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Pearl Jam's Greatest Album
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I meant to have this entry, the finale of the album rankings, up on Friday, I swear, but sometimes life just shows up. Between waking up late, preparing at the last minute for the campout I went on over the weekend and my gorgeously sparkling copy of Backspacer showing up in the mail, let us just say that Friday was not a good day to devote a couple of hours to my Examiner page. At least I was devoting most of the day to Pearl Jam nonetheless. I have thoroughly ingested the new album and look forward to delivering a review of it some time this week. For those of you who are fans of the group Phish, I will be breaking from the PJ obsession to write up a review of their new album this week, as well. But do not fret, I have a few more PJ ideas to sift through and wallow in, thus extending the 60 Days into a longer period.
After all the countdown entries, both of songs and albums, after all the readers’ comments, the readers’ song poll, the e-mails, etc., today’s entry might be the most personally important aspect of this entire 60 Days of Pearl Jam project, other than the release of and obsession with the band’s latest LP, Backspacer. Today, I discuss the band’s first and greatest album, 1991’s Ten.
1. Ten, 1991 - The packaging has been damned. The glossy late-80's carry-over production has been bashed. The songwriting's tendency toward anthems has been mocked. Regardless, Pearl Jam's debut album remains its finest LP and the greatest album of the last two musical generations. Ten shines, taking a basic band philosophy, simple instrumentation and fundamental rock and roll song styles and transforming it all into something intense and magical. Last week I ranked the rest of my top 5 Pearl Jam albums and consider all of them masterful classics, but no collection of songs the band has produced has reached the heights of this record. Knowing that these guys had been in previous bands but had never seen any success even approaching the vicinity of what the record would result in makes listening to Ten akin to watching someone catch lightning in a bottle, not once, twice or even three times, but instead 11 times over. With a huge sound, heavy intensity and something indefinable that has carried the band from its infancy to its now mellowing middle age, Ten built the foundation upon which Pearl Jam was based, but managed to help form the house's walls, ceiling and roof, decorate and furnish its rooms and even be the smoke puffing out of its warm fireplace. Emotional, raw, powerful, majestic, anthemic, soaring, spiritual, cathartic, therapeutic and loud, Ten is Pearl Jam's most passionate and greatest album.
Stone Gossard was the band's leader, offering up classic rock-influenced riffs layered in funky grooves. Dressed in tight jeans, a t-shirt likely supporting one of his favorite bands, his long hair often tied back in a top-style ponytail, Gossard was a fun-loving, dorky master of the song, an unlikely groovemaster. Stone's co-founder was Jeff Ament, a bassist with a knack for dark songwriting who sported outrageous fashion styles, including hugely entertaining hats, tank tops, tights, shorts and of course, basketball shoes. Ament was the athlete of the band, a high-flying jumper who managed to cover half the stage during performances. Mike McCready looked pretty mangy, a drunken Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabe half the time, wearing a silky cowboy shirt and hat, a stoned, trashy sleezeball the rest of the time, his little mustache covering a smug face hiding a well of despair. None of that mattered when the man played guitar, for his wailing style, so full of the blues as well as punk and thrash shredding, truly lifted the songs to entirely new and different levels, the focal point of so many of the era's greatest moments.
Then there was Eddie Vedder. While Ament and Gossard were tight, traveling from Green River to the doomed Mother Love Bone and deciding to continue their journey with a new band, and McCready was hand-picked, one of the two formers' local favorite guitarists, Eddie Vedder just fell into this band, first becoming its singer, then its lyric writer, then later, taking over Gossard's spot as the leader of Pearl Jam. He arrived as a quiet surfer dude from San Diego with roots in Chicago, a long-haired soul whose pent-up aggression and emotional imbalance would drive the very heart of the first album and much of the band's entire run. Less than two years later, he became Kurt Cobain's counterpart, a second unwilling spokesman and icon of a musical movement and an entire generation. His lyrics were sparse, stark and simmering with undeniable despair, while his vocal melodies, song delivery and detailed groans, grunts, moans, whispers, screams and wailing high notes became the star of the show, providing the band's three point shots and slam dunks alike. Nearly two decades later, singers throughout modern rock are still trying to disguise the fact that they essentially want to sing just like Eddie Vedder.
