotion, that you can share it all with an audience that continues to grow, not necessarily in numbers but as human beings and you are sharing this experience together."

Vedder and his band mates will have no choice in the matter of success in any case. Relevance seems to be assured as the first single World Wide Suicide and five other tracks have already leaked on the internet, the postmodern indicator to demand for a band. The fans are flooding forums with discussion about the songs and are more keen than ever to see Pearl Jam's name next to a No.1.

But Vedder maintains he doesn't want that.

"The commercial success, if it got out of hand like it did early on, we would be right back in a position we worked really hard to get out of. And survive it. The band that was everywhere and people got sick of it."

Pearl Jam is out on Saturday. The band will announce their November tour of Australia next week, and tickets will go on sale in May

http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/stor ... 42,00.html

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Newsweek

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12442610/site/newsweek/

Pearl Jam Comes Alive
The reluctant rockers return with a new CD that might just bring back the fame they love to hate.
By Lorraine Ali
Newsweek
May 1, 2006 issue - Eddie Vedder writes songs on a manual typewriter, carries important papers in a 1940s suitcase, keeps his credit cards in a plastic Batman wallet and wears his beat-up lumberjack boots over a pair of blue argyle socks. He prefers to talk politics rather than Pearl Jam, and has a 21-month-old daughter who likes to sing Daddy's new single, "World Wide Suicide," during play group. "She dances around singing 'Suicide, suicide'," says Vedder, "and I have to wonder what the other parents are thinking."

Such personal tidbits feel like a full-length tell-all memoir when you consider that Pearl Jam has been, and remains, a band that guards its privacy. After the success of their 1991 debut, "Ten," which sold nearly 10 million copies, the Seattle group stopped making videos, shunned endorsements and shied away from almost all self-promotion. And each subsequent album proved less accessible than its predecessor. (Can you name the last two Pearl Jam records?) But despite their refusal to play the game—or because of it—Pearl Jam is still considered one of the last rock bands that matter. "What's threatened by being out there all the time is your sense of normalcy as a human on this planet," says Vedder, 41, sitting in the band's headquarters on the industrial outskirts of Seattle. "You start making decisions based on public perception of who you are. I've seen people who go for it. They are that thing, and they're really good at it. They somehow made the jump still intact. Me? I ran screaming the other way."

You can hear some of that screaming—along with a lot of singing and a little pleasant harmonizing—on Pearl Jam's new self-titled CD. It's their eighth, and their first album with J Records (Alicia Keys, Chris Brown). It's also the most immediate and relevant CD that Pearl Jam has done since 1994's "Vitalogy." But is anyone still listening? So far, yes. Radio is finally playing the band again, the single "World Wide Suicide" hit No. 1 on the Modern Rock chart, and there's a high-decibel buzz around the album, to be released May 2.

As you might expect, the band is both recharged by this second wave of attention and getting uncomfortable. In the giant warehouse—which contains their rehearsal space, the office of the Ten Club fan Web site and countless reels of Pearl Jam recordings—they reluctantly shuffle into a back room for a rare photo shoot. They line up against a stark white wall in silence, like condemned prisoners awaiting the firing squad. You wonder why they want to put themselves through this again when Pearl Jam remains one of the most lucrative live acts around. In a word: politics. "There's a lot of anger and frustration in the atmosphere these days," says Vedder (who smokes way too much to have the voice he still has). "We didn't want to add to the negative noise pollution, but we did want to do something. It's just not the time to be cryptic. I mean, our tax dollars for this war are being funneled through huge corporations—one of which Dick Cheney used to be head of—and there's an even greater disparity between rich or poor in this country. It offends me on a really deep level." He smiles. "Then again, it makes me feel eternally young."

Still, "Pearl Jam" is more than a screed against the Bush administration. It's a compelling rock-and-roll album that still shows the band's classic-rock roots, grunge's punk base and Vedder's political conviction: "There is a sickness, a sickness coming over me/Like watching freedom being sucked straight out to sea." Some of the best moments come when Vedder gives us an image rather than an idea. In "Un-employable," he describes a dented JESUS SAVES ring worn by a working-class guy who punched his metal locker when he got laid off. "Music's at its best when it has a purpose," says Vedder. "In the days of 'Rock Around the Clock' and 'Good Golly, Miss Molly,' the purpose was, like, 'We should be allowed to do this.' We certainly haven't had to go out of our way to find a purpose now."

