How I learned to stop caring and really like Pearl Jam

It is not terribly cool to like Pearl Jam. In fact it hasn't been particularly cool to like Pearl Jam for a long time.

It's been a problem the band has faced since its starring role in the alt-rock revolution of the early nineties faded with its third album "Vitalogy," and though it tried valiantly, Peark Jam couldn't seem to shake the perception that it was directly responsible for the onslaught of mediocre Modern Rock it left in its wake. As a rock snob who spent an inordinate amount of time being overly judgmental about these things (and admittedly more concerned about the hipness of my music collection than I should have been), I largely ignored the band for the last 15 years, only reconsidering them recently on this blog here.

Last week I found myself considering Pearl Jam again. The trigger was random: I had heard offhand that the band was playing several dates at Madison Square Garden and had chosen as opening acts two bands I like quite a bit: The Black Keys and Band of Horses. It reminded me of how much I've liked Pearl Jam's practices.

While their music has not always inspired me, they've always carried themselves admirably. Never, in all the years they've toiled away since Ten sold 13 million copies, did they degrade themselves. They never put out a dance album, never asked Timbaland to produce a single, never sold a song for a commercial (that I can think of). And for a band so outside of current tastes, they've always had very good taste. They could have easily taken the road of many of their early '90s peers and fizzled out in a conflagration of cliche and irrelevance. They did not.1

So I started listening to Pearl Jam's material -- the whole discography. Everything. It occurred to me that I'd been unfair to the band. And that U.S. tastemakers have also been unfair to the group, too.2 Listening to the music objectively, it strikes me as consistently very good. It's cerebral but not necessarily melodramatic. Ponderous? Sure. But not enough to keep the music from being worthwhile. The songwriting is mostly very strong. The musicianship superb. And when these guys get into full swing, the sound is intense. They are a rock band that can hit you in the gut as well as any.

From a rock critic standpoint, Pearl Jam's greatest failure seems to be that the band has never changed much. And I think it'a a fair comment. Every Pearl Jam album is grounded by the same guitar/bass/drum sound with a mix of slow acoustic ballads, mid-tempo power anthems and hard-charging punk-inspired scorchers. But to be fair, I think this is a point where rock critics continue to do music and good bands (and ultimately the listening public) a disservice. Why should invention be essential to the appreciation of every new rock record? Very few bands can successfully reinvent themselves from album to album (R.E.M. and Radiohead come to mind... But swapping sounds has been a mixed bag for even very talented acts like Wilco and Beck). It's an impossible standard for 99 percent of professional musical acts, yet critics behave like it's necessary.

Yet what's worse, is it's not a standard universally applied. For instance, Pitchfork, the hippest of hipster tastemakers, issued high marks for the last two Dinosaur Jr.albums. Both albums are great, but they're great because they harken back to the band's classic late '80s sound (a sound that paved the way for Pearl Jam, by the way). They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a reinvention. Every J. Mascis record sounds a lot like every other J. Mascis record. And I think that's a good thing.

The Ramones never once changed their sound, yet most rock snobs love the Ramones (I, too, love the Ramones). Sonic Youth has always sounded like Sonic Youth (thank God) and Pavement, the most critically acclaimed indie band, the Beatles of lo-fi, Indie Rock, only sound different on Wowee Zowee, an album most rock critics didn't think lived up to the bands sloppy debut Slanted and Enchanted.3

Now I'm not going to argue that Pearl Jam is better than Sonic Youth or Pavement. I don't think I could support that case. My point is that the rock critic's insistence on the new undervalues competence in the musical marketplace and overvalues so-called "new sounds," and often mistakes them for invention. The White Stripes picked up a ton of critical acclaim but invented little. A band Japandroids attracted universal acclaim last year with an album that sounded like a throwaway SPOT session from the SST vault.4

So, sure, Pearl Jam now sounds a lot like Pearl Jam (almost) 20 years ago. And a lot of their recent output does not seem as inspired as those first three records. But the band has been on a lot more often than not, and they have certainly been a lot better then they've gotten credit for. They're not the Pixies, but who is. Sometimes you just need to learn to relax and enjoy music for what it is. There's nothing at all wrong about a really good rock band that's not cutting edge. It's amazing that it's taken me this long to figure that out.

Footnotes:

1. This is, of course, debatable. But I don't think a band that can sell out a weekend at Madison Square Garden can ever be considered irrelevant. It doesn't make them good, but a band with that kind of audience matters.

2. An odd fact I uncovered while looking through Pearl Jam's discography: the last four or five albums have all sold far more copies in Australia and Canada than in the U.S. I don't know what to make of that fact. I don't think it's indicative of the U.S .having hipper tastes than Canada or Australia just that we inexplicably have less taste for something uniquely our own.

3. One thing I've never understood is the hipster rock critic unfaltering, cult-like love of this album. Pavement is a great band but it is a band that got much better at realizing and executing its music ideas after its debut. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee and Brighten the Corners are all far superior in nearly every way.

4. SPOT was the house producer for the legendary punk label SST records. He recorded lots of legendary albums that didn't always sound all that good.