So it was this combination of personalities and musical abilities, along with drummer Dave Krusen, that ventured into the studio in early 1991 to record the album that would become Ten. The albums was built upon a collection of songs mostly composed by Stone Gossard and lyrics written by Eddie Vedder, a duo written in the stars and providing a huge amount of Pearl Jam's most powerful moments. Gossard had a large amount of song skeletons up his sleeve around that time, including a big group that ended up being left off of the album, such as "Alone," "Hold On," "Brother," "Breath," "Wash" and "Dirty Frank." Message board commentators on the theskyiscrape.com website proved me wrong when arguing against my assertion that Binaural had the greatest b-side leftovers. In actuality, Ten does. The list above does not even include the Ament/McCready collaborations, "Yellow Ledbetter" and "State of Love and Trust." Anyway, it seems that after Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood's death and before the recording of Pearl Jam's first LP, Gossard experienced a period of wild creativity. Out of Ten's 11 songs, Gossard composed or co-composed eight. The man was simply on fire, and the album reflects his penchant for uniquely driven rock music, often based in funk, sometimes in chunky, distorted hard rock, but always dominated by Gossard's penchant for something simultaneously catchy, different and powerful.
Ten slowly fades in, perhaps the first Pearl Jam reference to water, inadvertently reflecting a wave drifting toward the shore. The first sound is that of "Master/Slave," a Vedder/Ament collaborative instrumental featuring Vedder wailing deep in the background, a deep bass groove from Ament, echoing percussion and a minimalist quality. 40 seconds into the track, Stone Gossard's guitar interrupts it and erupts into his opening riff for "Once," a fiery explosion of up-tempo hard rock with simple, spacious lyrics by Eddie Vedder. His vocals are shaking, disturbed and upset, a mark of the man to soon take over the globe. The song follows the basic early Pearl Jam formula. Funky Gossard riff and Ament bass, half-singing/half-screaming Vedder vocals, a shredding solo by McCready, crashing, cymbal-heavy drum work by Krusen, a hugely soaring sound that all comes together for a tension-filled climax.
Track 2, "Even Flow," follows the same formula, but lifts it to greater heights, allowing both Vedder and McCready to take over more significantly, each musician demonstrating his first mastering of his instrument. Gossard's riff, here appearing in its first incarnation, is as funky as he gets, channeling his bopping duck dance for its debut run. While demonstrating a skill for leaving space in "Once," Vedder does quite the opposite in "Even Flow," spitting and sputtering his way through quickly delivered lyrics about the homeless before wailing through an anthemic chorus full of screeches, yells and moans, all culminating in the second and final verses' eruption of emotion and sound in the form of, "H-Y-yeeeaaahhh!" a sound that fills arenas each time the band performs the track. McCready's solo is extended and even rides a trick playout that somehow returns the song to its roots for the final chorus. The band's second single and most played live track, "Even Flow" is one of the definitive song's of the Pearl Jam sound, especially in the early years.
Throughout the album countdown, I have focused on certain sections of Pearl Jam albums that are both essential and beautiful, rising above the rest of the band's catalogue and even other parts of the very album in question. When discussing each one of these runs of songs, I knew in my heart that the greatest run would arrive during the greatest album discussion in the form of tracks three through eight, a section I equate to the greatness of Abbey Road's side two, side one of Nebraska or the entire duration of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. These songs incorporate everything that made Pearl Jam great at that time and many previewed nuances of what would make them remain important later in their career. The whole album is perfect, but this section still manages to somehow stick out become even more special than the rest, even if certain singular songs are not quite as good as others not in the six-song run.
"Alive" is the first song of the run and is obviously known as one of Pearl Jam's definitive songs, a huge arena rock anthem that appeared as the band's first single. The original PJ song builds on the style of the first two songs, slowing the music down a bit, easing the funk and creating more melody. Vedder goes along for the ride of these changes perfectly, his lyrics telling the story of his own childhood then venturing into fiction, in between penning one of his simplest and greatest choruses, the wailing classic, "Oh, I, I, I'm still alive," refrain repeated with intricately-structured vocal ticks and details. "Once" did a good job of it earlier, but "Alive" is really the first example of just how effectively the band could play a bridge or middle eight section, and how well they, led by Vedder's rising vocals, could transition from that break back into the epic chorus. Mike McCready's solo lifts the song above even the greatness of that chorus, first teasing with subtle hints, then wailing and soaring like it was played some time in 1972.
Vedder had already represented the unfortunate and disenfranchised in "Even Flow," but for the first time demonstrates that lyrics of that type would be a trend of his in the fast-paced hard rock of "Why Go," a Jeff Ament composition. The raw track feels almost as if it goes by too quick, McCready's soloing playing a starring role once again, the softness of the previous track almost nowhere to be found, other than in the only breakdown of the song, the gap between the first verse and first chorus. When the song ends, Ament's raunchy bass slides down, melding almost seamlessly into Stone Gossard's opening chord of "Black," the band's greatest song. The guitar sounds as if its coming through a phone line, an aching, dark progression suddenly broken by Vedder's "Oh-oh-oh" wails, cutting through like a butter knife, just a taste of the sharp edged sword to come later in the song. The song received an entire page-long description at the end of my song countdown. It would be nearly impossible for me to do it justice again here (if I indeed did the first time around), so I recommend checking out that page instead here:
"Jeremy" was the third single from Ten and launched the band from being pretty popular to being an international phenomenon. The video was bleak, powerful and scary and its success (along with the song and album themselves) fueled much of the band's later obsession with anti-commercialism. Driven by composer Jeff Ament's 12-string bass guitar and a haunting chord progression and melody, "Jeremy" is another definition of vintage Pearl Jam. Without this song, there is no diamond-selling Ten, no MTV exposure, including a Video Music Award, and likely no multi-platinum selling second album. The song is essential and undeniably important in the band's legacy. I had nearly forgotten just how emotionally intense "Jeremy" was until writing my entry for the song during the PJ song countdown. By the time I reached my second paragraph I found myself surprisingly in tears. An incredible piece of music.