Not that they ever have, from their 1994 fight against Ticketmaster—in which guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament testified before the Supreme Court in an unsuccessful antitrust investigation —to their participation in the 2004 Vote for Change tour. Pearl Jam formed on the eve of the first gulf war. Vedder, then 24, was living in San Diego. He got ahold of a demo by Gossard, Ament and guitarist Mike McCready, then sent it back with his own vocals on top of their music. Seattle in those days was the place, where such underdog groups as Nirvana and Soundgarden were suddenly being signed to major labels. "There was a cultural element to our scene that had nothing to do with record labels," says drummer Matt Cameron, who played with Soundgarden before joining Pearl Jam in 1998. "It was a groundswell. These people appeared out of nowhere and sold millions and millions of records. It was a natural evolution, and I don't think anything like that has happened in rock since."

But the scene was also self-destructive: rampant heroin use and an overall ethos that held that it was better to burn out than fade away. (Not an unfamiliar notion in rock and roll, but Seattle was deadly serious about it.) Pearl Jam is the only band left standing. "Stone and I made so many mistakes with our earlier band, Mother Love Bone," Ament recalls, "that basically concluded with Andy [Wood, their singer] dying. We were on a major label, and they were saying you gotta spend $300,000 to make a record, gotta have a supermixer mix it. After Andy died, we owed $40,000 to a lawyer and didn't have any money. I thought, If we get another opportunity, this is not how we're gonna do it. Luckily, the first Pearl Jam record blew up, and because the deal was on our terms, they had to let us continue making records that way. It really defined who we became." One thing they became, says Vedder, was apologetic. "Like, 'Sorry we're so popular.' 'Sorry, I like Mudhoney way better than us, too'." They tried to share the wealth by turning their audiences on to other people's music, touring with fringe bands and doing their own radio shows.

Survivor guilt and noblesse oblige aren't such big issues anymore. Pearl Jam's rejection of rock stardom, their increasingly idiosyncratic records and Vedder's emerging role as an advocate for progressive causes have cost them casual fans; their last album sold one tenth of what their debut did. Does this worry Vedder? Guess. "If we can survive and play music and put out records and play live shows, and live our lives as family members, community members and friends—that's the goal. If we're able to do it within this industry, that's even better. It could even be a sign that the industry isn't too polluted."

In other words, it's not about the money—though Vedder's idea of "surviving" may be your idea of filthy rich—and, ultimately, maybe not really about the politics. It's about the music, and few people describe better than Vedder the transcendent—and transitory—joy of artistic inspiration. "I think there's a finite beam when an idea happens," he says, "and if you don't translate it at that moment, it morphs into something less than the vision you had. What made it great gets dulled out. It might still be good, but that great beam of light hitting your brain—that's it. You just do brick-work while you wait for the beam to come."

But leave it to Vedder to see the downside too. "For me, finishing this record was the biggest relief. My brain's like an iPod without earphones—the music's just in there, going, all the time. When the record was done I got to own my brain again. I've got a 21-month-old daughter, and I don't want this little girl growing up with an insane, mad-professor father. As romantic as it seems, I think she deserves better." Pearl Jam sometimes seems bent on renunciation: of fame, of money, and now, apparently, even of inconvenient bouts of inspiration. It's a shame they're so good. Must make life a lot tougher.
[/b]

Amazon.com

If its debut album 15 years ago made Pearl Jam apprehensive with success, the Seattle quintet better buckle in for a return to eminence. On its eighth studio release--and first since 2000--the band socks away the adventurous experimentation that dogged some of its most recent records to investigate a post-September 11, war-ravaged world overflowing with urgency and significance. "It's the same everyday in a hell manmade/What can be saved, and who will be left to hold her?" lead singer Eddie Vedder wonders in "World Wide Suicide," one of several contemptuous rants on the Bush administration. Yet the album's spark is more than political. Songs like "Life Wasted," "Comatose" and "Big Wave" embrace the garage-rock past, as guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard play off each other with the primal lucidity of a decade ago and drummer Matt Cameron, one of rock's best, adds raw backing vocals to Vedder's polished craft. But Pearl Jam also turns up some of its most harmonious works since "Daughter," including "Marker in the Sand," with its radio-ready chorus, the tuneful "Parachutes" paced by Gossard's divine strumming, and the burning narrative and Urge Overkill punch of "Umemployable." Finally Vedder pleads for a lover's return in "Come Back," a keyboard-soaked love song complete with a chilling Gossard solo. It's got a soulfulness that begs for Sam Cooke to sing it and an originality that shows that a vibrant and cocksure Pearl Jam is back in town--and ready to retake the world. --Scott Holter

