For all the credit Nirvana gets with changing music forever, the band that was really at the head of the "grunge" music (an therefore destroying hair metal) was Pearl Jam and everyone seems to forget this, maybe even Pearl Jam themselves. Sure, Nirvana's music has certainly stood up better over time and was arguably more unique, but before April 1994 Pearl Jam were the kings. When Nirvana were whining about how hard it is to be famous and talking about how great these little bands were, Pearl Jam were using their fame to take on the giants: refusing to make videos and cater to MTV, refusing to sell their tickets through ticketmaster even though it crippled their career and releasing this record on vinyl two weeks before it's release date to bring vinyl back. All I'm sayin' is you need to wonder what would have happened if Eddie Vedder had killed himself instead of Kurt Cobain.
But at the same time, Pearl Jam is responsible for a slew of terrible bands who channel Eddie Vedder's deep and intense cowl and layer it on top of uninteresting middle of the road rock. Vitalogy as it turns out, was the last Pearl Jam album that would matter. Pop-punk would soon overshadow it, and the band's refusal to channel mainstream media outlets really stunted their growth. It kicks off with a fucking fierce one-two punch for a mainstream rock album, the second fist being "Spin the Black Circle" which not only the best Pearl Jam song ever, but probably the best, if not most ignored, single released during this era. To hear this on the radio was proof that Pearl Jam was not going to lose any footing because of Green Day, or Kurt Cobian's suicide or their public legal battles.
So why did they? I guess to put it simply, the rest of the album is uneven. Though songs like "Not For You" and "Nothingman" start out pretty promising, a lack of chord changes robs them of the necessary forward momentum to make them interesting for their five or six-minute lengths. They also insert little jam sessions such as "Pry, To" and "Ave Davinita" which while they sound like they were fun to play, they sound out of place - almost as if someone just cut little snippets of Pearl Jam screwing around and put it on the record. And although it kicks off with Eddie Vedder's voice sounding better than ever, he often falls into the trappings that made grunge a trend instead of a real genre.
Instead of being the masterpiece that Pearl Jam were clearly going for with it's elaborate artwork and semi-conceptual format, this turned out to be the last CD of an era. It's kind of a shame because when they write good songs, Pearl Jam are one of the best. Take "Corduroy" for example, the song was so damn good that despite a minute long intro and outro that had little to do with the meat of the song and being the only song without lyrics in the insert, was so powerful that radio just started playing it and it became a single. But where this record has obvious standout hits (just like Ten!) and honestly furious tracks (just like Vs.!), the low points are just too low and inconsistent to make this record say anything except "grunge is dead."
5 comments:
Funny that you reviewed this album Jeff, I was just listening to it while driving through NY/CT. Do you remember when EV wrote Pro Choice on his arm during the song "Porch" on Mtv's Unplugged?
I don't know who this is, but yeah, I remember that. Were they maybe more punk than Nirvana? Puuuuuuuunk.
Pearl Jam always hit me as having less overt influence from the world of punk rock than many of the other "grunge" bands, which I think was instrumental in making the scene become a new genre. Listening to early Nirvana, it's clear that they never thought they were forging a new genre, they were just playing punk rock with forethought, like Mudhoney or Husker Du. Pearl Jam didn't have as much of a punk rock aesthetic in their music, at least to me. However, their edginess and intellectualism was clearly punk (being smart is punk as fuck) and I think Vedder's lyrics stand better on their own than Cobain's.
Pearl Jam also had a sense of dynamics and contrast in their guitars that seems to be me as pretty in line with what early nineties post-hardcore bands like Dear Ephesus were doing.
In my blog, I had a recent monologue about Link 80, and I'm curious if their songs are rattling around your iPod, and what your thoughts (positive, negative, ambivalent) are about them.
Yeah, but what is punk rock as far as music goes? I feel like you CAN hear them in a lot of those early nineties post-hardcore bands, and Lungfish were punk and fuck, right? They were on DISCHORD! MINOR THREAT!!!!
I do have some Link 80 on my iPod, that's one of those albums I rarely listen to so I guess I'll see what I think when it comes up on random, yeah?
Ah damn, I had a long comment and it didn't post. Anyway, it summed up to: Pearl Jam brought in a lot of 70's rock and blues influences that allowed "grunge" to be more than just an offshoot of punk rock, which I feel is what it was in the hands of many bands. Pearl Jam clearly cut their teeth on blues rock, and while they had some very punk-driven songs, they brought in a number of outside influences. Also, no one sang like Vedder.
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