Pearl Jam – Marlay Park – Live Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Pearl Jam – Dark Matter – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Eddie Vedder – Earthling – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

A Musical Preview of 2022

 Article for www.nomoreworkhorse.com https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2021/12/31/a-musical-preview-of-2022/

Pearl Jam – Gigaton – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2020/03/26/pearl-jam-gigaton-album-review/

Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam released their (to date) only self-titled album in 2006.  It was an album that came out four years after their previous studio album, but very much 'after their moment had passed'.  And on the first few listens it really makes little impact.  Shouty songs like Life Wasted and Worldwide Suicide just show that Eddie Vedder can still shout but little else.  Parachutes, which arrives six tracks in, is a jaunty strum that sounds nothing like a Pearl Jam song.  At this point, you begin to worry for this album.

But from here on the album improves distinctly.  Unemployable is definitely Pearl Jam doing The Who but it really works, while Gone starts off all pouty and broody but turns into a big old PJ rabble rouser.  Penultimate track Come Back is a sparse soulful ballad of reaffirmation which would have been a good note to end the album on.  However the actual last song, Inside Job, is nothing like the rest of the album.  It feels like a throwback, all the way to debut album Ten.  Vedder sings "how I choose to feel is how I am", he means it, just like he sang on Black or any classic Pearl Jam ballad.  

So an album unlikely to be any Pearl Jam fan's favourite, but given time and persistence, not a bad album by any means.

Eddie Vedder/Glen Hansard - 3Arena - Live Review - 03/07/19

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2019/07/05/118809/

Pearl Jam: The Last Great Big Rock Band

Article for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2019/01/28/pearl-jam-the-last-great-big-rock-band/

Eddie Vedder – 3Arena – Live Review – 09-06-17

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/06/10/eddie-vedder-3arena-live-review-09-06-17/

Album Review: Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs

Pearl Jam released this double album of B-sides and unreleased tracks in 2003.  For a band whose recent albums had been delivering diminishing returns, it came as a breath of fresh air.  It’s split into a faster, heavier disc, and a slower one.  Many of the faster tracks have catchier, and indeed stronger melodies than much of the material on albums like Binaural and Riot Act.  Tracks like Sad, Down and Undone feature great guitar workouts, strong tunes and performances.  It’s a wonder they only surfaced here.  Perhaps they were afraid to put them on their albums?  Hold On and Yellow Ledbetter are slower, anthemic singalong tracks.

If anything, the slower disc has even more gems.  Fatal, Other Side and Hard To Imagine would have been standouts on any of their albums.  Eddie Vedder is on fine voice on the last of these, and equally manages a subdued, sensitive vocal on the brooding likes of Dead Man and Strangest Tribe.  Later, tracks like Sweet Lew and Dirty Frank show what could have happened if they had spent too much time with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
 
The album finishes with hidden track 4/20/02, an abrasive strum recorded solo by Vedder, referencing the death of Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley: “so sing just like him, fuckers, it won’t offend him, just me, because he’s dead”.  This collection is way more essential than many of their ‘proper’ albums.

Album Review: Pearl Jam | Lightning Bolt

Review for www.meg.ie

http://www.meg.ie/pearl-jam-lightning-bolt/

Album Review: Pearl Jam – Yield

By 1998, Pearl Jam had become more or less the last band standing of the so-called grunge bands. Their sound was always a more classic rock sound and this informs Yield.

It comes roaring out of the traps with Brain of J, which has one of those classic chord changes for the chorus at which this band excels. This track is not really reflective of the rest of the album which settles into a more mid-tempo groove with Faithfull (sic) and No Way, the latter of which has a sort of late period Led Zeppelin feel to it.

This is reinforced by first single Given to Fly, which uses the tune and tempo of Zep’s Going to California before rocking it up a little. Wishlist is a very simple mid-tempo melody, with an anthemic chorus and a soaring, clean guitar solo midway through, while Pilate is more akin to REM’s classic Perfect Circle.

There is some experimentation here which doesn’t really work with track 8, an untitled garbled mess of percussion and chanting which thankfully only lasts a minute, and later Push Me, Pull Me is a spoken word track which again, doesn’t really work.

