Released: 1991
Tracks: Once; Even Flow; Alive; Why Go; Black; Jeremy; Oceans; Porch; Garden; Deep; Release
Best track: Either Once, Release, Even Flow or maybe Jeremy…I don’t know!
Track to skip: none
So how can this be considered the same style of music as Soundgarden, Nirvana and Alice in Chains? I’m still a bit confused by referring to all these bands as ‘grunge’. Could there have been grunge bands from California in 1991? Probably not. This is obviously Pearl Jam’s debut and it’s one that hasn’t been out of my listening rotation for any more than a year these past 12 years. So yeah, it still holds up well. I mean, theoretically *any* album that has 5 singles from it (and the rest were probably played on the radio too) is going to hold up 10-15 years later.
When going back and listening to this critically like I’ve been doing the past few months (this review has been put off for about 3 months I think) the biggest thing that pops out of this is how huge of an influence Jimi Hendrix is on guitarists Mike McCready & Stone Gossard. Every lead they play on here just screams “HENDRIX”. No, this isn’t a bad thing at all. There are certainly worse guitarists to be influenced by. Regardless of the presence of Eddie Vedder, this is still a Guitar Album for me. I love Jeff Ament’s fretless bass on here too, as very few bassists in rock bands play fretless. It’s a nice touch and adds great coloration to these already great songs. I still say that Pearl Jam aren’t the greatest musicians on the planet, but that’s really unimportant because of how good the songwriting is. Don’t think I’m ragging on them because of their musicianship; I’m not. They’re fine. They’re tons better than Nirvana that’s for sure. I do like the songwriting very much, however. And the guitars, and bass.
It’s hard to single out just one song that totally rises above the rest. All of the singles (Once, Even Flow, Alive, Black & Jeremy) are all great songs. So are most of the rest of them. Deep and Porch (and Why Go to an extent) are just decent, but I don’t ever skip them. I like how the end of Release (another great song) features the same fretless-fest that opens up the album. It makes nice bookends to this thing. I think this is a good, solid album and justifiably a ‘classic’. The only really negative thing I can say about this is all the horrid crap it spawned (Creed). But that’s not Pearl Jam’s fault, they just did their thing.
Rating: 86
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