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PEARL JAM: “Pearl Jam” (J-Records)
2 1/2 stars
Pearl Jam made one terrific album -- before they were Pearl Jam. The short-lived, volatile pre-Eddie Vedder ensemble, Mother Love Bone, was on the verge of the big time in 1990 when the singer pricked himself with a fatal overdose. Then came Vedder, and everything got silly -- and conventional. In the four years since PJ’s last studio effort, tastes and formats have evolved. The essence of the band -- hard rock touched by punk, dour “power ballads” and Vedder’s humorless bellow -- seems especially mild, like the comfort food on classic-rock channels, in light of more useful sounds from pop’s Arctic Monkeys or intense, edge-of-darkness acts like Avenged Sevenfold. “Pearl Jam,” the band’s eighth album (in stores Tuesday), has moments, to be sure. The driving, full-on opener, “Life Wasted,” bares all that’s still great about the firm -- solid rhythm, charging beat, memorable melody and one of Vedder’s best-ever performances. Further standouts are “World Wide Suicide” and “Comatose,” among a handful of tracks addressing the current political climate, and PJ rages like lives depend on it. Elsewhere, a sameness sometimes prevails. But what’s great about PJ are the great parts of “Pearl Jam.” It’s not the pits, but there’s half an avocado on the cover.
-- Fred Shuster

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NME
Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam 4/10
"Call any vegetable and the chances are good/The vegetable will respond to you". Frank Zappa, true king of 60's/70's counter-culture, once sang. Pearl Jam have called on the avocado for the cover of their latest album, and the result is what you might expect - something rich, a bit slimey, and with a ruddy big hole in the middle.

Marking the pass of their millionth album (remember, here is the band that released an album for every date of a 72-date tour), this is a further stumble from the glory days of 'Ten'. It places them in the secret Soundgarden; a place of stadium-rock growls and Nickelback-esque balladry. Like throwing bangers at tramps - fun, but it's something they should have grown out of" Tim Chester

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Picks & Pans/Music
Music
CHUCK ARNOLD; JENNIFER ODELL

8 May 2006
People Magazine
45

Pearl Jam Pearl Jam

REVIEWED BY CHUCK ARNOLD

CRITIC'S CHOICE

ROCK

Since the turn of the 21st century, Pearl Jam had seemed to be left behind in the last millennium. Although the '90s grunge gods released two studio albums (2000's Binaural and 2002's Riot Act ), a rarities disc (2003's Lost Dogs ) and a ridiculous 177 official concert bootlegs, the band's relevance appeared to have gone the way of the flannel shirt. That's what makes this self-titled CD such a monster comeback for the hard-rocking quintet, which suddenly has come roaring back to life. "I escaped it, a life wasted/ I'm never going back again," sings frontman Eddie Vedder on the urgent opener "Life Wasted," as if his very existence depended on it.

Indeed, Pearl Jam grabs ahold with a vengeance and doesn't let go, launching into the ferocious first single, "World Wide Suicide," an antiwar anthem that, behind a blistering guitar and drum attack, unleashes Vedder's rage: "Medals on a wooden mantel next to a handsome face/ That the President took for granted/ Writing checks that others pay." High-octane tracks like these and the animalistic "Comatose" recapture their Vs. mojo without sounding like grunge retreads.

