It's better to burn out than it is to rust

PEARL JAM
Pearl Jam
J Records, 2006

Pearl Jam (The band)- Well what can I say? They are a bloody brilliant band (quite aptly put don’t you think?). Their mixture of grunge sound, classic rock roots, heartfelt lyrics and deep vocals all come together to form a concoction of pure musical excellence. They exploded onto the scene in 1991 with, in my opinion, the best album to be released in decades, the epic “Ten”. But fifteen years later it can be seen that with age, Pearl Jam, the band, are rusting. They are still an amazing band, better than most, but their latest album has confirmed the fears of the entire music listening world by making it certain that the heights of “Ten” will never again be reached by them.

Pearl Jam (The self titled album released in 2006)- To be fair, in isolation, this is quite a good album. I mean if Good Charlotte, Simple Plan or some such band were to release an album like this, I would count it as being an outstanding album. For Pearl Jam, however, it’s a whole different story. (My apologies to all Good Charlotte and Simple Plan fans, but it’s just that their music tastes like a Popsicle forcibly being shoved up someone’s ass.) Anyway, with our expectations of this great band, after listening to this album the words disappointing, overestimation and disenchantment come to mind. Through the years Pearl Jam’s sound has evolved from being very hard rock like, to something more sober. In this album they tried to recreate their hard rock sound and, unsurprisingly they weren’t able too. Why they tried to revisit those hard rock roots is beyond me. As a huge Pearl Jam fan, their new “sober” sound has grown on me and I was even looking forward to an evolved sober Pearl Jam record, instead what I got was a valiant but unsuccessful attempt by a great band to try and be something they were fifteen years ago.

We as Pearl Jam fans have become accustomed to every album of theirs having inventive and original guitar riffs. It pains me to say that their inspirational guitarist (Mike McReady) has dropped the ball on this one. The guitar riffs are ok but not nearly up to Pearl Jam quality, where songs like Comatose and Life Wasted in particular have quite basic guitar bridges.

It is also apparent that Pearl Jam are more of a personal band. By this I mean that their songs that deal with personal issues of the band members tend to be great, as the band can truly engage with the song. You can see this in their older songs such as Black, Yellow Ledbetter, Betterman, Indifference and so on. In this album Pearl Jam deal with political issues and as a result, the quality of those songs are insufficient as the band are clearly not engaging themselves with this political message as opposed to how they did when their songs were about personal issues. A testament to this belief is the fact that the most endearing and musically captivating song in this album is perhaps the only personal song- Comeback.

This album does have its bright spots; songs such as Comeback, Gone and Army Reserve are pretty good songs, Comeback being the pick of the lot. Another positive that Pearl Jam can take away from this album are its lyrics. Pearl Jam have always had good lyrics and this album is no different. Its nice to see that at least in song writing Pearl Jam are meeting the high standards set by themselves.

As pointed out by a fellow Pearl Jam fan I seem to have quite unjustly dealt with this album, therefore in conclusion I’d just like to repeat that Pearl Jam (the album) is only a disappointment and a failure when compared to other Pearl Jam records, and if you view it in comparison with the kind of records being released today it is far more superior. Lastly I’d just like to say that Pearl Jam are and always will be a great band not to mention one of my personal favorites.

-Tarun Singh