Pearl Jam “Backspacer”
From the very start, I did not trust “Grunge.” To me, it sounded like Jam bands who’d traded Jerry for Ozzy. Similarly, I did not trust “Alternative Rock.” It made absolutely no sense to me that Beck was an international Pop star or that Sonic Youth had a major label recording contract. I just knew, in my bones, that the open-minded embrace of alt culture would eventually turn into a bro hug. Generally speaking, I trusted none of it.
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.
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 wherein 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.
The early suggestions proved mostly true. “Backspacer” goes by quickly. “Gonna See My Friend” and “Got Some” make good on the promise of “The Fixer.” The former drops a heavy hook, which Eddie steers to the left of Metal through the sheer giddiness of his delivery. Meanwhile, the latter is all sharp angles and oohs and ahhs. The rhythm is fast enough to turn the singer’s natural vibrations into a hip, nervy jitter. In the 1990s, I never actually thought of Pearl Jam as an “Alternative Rock band.” But, ten years later, if The Strokes and The Killers were the new template, they sounded genuinely Alternative.
When the album races or hushes, it mostly works. “Supersonic” is a two minute shot of three chord adrenaline, and possibly the only time Pearl Jam ever resembled their heroes, The Ramones. It’s not much, but what there is of it is good fun. And the closer, appropriately titled “The End,” echoes “Just Breathe,” with its bare acoustic guitar and cello. It’s a beautiful, English Folk Rock inspired track that leaves all the room for Eddie to yearn -- the thing he does better than any singer before him or since.
As has always been my case with Pearl Jam, though, it’s all the stuff in the middle that loses me. When they do not fully commit to a hook or when they slow down just enough to find a detour, they are a very high end, but kind of generic, modern Rock band. “Johnny Guitar” sounds a good deal like Dave Matthews Band if they added Tom Morello on rhythm guitar and Eddie Vedder on vocals. And, if that excites you, then I can only guess that our ears are built differently.
“Unthought Known” is Pearl Jam inhabiting Coldplay. It’s a lot of minor chord piano and thumping bass drum. Oddly, the singer pulls back, as though the weight or speed of it feels wrong. “Speed of Sound” suffers from a similar problem. The tempo is in between and the piano functions as kryptonite for the superhero singer, who does the equivalent of vocal jazz-handing while the song tries to find itself. The entire band sounds unsure as to whether it’s a ballad or an anthem or a jam or all of the above. It’s likely the closest the album gets to Grunge. But it suffers because it follows “Supersonic” and ruins the buzz of its predecessor's breakneck speed. But also, because it’s the least decisive track on the record.
Timing, as they say, is everything. And, by 2009, when “Backspacer” was released, nothing that we called “Alternative Rock” sounded especially alternative. There simply was not much green field between the biggest Rock bands of the day -- Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay, Foo Fighters and Kings of Leon. They were all plenty good. And, on any given song, they could all sound alike. Pearl Jam still had Eddie Vedder. But, in 2009, the difference between Alternative Rock, Arena Rock, Hard Rock and Roots Rock was almost imperceptible. “Backspacer” frequently sounds like an elite Rock band. And it only very occasionally sounds like the stew I spat out in 1992. That was more than enough to get my attention. But it was not enough to keep it.
As Eddie and his bandmates approached their fifties, I did wonder what their middle ages would be like. I knew they would be filled with anniversary reissues and think piece essays and documentaries. But, I obviously did not know that, ten years after “Backspacer,” Chris Cornell would be dead and Donald Trump would be President. There have been just two Pearl Jam albums since 2009. And that makes sense. From their inception, Pearl Jam always wanted to recede, just a little bit. Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend mentored Eddie Vedder and his generation. But it’s a little harder to fathom the relationship between Pearl Jam and Imagine Dragons, Billie Eilish and TikTok.
In the face of constant change and occasional chaos, Pearl Jam have remained remarkably consistent. They’ve had the same four members for thirty years and a fifth member for over twenty years. It’s hard to stay intact that long. Just ask Aerosmith, who are perhaps the only major American band to retain their founding members for over three decades. And, to do that, they had to break up repeatedly and threaten nuclear war. Pearl Jam have not -- at least not publicly -- struggled to stay intact. They have, it seems, grappled with their function as our collective musical conscience. And, you don’t make it past three decades, touring the world, crowdsurfing, putting it all on the line and howling like Eddie Vedder without some carnage. Loss of privacy. Loss of trust. Loss of muse. Loss of love. But, whatever the loss, I cannot see it. And, if their bond and their posture are ruses, I wanted to find that out in 1992 — not in 2021. Today, I want Eddie Vedder to persist and to thrive for another thirty years. But I also want him to spend most days at home with his wife and kids, farting around, surfing and watching “The Great British Bake Off.” He deserves a break from all the yearning.
Many years after I first disavowed them, I now completely trust Pearl Jam. Maybe I don’t fully avow them. And I probably don’t trust them to give me what I want, which are songs that are the equal of their singer. But I trust them to keep striving. It was never really the band that I mistrusted. It was what they signified. It was the “this is your generation” sign permanently and symbolically affixed to their weird hats. It was the feeding of the culture machine. It was “Singles” and “Reality Bites” and all of the contrivances that followed. Eddie Vedder was actually born one year before Generation X formally began. He was an unwitting, false flag for my generation. But he was never cynical or untrustable. I was untrusting. Pearl Jam, I think, is the definition of trustworthy.