Always good at rabble-rousing and nothing if not politically committed, you get the feeling that a certain urgency about getting their message across might have given Pearl Jam’s music a renewed sense of vigour. In the six years since their last studio album, a lot has happened in US politics and it’s tempting to suggest that might have something to do with it. Its use of electronics occasionally devolves into behold-this-moment-of-great-portent swirling befitting an album that features a Dark Side of the Moon-esque cardiogram over a painting of a collapsing polar ice shelf.Įlsewhere, Gigaton sounds more vital and unexpected.
There are definitely points that sound exactly like someone who bailed after their last multi-platinum mega-seller, 1994’s Vitalogy, might expect Pearl Jam to sound in middle age: Take the Long Way is workmanlike heartlands hard rock Comes Then Goes is standard-issue gruffly wounded acoustic balladry that borrows its verse melody from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Up Around the Bend. The non-partisan observer might suggest that the former has been very much the ethos behind their least inspired albums Gigaton, however, largely falls into the latter category. It’s a situation to which there are two obvious responses: the fans aren’t going anywhere, so why try? And: the fans aren’t going anywhere, so do what you want. By the mid-2000s, Rolling Stone had started comparing them to the Grateful Dead, and the point holds: they’re purveyors of implausibly long live shows and implausibly numerous live albums, possessed of a following so large and dedicated that it’s impervious to fashion. But three decades and 28 albums later, Pearl Jam are still here, still unequivocally huge. But on another level: really? Grunge bands that took the major-label shilling were supposed to self-immolate in a blaze of hard drugs, discord and self-hatred.
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