When Pearl Jam shifts gears, though, the disc hardly lags: "Gone"- -on which a disillusioned Vedder muses, "If nothing is everything, I'll have it all"--is a moody gem in the vein of "Jeremy" or "Daughter"; "Come Back" is a surprisingly soulful ballad that builds to a soaring, U2-like climax; and "Unemployable" is a better R.E.M. song than R.E.M. has done in years. A real revelation, "Unemployable" details the plight of a newly fired man who's "jumping trains just to survive." After 15 years, it's evident that Pearl Jam is not only surviving but thriving. [4 stars]

DOWNLOAD THIS: "World Wide Suicide


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Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam

*** (J Records)

Mat Snow
Friday April 28, 2006
The Guardian
Pearl Jam by Pearl Jam


Pearl Jam are an orthodox-sounding rock band who have never mustered the credibility of their Seattle grunge contemporaries, Nirvana - but they have a grassroots popularity that enables them to challenge the rock industry's most cherished ideas about ticket prices, bootlegs and promotional videos. An air of aggressive self-righteousness especially attends frontman Eddie Vedder, respected for his awkward-squad personality. Despite being over 40, he musters absolute conviction in writing and singing lyrics of male teenage angst, such as the single here, World Wide Suicide. And though few of these 13 numbers have the drama of tracks by the Who or Led Zeppelin, from whom the band draw much of their style, Pearl Jam play like men on a mission - that mission perhaps being to recover the 9m US sales mislaid between their 1991 debut and this album's 2002 predecessor. You certainly wouldn't bet against them.


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Comfort Comes

http://www.comfortcomes.com/?page=reviews&id=893

Pearl Jam Score: 5


TRACKS ONE TO FIVE – all these tracks are pure rock, feisty and though not to my own personal taste, not too bad by any means, though the vocals are quite raw and harsh.
TRACK SIX – PARACHUTES – this track came as quite a shock, so gentle and so out of place after the rowdiness of the first five. The quality of the vocals is much improved on this song, which is good as you can hear them above the music and really appreciate them.

TRACK NINE – GONE – in my opinion this is the best track on the album, with rocky undertones but soulful vocals, this track flows really well taking you up and down in waves.
TRACK TEN – WASTED REPRISE - less than a minute long but I loved this, it has fantastic vocals, sentiment and a great tune.

TRACK THIRTEEN – INSIDE JOB – another great track, the instrumental intro is just shy of two minutes, with a combination of instruments, which hold the attention. Again the vocals are much better suited to this style of song, this track has a bit more power and fire than track nine its fantastic the winding down at the end is sensational.

This is a complicated album; a real mixture of styles and sounds, fans of Pearl Jam will love it I’m sure. I found a few real gems in there but overall I wasn’t crazy about it.

by J. Greenwood

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The Sun
The furious five
By SIMON COSYNS

PEARL JAM’S heady mix of wasted grunge and straight-up hard rock has always set them apart.
Their reliable knack for weaving in radio-friendly hooks arguably made them America’s premier band of the Nineties.

Debut album Ten and the follow-up Vs are stone-cold classics.

There’s no doubting singer Eddie Vedder’s incredible range . . . he’s the master of raw, lacerating howls and equally of cracked, down-tempo balladry.

Now into their 16th year, Pearl Jam are an institution.

If they’re in a mind to tour, vast stadium after vast stadium awaits.

But, and it’s a big but, they leave this particular listener cold more often than not.

They can seem relentlessly bleak, oddly detached.

Frankly, their mainstream “American” sound can make them quite an unappealing prospect to someone forever smitten by Nirvana, Pixies and The White Stripes.
So it was with some trepidation that I approached Pearl Jam’s self-titled eighth studio album, their first since 2002’s Riot Act.

It proved to be a case of “O ye of little faith.”

What a revelation it is. The bleakness remains but there’s real fire in their bellies this time out.
Like soulmate Neil Young, who’s set to rush release an anti-war album, this bruising collection finds the band railing against the woes of the world in general — and Bush’s America in particular.
The band say: “We’ve got all the instruments going full force, yet co-existing.
It’s like we took our aggressions and shaped something positive from them in a very direct manner.
“Though we’d qualify most of the record as hard-driving, the two quiet ones (Parachutes and Come Back) could be our best attempts yet at pulling the disguises off of loss of life, and even love.”

From the opening notes of Life Wasted, you pick up the angry mood of this album.
It’s an earthquake start with wave upon wave of towering riffs crashing across the first four songs.

World Wide Suicide conjures up nightmarish visions of manmade hell.

