The great bands of our era are disappearing. With the Pumpkins smashed and Rage machine-less, we must treat each group's release as if it were the last. We have been pleasantly surprised this year by the Chili Peppers' By The Way and sorely disappointed by REM's Reveal. And so when a band like Pearl Jam puts out a new collection, the questions are essential, not just for the artist but for contemporary music in general. Will it please drown out Nickelback? Has the group "sold out"? Has their music changed? Has our music changed?
Pearl Jam fans need not fear. The Seattle group's latest, Riot Act, is, for the most part, more of the tried and tested five-piece's same.
Eddie Vedder, as always, is only semi-intelligible, and the songs are driven by Matt Cameron's percussion with Stone Gossard's, Mike McCready's and sometimes Vedder's guitars melting into the drum track. Almost entirely, it's the same Pearl Jam we've seen from Ten to Binaural.
The change in tempo is the most noticeable difference in the sound; the album is slightly slower and more deliberate than one would come to expect from the band.
But the old sound still reigns supreme. The album's strongest track, the radio single "I Am Mine," exhibits the classic Pearl Jam flavor, with overtones of "Elderly Woman" and 15-year-old-girl favorite "Betterman."
For non-devotees, if the album has a true fault, it's that it hasn't sold out. In order for Pearl Jam to keep making music, people have to buy it. And the band's fan base is composed of two kinds of people. First, twenty-somethings who are too busy getting jobs and starting families to keep up with the music of their youth. Second, ultra-loyal cult fans, 50 percent of whom have heart attacks and die whenever Eddie lends his name to another third-world cause.
This is not a financially lucrative fan base.
Without the hit singles it needs to ensure fresh worshippers, Pearl Jam faces the same fates as many of its contemporaries. Epic Records would have done better to demand a few crowd pleasers in the midst of the album's artistically valid, yet rather unmoving, 15 tracks.
In short, if you're a Pearl Jam fan, you should buy this album. If you're not, Riot Act sure won't change your mind.
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