It works better when they play it straight. MFC zips along nicely, and Low Light has a pleasing acoustic feel to it. The anthemic In Hiding plays it a little too straight, and All Those Yesterdays sees them aim for a Beatles-type song, complete with brass etc. Less said about the hidden track, Russian dance (hummus?) the better.

It’s uneven but an enjoyable mixed bag.

Album Review: Pearl Jam – No Code

After Vitalogy and their battle with Ticketmaster there was a sense of exhaustion about Pearl Jam. Something had to give and it did. There was a palpable sense of pulling back about 1996’s No Code. Aside from the beautiful packaging, it starts out with the very understated Sometimes, a slow, creeping number in which Eddie Vedder croons about being “like a book amongst the many on the shelf”. It’s hard not to see this as a metaphor for where Pearl Jam wanted to go, to fade away from the limelight.

The influence of Neil Young was all over this album, particularly on the loping Crazy Horse like Smile and Red Mosquito. Lead single Who You Are was a real departure for Pearl Jam, a kind of uptempo campfire strum. There are more standard issue rockers like Hail, Hail, which rocks along at 90 miles an hour, and also Habit and the 60 second Lukin. These tracks pack as much wallop as anything in the Pearl Jam catalogue.

But it’s the stripped-down tracks which work really well here. Off He Goes is a really affecting song, sensitively sung by Eddie Vedder which has real impact. Equally successful is Present Tense, a real brooding number which explodes into life briefly midway through before settling back into contemplation mode.

Mankind has Stone Gossard on lead vocals, and he suffers in comparison to Vedder, which renders the song as something of a failure. They embrace their weirder side with I’m Open, a dark spoken word song before finishing with the really stripped-down Around the Bend, displaying a side of Pearl Jam which hadn’t previously been heard.

As Pearl Jam albums go, this one is quite experimental (for them), though in some ways it endures as much as their better known works such as Ten, vs etc.

Film / Soundtrack Review: Pearl Jam 20

Review for www.meg.ie

Album Review: Pearl Jam – Riot Act

The much maligned Pearl Jam released Riot Act in 2002, to the welcome of significantly fewer waiting fans than in their early 90s heyday. What has happened to this band is that, free of the shackles of the weight of being ‘voice of a generation’ is that they have loosened up (a little) and become possibly more enjoyable.

Not that they are ever exactly a barrel of laughs. Can’t Keep builds up but never quite reaches a climax but Save You is a loose and ragged rocker, leaving bits of itself over the place as it rampages along.

Things get darker with the solemn yet awfully titled Love Boat Captain, which starts quietly before building into a classic Pearl Jam anthem, referring to the tragic death of some of their fans at a concert in Roskilde. Cropduster is a mid-paced rocker with a big chorus, and I Am Mine is a kind dark, sea-shanty which sways to and fro nicely.

Pearl Jam always find time for a sensitive Eddie Vedder moment, and here it’s no different. Thumbing My Way is a beautifully sung lament that Bruce Springsteen would kill for. On the other extreme they bring in some machine-processed guitars for You Are. Here Vedder sounds as dismal as only he can as he groans “you are a tower of strength to me.”

Green Disease sounds like they were listening to The Strokes, while Vedder’s Lion King moment Arc is best forgotten. They save the best for last as they so often do with the bleak as f**k All Or None. “It’s a hopeless situation,” Vedder croons and you really believe him. Like the best Pearl Jam album closers, there’s a sense of finality to it.

Not necessarily a starting point for Pearl Jam. There are some strong songs here on this somewhat patchy album. This Riot Act’s not for reading, but not a bad listen.

Album Review: Eddie Vedder | Ukulele Songs

Review for http://www.meg.ie/

Album Review: Pearl Jam – Binaural

At this point in Pearl Jam’s career they were engaged in a wilful act of fan-shedding, removing most of the better songs from their studio albums and keeping them for 2003’s Lost Dogs rarities collection. Ok, they weren’t, but in retrospect it feels that way.

Binaural, released in 2000 was less accessible than previous album Yield. Rather than engaging tunes with big choruses, they preferred fast rockers without a chorus with Eddie Vedder groaning within an inch of his life such as Breakerfall, Evacuation, Insignificance etc.

