Pearl Jam - Vs.

I like Pearl Jam's first three albums, but i just couldn't get into No Code, or their stuff with Neil Young, or anything after. Their second album is my favorite. I have a weird thing about loving second albums, and Vs. might be a good indication why.

The story goes like this: Ten was a huge deal. They are famous. They start out jamming with their new drummer for the second album, but Brenden O'Brien moves them to high end LA. Eddie Vedder, being the method actor he really is, can't stand it because a) it's too nice, b) that makes it impossible to get into the insanely negative head space he writes from, and c) how is any of that rock and roll?

Long story short, he starts living in his truck and his band mates try to make it as miserable an experience as possible for him, and everybody is super excited because once he actually gets some lyrics penned down they're a good enough improvisational jam band to just go wherever he takes them. The end result, in their own words, is HEAVY. Ten wasn't a paddle-boat ride across a placid pond, but it was mentally and expressively very restrictive, because it was very much an already finished work of Vedder's unsavory subject matter. These songs are still negative, but the narratives lend themselves to much wider musical possibilities; punk, ballads, some funky stuff like they used to play, you get the idea.

Lets be honest, Ten is a little too much to talk about even for the moderate level of intellectual freedom i've given this project, and you definitely don't want to read what i might have to say about it. But child abuse, learning disabilities, rats being better than people, sheltered small town living, that's pretty safe subject matter.

If purple sounded cerebral and well thought out, this sounds like four guys smashing their faces into the wall while their singer has a seizure. Yeah, they are just letting it all spew out into the room. It's fantastic. Even the slower stuff sounds made up on the spot, just a couple chords and everybody following Vedder's lead when it's time for the chorus or shift. You can't compose that feeling, it's full on winging it captured by microphones; albeit well placed ones.

This isn't an album with musical coherence. You can tell that they made it one song at a time, not in any order. What holds the whole thing together is a common anger and dispair; this stuff is bad and there's nothing we can do to fix it except just rage until we're too exhausted to think anymore. It's the kind of heavy that doesn't really exist outside of sludge metal like Crowbar or the deep cuts of Pantera. Believable anguish is a whole lot harder to really explore than zombies and devils and sensational gore.

Amazingly, everything here is likable, catchy, sing-alongable. It feels like a collective experience, these guys just happen to be the voice for it. That feeling starts to fade with Vitology, but it's very much true for Vs.

Quite literally, the band didn't want to be famous, they wanted to get through being a blip on the mainstream radar and get back to just being a self contained rock band. No more videos, no release parties, stop jacking up the price of tickets, and please forget about us as celebrities. They just released a new album. I haven't heard it yet, but they seem much happier after exiting the brightest of media spotlights. Grungiest arena rockers i know.

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