 While Kurt Cobain was keeping it low in the verses and literally exploding in the chorus, Layne Staley was very angry about keeping his head in a hole and Chris Cornell was howling about a black hole sun, on the very edge, Eddie Vedder, with his eyes closed and his hands off the mike, was stammering about a boy called Jeremy. It became one of the signature songs of the 90s and along with Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit heralded in the musical movement we know as grunge.
When everyone was happy to go down under with grunge's slow tempos, fuzzed out guitars and stop-start song structures, Pearl Jam was not. They went with faster upbeat punkish songs with noticeable hooks and choruses. And while grunge lyrics were typically rants about looking inwards with healthy doses of angst, self-loathing and wanting to shoot one's self in the head, Vedder as the main songwriter and singer of Pearl Jam was always the bitter realist, a man capable of pointing out the injustices of the system and waging that war on the home front, both inside himself and whoever was listening.
Interestingly fame and being termed as one of the "greatest bands" that came out of grunge did not sit well with Pearl Jam. With the subsequent release of eight albums, Pearl Jam with its mainstays, lead guitarist Mick McCready, rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament, Vedder and a revolving host of drummers - Matt Cameron joined the band on Binaural - was all about undoing the past. There were no stories of rock star excesses about Pearl Jam, as Vedder described in an interview, "I felt that with more popularity, we were going to be crushed, our heads were going to pop like grapes," so from Vs till Pearl Jam, the band put on a brave face, which mostly never felt happy, toured insistently and played what many would refer to as 'sombre' music, which included a weird mixture of rock, worldbeat and experimentalism. What once was termed as 'a great band' looked increasingly like the band without spark, exhausted, spent and as the rattlesnake rattled its last breath… everyone stood with knives drawn, with the question on their lips: Was Pearl Jam dead?
 With the release of Backspacer, Pearl Jam have laid waste to all such rumours. Backspacer starts and ends in a mere 36 minutes and with its mix of fast punk rock songs and soft ballads, it's safe to say that Pearl Jam haven't played with such gusto and had this much fun in a long time.
A good point to start is 'The Fixer' which is also the first single. As Cameron starts off things with banging his floor toms, McCready and Gossard lock into a catchy little hook and alternate gleefully between different guitar sounds which Ament and Cameron aid by laying out a punchy groove,Vedder growls one of his most uplifting lyrics, "When something's dark, let me shed a little light on it/When something's cold, let me put a little fire on it/If something's old, I wanna put a bit of shine on it." What you would never expect is a certified on-the-road song from Pearl Jam and a happy-go-lucky one at that.
'Johnny Guitar' is another fine rock out. Vedder lets his hair loose and gets naughty as the rhythm section play a chugging along groove and Gossard and McCready slash out a mess of wah wah- infused guitar licks that get under your skin. Vedder is all wail and desperation "On the left the girl in red so innocent/Never sheds her clothes even when she goes to bed/Yeah the type of girl responsible for original sin/Can't help but wonder where and who she is."
While the album plays, it's refreshing to hear that Pearl Jam's new songs aren't about bouts of depression. Vedder no longer sings about surviving trauma or vents out political anger, as he did on Pearl Jam's first albums. Now his lyrics like on the beautiful lullaby-like ballad 'Just Breathe' are about a fulfilled life. "Practiced all my sins, never gonna let me win/Under everything, just another human being/I don't wanna hurt, there's so much in this world to make me believe."
The credit for Backspacer's sound goes to Brendan O'Brien's crisp production, which makes it sound like the guys are playing their stuff live in the studio and keeps the jive in the mix where all the instruments are given their fair due. Credit also goes to the severely underrated team of McCready and Gossard who keep their bag of licks interesting, and always understated, they are guitar players who like keeping the song as the priority and to Matt Cameron for being the most concise rock drummer since Stewart Copeland. He also knows when to keep a groove when he hears one and for Jeff Ament for keeping everything together with the all important bass line on which the structure stands.
*****Get it NOW!
****Just get it
***Maybe maybe not
**Just download the
best song
*Forget that this was mad |