Comatose appears to offer the only escape route. Severed Hand maintains the relentless pace.

A little relief comes with Marked In The Sand, a spiky narrative making way for a Springsteenesque chorus.

The aforementioned Parachutes is a waltzy acoustic comedown.

Of the album’s later tracks, the moody, bluesy Come Back finds Vedder giving one of his most affecting vocals on a song about love and loss.

In all, this raging album proves Pearl Jam can be a relevant, vital force in 2006 . . . something I didn’t think possible before hearing these 13 tracks.

Scorched-earth rock never sounded so good.


http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2006...21,00.html

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Billboard
It's tempting but misleading to label Pearl Jam's first record since 2002 a "comeback"—the band has spent its career keeping a judicious cap on its profile. But one thing is clear: Pearl Jam is fully, comprehensively re-energized. While its last few records sounded tangibly downcast, "Pearl Jam" feels like pure power—witness the one-two punch of "Life Wasted" and "World Wide Suicide," which find Eddie Vedder's fiery baritone in mighty roar. One of rock's most eloquent rabble-rousers, Vedder has written what initially sounds like a concept piece on war, but he steps back from virulent anti-Bush sentiments and lets his well-drawn, humbler stories do the talking. The band steps up musically as well: "Severed Hand" gets unexpectedly funky, and "Comatose" is 150 seconds of pure punk stomp. This album will put Pearl Jam squarely back on the map, whether the band likes it or not. —Jeff Vrabel


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LA Times story

Ready for a storm
Pearl Jam slashed through the '90s status quo, often sabotaging its own ambition. Now, after a decade on the fringe, the band is stoked, polished — and raging again.
By Ann Powers
Times Staff Writer

April 30, 2006

SEATTLE -- On a typically blustery spring Seattle afternoon, Eddie Vedder sits in a blue vinyl booth at West Seattle's Easy Street Records and Café, catching up with the owner. The small shop is a favorite hangout, and Vedder is barely noticed. In this beachy district where many of the city's rockers — including the 41-year-old Pearl Jam singer — have settled and started families, everyone's equal. "It gives us protection from being swallowed up by the world," Vedder says of my hometown.

Vedder's been here for 16 years, and I was born here, but we're part of a generation that has benefited from the city's shift from isolated industrial port to New Economy hub. At times, rock 'n' roll has taken both of us from these gray-blue environs, but no matter where we live, we'll always call it home. Like Pearl Jam, Seattle has grown with care, its Uptown condos and upscale urban malls never overwhelming the no-nonsense pioneers who own its soul. The sound I first heard at punk clubs like the Gorilla Room circa 1980 developed into the paradigm for the quality rock that Pearl Jam represents, and Microsoft millionaires belly up to its tavern bars next to the skippers who still fish its harbors. For all its 21st century largesse, Seattle remains unpresumptuous. Like Vedder himself, it wants to be just folks.

It's been a while since Vedder has left this comfort zone. Fifteen years ago, Pearl Jam ruled rock, but its zealous high-mindedness — which led the band to abstain from music videos, to favor experimental jams over Top 40 fare and to take on big targets of the left, including Ticketmaster and the Bush administration — put the band in a strange category: celebrated, yet obscure. Its last four albums have gotten little radio attention and led to a sound that Vedder complained was too cerebral.

By keeping to itself and its subculture of fans, Pearl Jam lost momentum. Over the years, band members began bringing into the mix distinctive influences, reflected in outside projects, in a way that didn't always lend itself to coherence. Guitarist Mike McCready, whom I first got to know when we were in our teens and he was in the metal band Shadow, continued to play with some of his old bandmates in side groups such as the Rockford. Along the way, he fought, and overcame, various addictions. Now McCready battles Crohn's disease, and he has become focused on charity work to fight the intestinal disorder.

Bassist Jeff Ament, a bearded Montana native, went off to record with the world-music-tinged Three Fish and to check out skateboard parks nationwide. Guitarist Stone Gossard, whom you could easily picture working at a Seattle Internet start-up, co-led the soulful, Seattle-based band Brad. Drummer Matt Cameron became active in his son's grade school. Vedder, meanwhile, stumped for Ralph Nader and other causes. At best, the band was a cozy, slightly frayed home.

