Pearl Jam | Self TitledEmpty Bottle Evenings

Jan272015January 27, 2015January 27, 20151 Commentby Bake

Pearl Jam | Self Titled

Posted in Music

Last time I wrote about one of Bad Religion’s under-appreciated albums. Today I’m going for one of Pearl Jam’s. Why? Well, they’ve only released about half as many albums, but it’s still easy to lose track of them over 25 years. Also, and more truthfully, when going back and listening to Bad Religion’s back catalog I realized Eddie Vedder sang on “Watch It Die” off Bad Religion’s Recipe for Hate. This sort of blew my fucking mind. What was a famous grunge singer doing on a prominent punk band’s album? Maybe Vedder always wanted to be in a punk band? And maybe it took until 2006 for it to show up.

Pearl Jam is not really a punk album but it might be the closest thing to it that Pearl Jam has released. And it’s actually pretty damn good. Of course if you’re looking for punkish songs Pearl Jam has scattered quite a few of them across their long career like “Go”, “State of Love and Trust”, “Spin the Black Circle”, “Lukin”, “Habit”, and a lot more depending of your definition of punk. Actually their prior album Riot Act is more politically influenced and features aggressive up-tempo songs like “Save You”, “Green Disease”, and “Get Right” too. But their self titled is what we’re focusing on today class. Maybe it’s not punk. It’s arguably more garage rock with a handful of alt-rock ballads filling out the disk. But let’s jump in anyway. And yes, there will be a quiz tomorrow.

The “Avocado Album” opens with three strong, fast paced punkish rock songs: “Life Wasted” a song about refusing to get brought down by someone else’s negativity, “World Wide Suicide” tackling the shadiness of world politics and war, and the early-punk inspired “Comatose”. Like other raw and noisy Pearl Jam songs, including several off Vitalogy (“Last Exit”, “Spin the Black Circle”, “Satan’s Bed”) It’s not the kind of punk people (at least me) are used to hearing often anymore, more like The Stooges/MC5 style of music. Sometimes I find it weird when Pearl Jam has mixed these type of songs amongst late ’80s style Metal and mid ’90s era radio friendly pop-rock, but the band’s calling card does seem to be varying greatly song to song while never straying outside the realm of rock music in general. While some of their previous efforts were supposed to showcase their more experimental side, even with the individual song differences this is actual the most straightforward Pearl Jam album in the 2000s.

“Severed Hand” and “Marker in the Sand” do seem like quintessential Pearl Jam songs with the former resembling a deeper cut from their first few albums and the latter something Yield might have, uh, yielded. “Parachutes is far from punk; it’s their requisite Beatles tribute on this album. Meanwhile, their take on poverty, “Unemployable”, starts off ’70s Bowie and continues with Foo Fighters-esque choruses. “Big Wave” brings back some of that garage rock energy before the somber beginning of “Gone” slows things down until the area rock drums and U2-ish guitar kicks in for the soundtrack of someone leaving it all behind. Unsurprisingly “Army Reserve” is not pro war; lyrically it could be a punk song, musically it sound like it could be found on Binaural. “Come back” is sort of a sappy, bluesy ballad about being left alone that the sappy, bluesy guy in me sort of likes. A lot. And finally “Inside Job” closes out the album with a slow build up that only an album closer could pull off.

Wanting to listen to something punk led me to listening to Bad Religion, and listening to them led me to listening to this album. But three songs in you realize this isn’t really a punk album, just a Pearl Jam album. I think because Ten was one of my first albums ever I tend to think of Pearl Jam as the band who plays 6 minute songs with crazy guitar solos like the beasts played in “Alive”. But in the past two decades most of their best songs are actually 3 minute long hard rock jams that are more akin to underground stuff found in the early ’70s, not mainstream stuff listened to millions of flannel wearing kids in the early ’90s. These 13 Pearl Jam songs, despite some of the energy and political lyrics present, do not really represent punk, but they are representative of band that everyone knows the name but probably doesn’t realize the what type of music they have actually been creating. I hope that others take a closer listen and find some of it to be pretty damn good too.