Specifically, though, I had a thing against Pearl Jam. Their songs sounded like stew. And I was sure that there was something either overcooked or rotten at the bottom. They liked to talk about The Clash and The Ramones, but they sounded like the opposite of those bands. They wore hats that looked not unlike whatever was on the heads of The Spin Doctors. Their bassist had the build of an athlete but played these odd guitars that belonged in King Crimson. And their lead singer was just too good. And too good looking. This was music that did not jive. In 1992, I was just waiting for Pearl Jam’s other Doc Marten to drop.
As early as the winter of 1991, I was hearing whispers about this Pearl Jam. I was seventeen at the time, but wanted desperately to be twenty two. I presumed that the quieter jocks and Metal kids who were talking about the band in school simply didn’t know about The Cure or PIL. To them, Pearl Jam was as weird as music could get. Plus, it was easy to discount the word of mouth back then. It was more a hum than a buzz. Even the next year, when I went away to college, I managed to completely ignore the initial tremors of Grunge. I didn’t have a TV and considered myself a very serious adult. I was head down in Slint and Pavement. Pearl Jam was literally three thousand miles away.
But, when I returned home that summer, I knew something was amiss. Nirvana was the only thing on MTV. I couldn’t reconcile their popularity — they were a Punk band. They were like The Pixies, but less weird and more distressed. On the other hand, their songs were short and catchy and “Nevermind” resembled Pop music in the same way that Kurt Cobain resembled Axl Rose. In that way, it made some sense to me. Pearl Jam, on the other hand, did not. It seemed that they were the only other thing on MTV. The guys at school who never showed any interest in music — the ones who used the word “gay” as a catch-all for everything they didn’t like or understand — those guys were blasting Pearl Jam from their car stereos. I had only been away at college for a single semester. But, in that time, the whole world had changed. And I had zero clue why or how.
So, like millions and millions of others, I bought a copy of “Ten.” I considered it research. But unlike millions and millions of others, I never liked it. I almost feel guilty writing that, but it’s true. I am a card carrying member of Generation X. I loved Punk Rock. I loved Hard Rock. I liked Metal. I knew, almost instantly, that Eddie Vedder was doing something different. I’d never heard a man sing like that. The baritone. The vibrato. The yearning. I couldn’t figure out if it was a physical gift or a trick or a technical defect. But, whatever it was, it was wrestling with songs that I just could not get into. The music meandered. It was either too slow or too fast. The bass sounded too far forward. The melodies never resolved themselves. The choruses required tsunami-like vocals to overwhelm the slow moving waters beneath. There was obvious talent. And there was dynamic. All of the guys could do their jobs. And they were impassioned and principled, even from the start. But I could not abide. To me, “Ten” was a heavy, over-seasoned meal with a single ingredient that tasted unlike anything I had ever consumed before. And that ingredient was Eddie Vedder.
That being said, Pearl Jam was never my enemy. I never begrudged their success or rolled my eyes in the direction of genuine fans or bandwagoners. If they were the new face of Rock, I was OK with that. Along with Nirvana, they ushered in a brief moment in American culture when the zeitgeist was exciting, weird and, nearly egalitarian. As Grunge was assimilated into Alternative culture, TV, radio and music festivals all got more colorful. R.E.M. became super superstars. The Modern Rock radio charts were topped by bands like Belly, The Juliana Hatfield Three and 10,000 Maniacs. In 1993, Babes in Toyland and Dinosaur Jr. headlined Lollapalooza and Sebadoh, Mercury Rev and The Coctails played the side stage. The Coctails — a band from Chicago that is a cult band for cult bands! They were near the top of the bill.
The first half of the 1990s were a singular moment wherein Nirvana and Pearl Jam — the two biggest Rock groups in the world — genuinely believed that they were not half as great as The Melvins or Sleater Kinney. Those few years marked a fleeting time when Generation X triumphed over the Boomers, replacing the falseness of our parents’ ideals with a celebration of angst and apathy. The lines between Indie and Alternative and Rock and Pop were all blurry. It was hard to be cynical when there was an almost uncanny, kaleidoscopic joy about it all.
Obviously, it didn’t last. As early as 1992, when Cameron Crowe released “Singles,” which featured Vedder, Chris Cornell and assorted Grunge royalty, I sensed that the signified was already eclipsing the signifier. In early 1994, the ethos and the affect was more comically (and successfully) co-opted by Ben Stiller’s “Reality Bites.” Later that year, Kurt Cobain died and the opiated underside of Alt culture got exposed. It was all too good to be true, in part, because it may have never been true. Today, nearly thirty years later, I still wonder if the “Alternative revolution” was a creative victory or a trick of hegemony.
By the mid-90s, Alt was basically over. Or rather, Alt was no longer alternative. There were still vestiges — Radiohead and the Beastie Boys. But in the place of Bikini Kill and L7 we got Alanis and Tracy Bonham. And instead of Nirvana and Beck, we got Live and then The Goo Goo Dolls and then Dave Matthews Band and then Third Eye Blind and then Matchbox Twenty and then Creed. In 1992, I never could have seen the through line from Pearl Jam to DMB and Creed. But, in retrospect, that’s precisely what unnerved me about “Ten” — the sound of a Jam band rocking more slowly and fervently.