Then, after 15 years with Epic, Pearl Jam signed to Clive Davis' J Records label, though before he sealed the deal, Davis insisted on seeing the band. "I wanted to see their hunger, their freshness, their magic again," he says. "To see if in their songwriting they would come up with a vintage Pearl Jam album with its great storytelling that could put them on top again." The band passed the audition.

Known for creating comebacks for such stars as Carlos Santana and Rod Stewart, Davis saw those possibilities in Pearl Jam.

"I thought we could focus a laser beam on the band consistent with their artistic integrity," he says. Vedder and his mates have answered with a self-titled J debut that's focused, furious and outward-looking. Like U2, Pearl Jam has made a conservative choice with liberating results — an act of remembering that's pushed them into a new phase. The proof is in the first single, the antiwar cry "World Wide Suicide," the fastest-charting of the band's career. "Pearl Jam" will be called a return to form — indeed, contrarians such as the reviewer at hipster website Pitchfork are yawning at "the group's efforts to quote rock unquote" — but what's poured into that mold is very different than what the band produced in 1992.

Even before the album's release Tuesday, a fiery "Saturday Night Live" performance earlier this month — the band's first in a decade — kicked off a media blitz. This year's tour will include headlining spots at England's huge Reading and Leeds festivals, a co-headlining American jaunt with Tom Petty and arena dates throughout the Western world.

Some of what's changed is the band itself, especially Vedder. The elusive, long-haired boy who captured the pain of youth in such hits as "Jeremy" has matured into a citizen activist who embraces his classic rock heritage. His politics have given purpose to the fame he once shunned, and the mentorship of his idols, including Pete Townshend and Neil Young, has helped him escape insecurity. Just as Gen-X has grown up to become the Sustainable Lifestyle Generation — especially in the eco-friendly, tech-savvy Northwest — Vedder and his bandmates have hit their 40s seemingly uncompromised.

"They're all complex people, but they're grounded." says RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser, a close friend of the band. "Seattle has enough feedback loops to keep you that way. It's amazingly tolerant without being infused or polluted by trendiness. Elsewhere, open-mindedness gets transmuted into marketing hype, but there's no artifice or market research going into writing a song like 'World Wide Suicide.' "

"If someone says this new album is returning to the energy of the first couple of records, that's great for me because those are the records people know, and it may make them more interested to hear it," says Vedder. "Whether it's true or not, I don't know. I feel our whole recording lifespan is really one long album."

Doing their homework

Ament is having a morning snack at an espresso bar close enough to his West Seattle house that his wife pops by to say she's taking their dogs for a walk. The bassist is worried about the loss of the relative calm that had come with being a band that attracted minimal attention.

"People in this neighborhood who haven't said jack to me for years, now they're saying, 'Oh, you have a hit record,' " says Ament, who also maintains a home in his native Montana. "There's a part of me that thinks, 'God, it would be great if a song or two got played on the radio.' But part of me worries, especially for Ed. We're going to head into this storm; we have to be together and all be ready for it."

The years leading to "Pearl Jam," Ament says, required more patience than caution. "All I wanted was to be out of our contract and have a big party to say we made it," Ament says of the final years on Epic, which concluded with 2002's "Riot Act."

Industry watchers wondered if Pearl Jam would become completely independent after leaving Epic. The band had released hundreds of "bootleg" live recordings through its fan service, Ten Club, and developed a thriving online music distribution system. The band has been quick to adjust to a changing pop landscape, in which singles-producing hip-hop, R&B and country stars dominate the mainstream while rock artists have had to invent new ways to reach listeners beyond the realm of "American Idol."

The deal with J, says Davis, takes advantage of Pearl Jam's understanding of the Web and the touring circuit while providing the worldwide distribution and promotional muscle a major label can invest. Most important, the label offered the band artistic immunity. "We can make an art record if we want to next year, we can make a punk record," says Ament. "We wanted this record to be a tight, concise thing."

This time, instead of going their separate ways, the members of Pearl Jam began work on the album right after 2004's politically charged Vote for Change tour. "We hadn't done that in 15 years — come off the road and tried to capture something," says Ament. Bush's presidential victory, which the band opposed, heightened the mood. But the sprint soon became a marathon.

