Album Review
Album Grade: ***1/2
By Anthony Kuzminski
Mere seconds into Pearl Jam’s ninth album, Backspacer the once flannel wearing bandits growl and grind their way through the buoyant “Gonna See My Friend”. Guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard’s six-strings chime in unison evoking the Ramones with its ardent aggression, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron are ever reliant with steadfast propulsion while the screeching vocals provided by Eddie Vedder find the band in full form and speeding away like a thief in the night. “Got Some” gnashes its way towards a discreet chorus that actually takes a backseat to the burning performance while, “The Fixer” has a signature grabbing chorus that is pure Pearl Jam. All of this happens in under 9-minutes. Backspacer whips past you in a mere 37-minutes, more rapidly than the speed of light. I’m not going to tell you this is a return to form or their best since Vs., but it’s an unbelievably resilient record that continues to disclose harmonious wonders with every listen. Finding a middle ground between primal guitar riffs and more solemn songs, Backspacer is a quintessential Pearl Jam record and one of their most accessible; simultaneously searing and yet intensely sentimental.
Pearl Jam has always had a way of entrancing the listener in a devoted manner. Beneath singer Eddie Vedder’s lyrics were the forceful drive of the band and an ‘us against them’ mentality. However, one can only channel anger through music before it becomes tedious, especially when you’ve sold millions of records. However, when Pearl Jam turned inward and created more reflective work found on No Code, Yield, Binaural and Riot Act, the results were mixed. Make no mistake, each one of the aforementioned albums has a number of enduring songs, but all too often it took me hearing or seeing the songs live to fully appreciate them. Their 2006 self-titled record (often referred to as Avocado by the core fans for its picture of an avocado on its cover) was an incandescent return to form for the group. Fueled by the world’s troubles, the band re-emerged from a decade long melodic coma to create a record full of all the classic Pearl Jam ingredients; rage and melody paired together. However, since then, the world has begun to shift once again and one has to wonder, what is left for Pearl Jam to tackle? For a group of musicians all in their forties, they’re looking beyond…far beyond their current state. On Backspacer they challenge death, embrace life’s simple pleasures and speak of fear of the unknown proving that despite selling millions of records, this is a band that is still believable.
On “Just Breathe” the band’s nuanced performance is discreet but enlivening enough for them to be noticeable. Evoking inner emotions and filling up one’s tear ducts, one can’t help but feel that the song’s overreaching sentimentality and truthfulness evokes what Pearl Jam does best. This is the greatest love song Pearl Jam has ever written. “Amongst the Waves” is a metaphorical life-affirming surfing song with a glorious solo by Mike McCready. “Love ain’t love until you feel it” croons Vedder providing the listener with an empirical experience of floating through the air on with love providing the gas to surge one’s life forward. “Unthought Known” a self-help odyssey that could have ventured into Bon Jovi territory, but the way the band quakes beneath the brooding vocals allows the emotion to erupt. “Speed of Sound” is about a loss of faith (“And yet I’m still holding tight, To this dream of distant light, In that somehow ill survive”). “Supersonic” may feature one-dimensional, almost throwaway lyrics, but one listen to the band’s primitive grooves you can’t help but want to mosh like it’s 1991 all over again.
On each of these songs, the compelling performances allow the lyrics to breathe and unfold into our ears. On Pearl Jam’s 2002 record, Riot Act, the band wrote some of the most concentrated and pondering songs of their life following the death of nine fans at the Roskilde show in Europe in the summer of 2000. However, on Riot Act the band’s arrangements felt obtuse never allowing the lyrics to reach the surface for mass consumption. On Backspacer the band doesn’t try to fight their own melodic strengths and in fact, the music at times embellishes the vocals without ever overtaking them.
Backspacer harbors a personality that shifts from the acoustic melancholy to the raging in-your-face anthems (“Got Some”) of their early days. I don’t think the album is up to par with their self-titled 2006 record, which had all the classic elements of a definitive Pearl Jam album; anger, aggression, performances full of lightning and a keen sense of melody. Backspacer isn’t quite as volcanic but it’s also less political. After spending the better part of two decades carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, they’re now writing about unpretentious pleasures, the shortage of time and a heightened awareness of the after world. Instead of tackling social issues for an entire generation, they’re tackling issues that are far more personal. If I have one minor criticism of the record, is that it could have potentially been an outright classic with some small editing. A nine-track record may have proven to be fully potent. Yet even “Johnny Guitar” is beginning to grow on me with its plodding simplistic six-string strumming. I’m not sure if it is too clichéd to leave a lasting impact but the more one listens to Backspacer the treasures reveal themselves. The biting political tone of their most recent releases takes a back seat to the paeans of life. Vedder’s lyrics reveal themselves to you in the simplest of manners and yet upon further reflection, they’re intensely compelling when paired with his longing vocals putting the listener in a psychologist’s chair helping them realize the intricate beauties life has to offer one. As Vedder approaches fifty, one can’t help that he feels mortality knocking on the doors of those close to him. The band throws enough life-affirming metaphors in their lyrics that would make a self-help book author giddy. That being said, the relatively organic nature of the mix and performance allow the listener to slurp up the advice with merriment.
On the album’s concluding track, “The End”, the narrator is fighting a terminable disease and is fearsome of what the future holds for them on the other side. What will happen to his loved ones? These are questions no one asks until put into that position. The song ends unexpectedly as if Vedder hushed his final words providing a profoundly lingering and meditative end to any record in recent memory. “The End” reminds us that that when we least expect it, our lives may twist and turn in different directions. We’re all here one minute and gone the next; suck up life, revel in it and soak it up while you can because we never know when we will reach “The End”.
Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.