Obviously, this larger, cultural disappointment was not the fault of Pearl Jam. In fact, while the promise of the nineties was imploding, Pearl Jam was improving. If “Ten” was an album where a new lead singer was finding his way in a previously established unit, by “Vitalogy,” Eddie Vedder had fully taken over. Whereas the singer only wrote two songs for the band’s debut, he wrote or co-wrote nine of the fourteen tracks on their third album. “Vitalogy” finds the band moving faster, loosening up and experimenting a bit, while still maintaining a sufficient dose of their trademark seriousness. It contains a timeless, unmistakable Pop song in “Better Man” and what is their most irrefutable and anthemic achievement, “Corduroy.” There was no more wrestling between the band and their matinee idol frontman. The singer had pinned down the songs. Stone, Jeff and Mike did the sensible thing. They submitted and followed the leader.
Over the next ten years, Pearl Jam evolved from Grunge posterboys to unlikely Pop stars to the most consistent and principled Rock band on the planet. They fought and mostly lost a battle with Ticketmaster. They stood up for progressive ideals. They made albums every other year and followed them with world tours, playing marathon concerts for stadiums of sweaty, enraptured fans. Eddie’s Pearl Jam sounded mostly like Jeff and Stone’s Pearl Jam, but more certain, less serpentine. On singles like “Given to Fly” and “I Got Id” and “Last Kiss,” they could be faster or slower or more abstract or more direct. But they did not sound like all of those things at once. Songs were songlike while experiments were experimental. What started as four talented guys trying to locate a vibe, began to sound like an actual Rock band. In fact, during this time, they were probably the “Most Important Band in the World” not named “Radiohead.”
Being important, of course, did not mean “important to me.” Although each successive Pearl Jam album had a righteous, Pulitzer air about it, I was more interested in the Indie Rock that was left in the rubble of Alternative’s collapse. And so, like a lot of snobs and fair weather fans, I stopped paying close attention after “No Code,” in 1996. There was no ill will. In fact, quite the opposite. I was very happy that the band existed. They were fighting the good fights. They were like some noble non-profit that did important work, of which I was simply unaware. It is true that I sometimes considered them too righteous. But, even then, it was hard to not applaud their effort.
In the later aughts, my respectful disinterest in Pearl Jam began to thaw. In 2007, I saw “Into the Wild.” And while I don’t remember liking the film all that much, I know I loved the soundtrack. Eddie Vedder’s proximity to Neil Young had evidently paid off. With mostly his own guitar, mandolin and banjo, and without his famous band, he had made a beautiful Americana album. It gave me an unexpected glimmer of hope and anticipation for the future of Pearl Jam. In 2008, Eddie and his soon to be wife had their second daughter. And, later that year, the junior senator from his home state of Illinois became the first Black man to be elected President of the United States. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were out of office. The days of Matchbox Twenty and Third Eye Blind were a distant memory. Slipknot and Staind were off the charts. CD sales were dead but Indie Rock was thriving again. Hope had sprung eternal. So, after nearly two decades of steadfast resistance, It was a fair moment to wonder if Eddie Vedder had lightened up, just a little.
On the heels of all of this sea change, there were rumors of a new Pearl Jam album. And then, in the second half of 2009, we received two singles from “Backspacer,” the band’s ninth studio album. “The Fixer,” which came first, is an unusually concise rocker with a sharp, kind of hitchy, hook that evokes Franz Ferdinand or Spoon. In that Eddie Vedder is still the singer, the song is undeniably Pearl Jam. But in its brevity and its fun, it lands a very long way from “Ten.” The second single, “Just Breathe,” bears some resemblance to Eddie’s work on “Into the Wild.” “The Fixer” can be plotted near the edgy, new wave side of Indie, while “Just Breathe” resides closer to the folky end, near Iron and Wine or Sufjan. Over a spare, finger-picked guitar, a purr of organ and some strings, the singer tries to stay in his head and heart at once. It’s an excellent mode for Eddie. It’s the kind of song you swoon for. It’s a peek into the sort of artist that he was possibly born to be and a world wherein the Dave Matthews Band and Mumford are wholly unnecessary. Possibly a better world.
Taken together, these singles sounded genuinely different than the Pearl Jam I remembered. They also sounded surprisingly new and modern. They were nothing like Grunge, but they still had the singer who could outsing everyone else. I was not not interested. Early interviews suggested a more “optimistic” and “New Wave” album. As encouragingly, the band noted the economy of the songs. “Backspacer” featured eleven tracks in thirty six minutes. That made it about a third leaner than the average Pearl Jam album. Five songs clocked in under three minutes and only two nudged past four. With the exception of Brendan O’Brien back producing the band, this did not sound like the Pearl Jam I was familiar with.
