Slackspacer: Why Pearl Jam’s New Album is Unnecessary

Hypothetical situation:  one of the most successful rock bands–at a time when rock is the biggest-selling genre out there–decides they actually have too many fans and makes a conscious decision to evolve their music away from the mainstream.  With each subsequent album, they go in a slightly different, unexpected direction, with varying degrees of accessibility.  They shed millions of fans, but those who remain are devout, as their musical tastes just happen to have evolved along the same unexpected lines of the band’s.  Now, what happens when that band, some twenty years into the grand experiment, stops evolving?  Not going backward, per se, but they just stagnate, make the same album twice, and seem to have run out of new things to say?  Well, for starters, most of those faithful fans are going to remain just as faithful, as by this point being a fan of this band is practically a lifestyle choice.  Also, we’re left to deal with Pearl Jam’s completely unnecessary album Backspacer.

It begins promisingly enough.  The opening track, “Gonna See My Friend”, features Eddie Vedder’s signature growl, and is thematically the opposite of the opening track on their previous album.  That song, “Life Wasted”, was an uplifting, life-affirming anthem.  This lead track, however, is a depressed, angry rant.  About what, we can’t be sure.  This turnabout in tone is thrilling because it’s unexpected.  And the song is a fist-pumping rocker, but far from anything new.  The old standby formula of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown/bridge-chorus which Pearl Jam have used so well in the past just feels forced here.  I’ve worn these shoes before.  The song isn’t bad, but it’s completely unnecessary.

The second track is the standout on the album.  “Got Some” is a musical marvel, as McCready and Gossard layer guitars over each other with ever-increasing intensity, Matt Cameron drives the start-stop-start-stop stutter of the song along until it finds it’s dramatic footing when Jeff Ament pops in a Spy Hunter-esque bass line about halfway through the song, and at that point we know something special really is happening.  Vedder has found a great refrain for the song in “I got some if you need it”, but we’re lucky we can’t understand the rest of the lyrics, because they’re pretty inane (“Precipitation, which side are you on?/ Are you on the rise?”), but they’re still highly sing-able once you know them.  This song feels fresh, new, kinda a little daring.

Third comes “The Fixer”, the first single off the album, and to this listener’s mind, the first true pop song the band has written. And it’s great.  It’s the yin to “Gonna See My Friend”‘s yang.  It’s positive, uplifting, a joyful noise, and highly addictive.  Not new, really.  It’s another list song, and Vedder loves writing list songs (“Wishlist”, “Sometimes”, “Rats”), and he’s good at them.

Then the album takes a downturn.  There is one failed experiment (“Johnny Guitar” bumbles to its unsatisfying conclusion) and lots and lots of rehash.  The songs aren’t bad, exactly.  Just not exciting or compelling, and most are unoriginal.  The quiet, tinkly “Just Breathe” is a nice enough song, but I liked it better the first time, when it was called “Guaranteed” and it was on Vedder’s Into the Wild soundtrack album.  “Just Breathe” also utilizes a string quartet, which displays a shameful lack of creativity, and dare I say, a bit of audience pandering.  The closing track, “The End” (an early fan favorite, and I apologize to the faithful here) is one of the worst Pearl Jam songs ever put to record.  It, too, shamefully uses a string quartet instead of the band conveying the feeling from the instruments they actually play, as well as containing the absolutely most annoying vocal rhythm Vedder has ever contrived, and some of the worst rhymes, too.  Most of it reads like it was written by a fourth grader: “Don’t leave me so cold/ or buried beneath the stones. / I just want to hold on/ and know I’m worth your love.”  Ug.  Is this really where we’re at, Pearl Jam?

And the rest:  “Amongst the Waves” is the second surfing song in two albums.  It’s a shame it’s so sonically pleasant but lyrically inaccessible to me, and I liked it before when it was “Loveboat Captain”, “Gone” and “Marker in the Sand”–songs from previous Pearl Jam albums.

“Unthought Known” is the first Pearl Jam song that comes right out in the open with being pretentious.  I was more comfortable when they were a thinly-veiled pretentious band.  It is also a sonically pleasing song, but I liked it better when it was “Inside Job”.

“Supersonic”, “Speed of Sound” and “Force of Nature” are all regrettably forgettable and, something deep inside me fears, attempts to appeal to the masses and sell records.  I can’t blame them.  Everyone wants a come back.  But I just have to ask:  their last album didn’t sell incredibly well, so if they’re trying to break through to a mainstream audience, why did they make it a second time?