The only real detour of the album and the band's first venture into experimental songwriting, "Oceans" washes up next, a gorgeous fusion of tribal percussion, acoustic and electric guitar flourishes, and high-rising Vedder vocals. His lyrics deal directly with the aforementioned concept of waves and water, setting another standard of what would become much of the band's later work. The song is simultaneously folksy and whimsical, a difficult feat to achieve, even by such greats as Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell. The tide washes back away and harsh reality reappears in Eddie Vedder's "Porch," the real explosion of the album. Here was Ed's love for swearing, punk music, layered guitars, spitting vocal delivery and short epics all in one song. The minute-long guitar solo and interplay that breaks up the song ranks among Pearl Jam's finest, a section that would receive special treatment live, including Vedder climbing like a chimp all through whatever venue the band was playing that given night.
"Garden" and "Deep" were easy to dismiss early in my Ten listening career but have since grown on me as two of the more underrated songs in the band's library. The former is just as much of an anthem as almost anything else here, relying on a shimmering guitar riff from Stone Gossard, twinkling touches by Mike McCready and another soaring Vedder vocal. The lyrics are one of the subtle stars here, with Eddie dropping a line that would serve as another standard of his career: "I don't need you for me to live." "Deep" is the harshest and heaviest song on the record, an intense shuffle of metal-blues. McCready works wonders again, while Vedder demonstrates his ability to sing and scream at the same time. His layered "Oh-oh-oh" vocal harmonies are genius and serve the song wonderfully, offering a layer of beauty to an otherwise gritty portrait. Being number two on my song countdown, "Release" also received a significant entry there, a half page attempting to describe its magnificence. However, I will add here that the song is the perfect closer for Ten, the band's first slow-builder that was not a traditional ballad, but something else entirely. The track summarizes much of the content on the album, likely without even knowing it would when written, a tale of survival and overcoming previous victimizing experiences. The "Release" that takes place is what frees Vedder personally, his band, as well as the listeners, to listen without prejudice and rise above every difficultly that has befallen all of us. After the song fades out, "Master/Slave" returns and drones on for almost four minutes, Vedder's vocals giving it a nice shine, the bookend closing out one of the great expressions in musical history.
While Nevermind to this day receives most of the critical praise for changing rock music forever, Ten is the grand statement of that change. Nevermind introduced so-called "Alternative Rock" to the masses, but Ten perfected it. After its initial release, doubters claimed that Pearl Jam and Ten were capitalizing on Nirvana's success, a commercialized, watered-down version of the "alternative" sound. This reaction from some of the underground likely influenced the band's adverse reaction to its success. Regardless, the album was simply better than Nevermind. The claim that it was capitalizing on Nirvana's achievements does not make sense, considering it was recorded before Nevermind and differed vastly from that album, or Nirvana's previous release, 1989's Bleach. No, Ten was its own animal. The recording has been hailed as a cornerstone of modern rock, landing on many top albums lists. It has been cited by a large group of musicians since as a huge influence in their lives and musical backgrounds. But who cares? Just listen to the music, not the people who think they know what it is.
On a personal level, Ten is the reason I did not just stay interested in and liking Pearl Jam, but instead became a huge fan. After buying Vitalogy on somewhat of a whim, I picked up Vs. and Ten. Maybe it is just my personality, but I have always gravitated toward the huge sound present on the band's debut. These songs resonate in me and have been alive in everything else I have said, sand, performed or written since. While the bootlegs are my favorite way to experience and listen to Pearl Jam, Ten nevertheless makes consistent appearances in my CD player every so often. Like "Black" as a song, I regard Ten as the album of my life.
Ten YouTube Playlist: www.youtube.com/view_play_list
For all things Pearl Jam, visit my homepage here: www.examiner.com/x-3940-Indianapolis-Pop-Culture-Examiner
Check out Mel Duncan's Pearl Jam coverage here: www.examiner.com/x-16134-Pearl-Jam-Examiner
Questions, comments, complaints, ideas, etc.? E-mail me 24/7 at cpeelle83@yahoo.com
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