"We thought we'd take some time on this record. Let's get together and write some songs, then go off and analyze them, rerecord a bit, and then take more time," says guitarist McCready. "Even wanting it to go quicker, we still held back and let Ed go where he wanted to go." Vedder, who co-writes separately with each of his bandmates, soon fell into a creative maze as he tried to satisfy both the band and his new family. The sessions came at a time when, like many aging Gen-Xers, Vedder was contemplating slowing down.

"Making this album was the first time I wanted a 9-to-5 routine," says the singer, whose daughter with girlfriend Jill McCormick, Olivia, is nearly 2. "I felt that if my mind was occupied with melodies and lyric construction, my daughter was somehow getting ripped off. But I also had to stop fighting to get back into my pre-child life, where I could go to certain dark places and just live in my own head. I surrendered to the fact that things have changed.

"I had 12 or 13 drafts of some songs on this record," he continues. "I just basically put in a request, saying if we spent this much time on the music, I'm going to need almost equal time."

It was tough on the rest of the group. "His pace drives me crazy sometimes," says Ament. "But we've learned to trust his process. As hard as it is for him, he's the guy who's going to finish the best songs.

"There were a lot of tough moments making this record," he adds. "And that's probably what makes it feel good."

Unconventional synergy

Over dinner at Il Bistro, a duskily lighted date restaurant tucked into the lower levels of Pike Place Market, Gossard and McCready argue over the importance of lead versus rhythm guitar. "Riffs versus leads, 10 seconds!" McCready shouts, racing into a monologue about his own fireworks approach — "Color! Intensity!"

"Riffs! Find one little thing and do it over and over and over again. Driving it in, making it work!" Gossard yells.

They're still having the fun that generated their rule-breaking collaboration, when McCready was a teenage metalhead and Gossard was a baby punk.

McCready and Gossard's relationship epitomizes Pearl Jam's aesthetic. The group has developed a complex working process not unlike the "no collar" approach Internet moguls and snowboard designers employ.

Within the swirl of songs such as the new album's "Marker in the Sand," McCready's lyrical leads and Gossard's insurgent licks form something distinctive. Ament brings in world-music rhythms; drummer Cameron, who joined in 1998 after his former band, Soundgarden, dissolved, adds an art-metal edge. It's Vedder, the others say, who makes sure none of this gets lost in the final product.

"If a song I write turns into a Pearl Jam song, it's because Ed's interested," says McCready, who, like his bandmates, pursues several side projects. "I'll bring something in, Stone might help arrange it, and when Ed gets behind it, it has the potential of happening. You have to let your ego down, be willing to take criticism, and explore different ways of writing a song."

"The fact that all of us write is really powerful," Gossard adds. "There's so much variety, so many different rhythmic and melodic impulses, it could get really scattered. Everybody's influences compete in a very subtle way, with Ed as the gatekeeper."

"Eddie knows where his strengths are, and they're in this band," says Cameron. "He could easily go do a solo career ... but his music will be more powerful played by Pearl Jam." Vedder agrees, and not only for artistic reasons. For him, Pearl Jam is political.

"Fifteen thousand young people come to the concerts, so a socially conscious musician like Ed can reach a much larger audience than Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger ever did," notes Vedder's mentor, the radical historian Howard Zinn. "Eddie represents millions of the young by what he is, by what he has become."

What has Vedder become? Less alienated, for one thing. Refusing to leave Pearl Jam has taught him what real equality demands.

"We're fighting for the health of democracy here, yet we realize that just within our group it's very difficult," says Vedder. "I'm sure I was stepping on toes all over the place making this record. And we're just making music, we're not trying to make sure there's money for highways and healthcare." That struggle for mutual respect defines the sound and the image of Pearl Jam. They're facing the central question for the fortysomething Gen-X — how to adapt without losing yourself — and it's led the band to a new place of strength.

"Thank God we remained friends and kept trying to do the same thing," says guitarist Gossard, who co-founded the group with McCready and Ament in 1990. "We made some records that were frustrating, but we were still working out what we're capable of."

Gossard said, "I've looked at this whole thing as a huge experiment. What did my favorite bands do? Let's do that, but not break up."

Ann Powers joins The Times this week as the pop music critic. She can be contacted at calendar.letters@latimes.com.



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