A Comprehensive Guide to Pearl Jam

Ten (1991)

In the late 1980s, Gossard and Ament played in early grunge bands Green River and Mother Love Bone. They joined forces with McCready to form a new outfit called Mookie Blaylock, named after the NBA point guard. Their early demo tape caught the ear of Vedder, then a San Diego surfer with a day job as a security guard. Impressed by his vocal and lyrical approach, the band flew him to Seattle where he passed the audition, along with drummer Dave Krusen. As the group recorded their debut album, they changed the band’s name – adding Vedder’s great-grandmother’s name, Pearl, to jam. Still, they acknowledged Blaylock by naming the record Ten, a reference to his jersey number.

Vedder originally wrote the album’s lyrics as an operetta inspired by his teenage realization that his father was actually his stepfather — “Once” and “Alive” were plucked from that song cycle. Ten’s darkness could have been off-putting if the band hadn’t countered it with an infectious, chest-beating sense of affirmation. McCready’s exhilarating solo on “Alive” signaled that Pearl Jam had arrived fully formed.

Their debut exploded Pearl Jam into the mainstream, leaving the band apprehensive about the public attention. Krusen was out of the band before its release and was replaced by Dave Abbruzzese. Pearl Jam had also developed a contrarian streak, refusing to release “Black” as a single despite pleas from Epic Records.

True to its title and album art, Vs. is all about captivity, subjugation, and herd mentality. Taking veiled jabs at critics and industry execs, the album touches on street kidnapping (“Animal”), police harassment (“WMA”), and an overall less-than-rosy view of humanity (“Rats”). The bandmates didn’t pull punches with each other either — “Glorified G” roasts Abruzzese as a macho knucklehead for purchasing two firearms. But Vs. isn’t all peevish and petulant as standout track “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” presents a tender acoustic ballad about the passage of time and “Rearviewmirror” tugs at listeners’ hearts.

Written between soundchecks on the Vs. tour, Vitalogy is the deepest, dankest, and strangest album Pearl Jam ever made. In the midst of band turmoil, Vedder played more guitar and often wrote with outside input. “Spin the Black Circle” started as a typical mid-tempo rocker by Gossard before Vedder added lyrics about the joys of vinyl records and cranked up the tempo to a breakneck clip. Between unhinged rockers like “Not For You” and “Satan’s Bed,” Vedder indulges in Tom Waitsian experiments like “Bugs,” an accordion jam about insects writhing on his body, and “Stupidmop,” a noise collage featuring looped recordings from a psychiatric hospital.

Precious gems also shone through Vitalogy’s turbulent waters. The band had been kicking around “Better Man” since the Vs. recording sessions, where they canned it due its accessibility. Producer Brendan O’Brien claimed Vedder initially tried to sabotage the song and, at one point, even offered it to Chrissie Hynde to sing on a Greenpeace benefit record. The song made Vitalogy’s final tracklist and went on to become one of the band’s most cherished, proving that the album’s anything-goes spirit wasn’t just about getting weird, but also getting vulnerable.

Pearl Jam’s 1995 Vitalogy tour was a fiasco. Leading a public boycott against Ticketmaster, the band was forced to — as Ament put it — “[build] shows from the ground up.” After Vedder’s health temporarily took the band off the road, the group, with new drummer Jack Irons, pieced together material from jam sessions at Chicago Recording Company. Irons told Modern Drummer that “it was difficult to tour and play these shows that were two or three hours long, and then force ourselves to produce something in a studio.”

The epitome of a transitional album, No Code is Pearl Jam’s Tusk or White Album — exploratory, often sparse, and prone to detonate without warning. Ballads like “Sometimes” and “Off He Goes” get a splash of cold water from songs like “Lurkin,” a track about hiding from a stalker. Elsewhere, the band dabbles in Paul Simon-style worldbeat (“Who You Are”) and Neil Young-esque country rock (“Smile”). Lacking a stylistic true north, No Code is inconsistent, but its quirky, playful vibe has aged terrifically.

Yield is a refreshingly user-friendly and back-to-basics Pearl Jam record. Ament said it was fun to make and credits its success to “Ed kind of sitting back.” Instead of wrestling for the controls, Vedder gave his bandmates a wide berth creatively, and the pivot to band democracy was a needed change.

Rock bands “returning to their roots” often skirt the edge of dullness, but the band’s sense of humor makes Yield a joy, from the goofy rocker about John F. Kennedy’s cerebrum being stolen during autopsy (“Brain of J”) to the lovably boneheaded tribute to homo sapiens (“Do the Evolution”). Not everything on the album works — “Wishlist” has Vedder pining to be a Christmas tree ornament and the final third of the album practically slips by unnoticed. But when Yield hits, it hits: the gravity-defying “Given to Fly” gives “Better Man” a run for its money as the band’s finest song.

Binaural is Pearl Jam’s first album with Matt Cameron of Soundgarden on drums and manages to capture some of the band’s blackened psychedelia in a bottle. Pearl Jam opted to bring in Tchad Blake as producer whose calling card is binaural recording — using two mics to create 3D stereophonic sound — hence the album’s title.

Perhaps due to this, Binaural sounds uniquely rich and loamy, whether the band’s in rock attack (“Breakerfall,” “Gods’ Dice”) or balladry mode (“Nothing As It Seems,” “Thin Air”). Today, the band tends to undersell the album — Vedder later admitted to a bad case of writer’s block during this time and Ament said it was “[not] one of the greats.” Pearl Jam may have been chilly toward the final product, but Binaural deserves revisitation if only for the gorgeous, spacey “Light Years.”

At its best, Riot Act plumbs the cosmic dust of Binaural even deeper. At its worst, the album is leaden, ponderous, and feels twice as long as its 52 minute runtime. McCready described recording sessions for the album as “very intense and spiritual,” and it’s easy to hear that. “Love Boat Captain” addresses the 2000 tragedy at Roskilde Festival in which a crowd crush killed nine fans during Pearl Jam’s set, an event that nearly ended the band.

In 2002, Vedder said “Roskilde changed the shape of us as people, and our filter for seeing the world changed.” Perhaps that chastened point of view inspired “I Am Mine” — the best song on Riot Act — a powerful declaration of self-ownership. Unfortunately, the album’s highlights are outnumbered by its speed bumps and, despite its promising moments, Riot Act ends up as the hangover after Binaural instead of the creative progression it could have been.