None of these are particularly interesting. Elsewhere, Light Years and Thin Air have the ring of Wishlist (again from Yield) about them, that is a steady drumbeat and a big, catchy singalong chorus and a great vocal from Vedder. Nothing As It Seems was the lead single, kind of an odd choice for a single as it’s one of the murkiest, most brooding songs Pearl Jam have written, with lashings of electric guitar from Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. How anyone thought this would be a good choice for a single I don’t know, but it’s a great track, despite not having a commercial bone in its body.

The slower tracks work quite well. Tracks like Of The Girl, Slight of Hand and Parting Ways move at a fairly glacial pace but are fine tunes. Parting Ways in particular is a great tune, ending off with dark as hell guitar chords crashing ad nauseam giving an almost trance-like effect. Mention also to Vedder’s foray into uke-rock (ie using a ukulele) on Soon Forget.

I wasn’t quite joking about the fan-shedding. This album sold fewer than any of their previous albums, though for committed fans there is still plenty to get your teeth into.

The enduring appeal of Pearl Jam

Much derided as the corporate flipside to Nirvana’s integrity, this judgement was never correct. It’s not like Pearl Jam came from nowhere, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard certainly “paid their dues”, toiling for years in firstly Green River and then Mother Love Bone.

Singer Eddie Vedder is one of the more divisive figures in modern music. His detractors will accuse him of spawning a myriad of lame copy cat singers. This is undoubtedly true, as anyone familiar with the middle of the road American bands which came after grunge in the mid 90s can testify to, as he influenced everybody from Hootie and the Blowfish to Creed. But his voice is a versatile instrument, capable of remarkable sensitivity as well as powerful intensity.

They burst on to the music scene in a mass of hair, plaid shirts and cut-off shorts, looking every inch the grunge cliché. With 2 guitarists, Gossard and the relentlessly soloing Mike McCready, they provided an old-fashioned rock assault, driven by Ament’s bass and various different drummers.

Pearl Jam were never really a ‘grunge band’. They sound less Black Sabbath crossed with punk, more like a heavier early 70s The Who (Vedder is a huge fan). They are probably best known for their debut album Ten, which was everywhere in the early 90s. It was full of catchy rock anthems (Even Flow, Alive, Jeremy), with equally eye-catching videos, ideal for MTV (in the days when MTV still played music). They had a ‘big’ sound, perfect for blasting out of stereos everywhere. They followed it up with vs, which had almost as many anthems, though at this point they had made a point of not making videos for any of their songs, to avoid over exposure. This only served to get them more attention!

However their career became more interesting from this point on. 1994 was annus horribilis for the whole grunge/Seattle scene with the untimely death of Kurt Cobain. Cobain had criticised the band, calling them sell-outs, but subsequently they reconciled, so his death affected the band greatly and informed that year’s Vitalogy album. It received mixed reviews when it came out, caused by the lack of radio-friendly singles and also some cringeworthy musical ‘experiments’ (Bugs, Stupidmop). Despite this, the album has endured as one of their stronger albums. At its core, it contains some really strong hard rock songs (Not For You, Corduroy) and also some great slower tracks (Nothingman, Betterman, Immortality), which sound soulful and timeless, great songs played with real passion.

1996’s No Code followed this trend, eschewing the obvious rock anthems with some blindingly good subtler songs (and some great packaging). I was lucky enough to catch them live in Dublin on this tour and they really were superb, playing for more than 2 hours, pulling out gem after gem. Towards the end the vibe was almost like sitting around a campfire, while they played some of their lesser known material. I missed my last train home that night but there was no way I was leaving until it was over.

They have continued in this vein, through Yield, Binaural, Riot Act, Pearl Jam and their most recent, Backspacer. Nothing grungy about these albums, they all showcase the band's unashamed classic rock, updated for the post-grunge audience. None of them are perfect albums, but each contains a couple of minor classics.

Speaking of minor classics, they released a collection of non-album tracks, many of which were considered but ultimately rejected for their various albums. Entitled Lost Dogs, it’s actually a really good listen, and track for track, possible superior to many of their later albums. The track Dead Man had been written for the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, and it points the way to Eddie Vedder’s superb solo album Into the Wild (soundtrack to the film).

Quite simply the last great rock and roll careerist band, ie a band worth following through different phases and albums.