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Lately, I’ve been making my way through the archives of a Canadian radio show called The Ongoing History of New Music, on which host Alan Cross discusses various aspects of new rock—everything from band biographies to music technology. It’s a music geek’s dream—and if you haven’t heard the show, you really owe it to yourself to check out OngoingHistory.com.
I bring it up because I was recently listening to an old show on the cycles of rock music—and how rock and pop continually battle it out for popularity in a ying-and-yang kind of cycle that generally lasts around 12-13 years. I’m not entirely sure where in the cycle Alan Cross would say that we are right this minute, but I do know that Pearl Jam has survived a full cycle. In the early ‘90s, when the band was formed, new rock (in the form of grunge) was on the rise. Since then, Pearl Jam—like rock in general—has had its share of ups and downs, of successes and failures. But, fortunately, the band’s ninth album, Backspacer, can be considered one of the former.
Whenever Pearl Jam releases a new album, fans never quite know what they’ll get. Past albums have seen everything from strange, experimental tracks to smooth folk numbers to edgy ballads. But for old-school fans, who were there for Ten, there’s just nothing better than the ratcheted-up rock numbers that leave lead singer Eddie Vedder’s voice sounding more than a little bit hoarse. And, with songs like “Gonna See My Friend,” the first track on Backspacer, along with the first single, “The Fixer,” that’s what you get here: Mike McCready’s fast-moving riffs combined with Vedder’s gritty vocals to tell a handful of hard-driving, head-bobbing musical stories. They’re catchy and high-energy and generally upbeat—more upbeat, in fact, than you might expect from Pearl Jam. You might even say that some of them have the slightest pop touch. But, whatever you call them, they’re the kind of songs that wake you up in the morning or help you rock away the stresses of another long week of work.
But Backspacer isn’t just a collection of heavy-driving rock songs. There are a couple of slower tracks, too. But while those slower, more melodic numbers are often beautiful, they’re also rather dreary—and I’ll admit that, after listening to them once or twice, I started skipping through them.
Backspacer isn’t just the same old Pearl Jam. It isn’t the grunge of Ten. It isn’t the moodiness of Vitalogy. It also isn’t strange and experimental. Instead, it’s a breath of the past mixed with a hint of the present—and it shows that Pearl Jam has grown and changed and evolved through the years, moving along with that cycle of rock music that Alan Cross talks about. Backspacer is undeniably Pearl Jam—and it’s just the right Pearl Jam for today’s rock fans.
