Rockers have crafted another pearl
It has been seven years since the last Pearl Jam album, the longest gap in the band’s 30-year history. The break suggests the stage in a veteran band’s life when prosperous lives have taken different directions and booking studio time becomes an expensive feat involving different management teams and luxury hotels. But Gigaton bursts into action as though with pent-up frustration.
Who Ever Said throws the gauntlet down with barbed riffs, attacking drums and spirited vocals. “Whoever said, ‘It’s all been said,’ / Gave up on satisfaction,” Eddie Vedder hollers. The nod to The Rolling Stones’ song places him and his bandmates as defenders of classic rock, dissenters of the notion that guitar bands are over. His refusal to accept that “it’s all been said” also goes against the grain of the music scene from which his band emerged.
Grunge fed off disillusionment, not satisfaction or continuity. Pearl Jam became its most commercially successful act, bigger even than Nirvana. Critics decried its members as sellouts. But their rootedness has stood them in good stead. Long after their contemporaries have vanished or slunk to the nostalgia circuit, they manage to sound invigoratingly alive.
Gigaton’s first half dashes by with a series of urgent rockers. There is no grandstanding, nor the cosmetic sheen of overproduction to which senior rock bands are prone. Vedder’s earnest bawl rings out, splitting the difference between Bruce Springsteen and Kurt Cobain. Lead guitarist Mike Mccready is a sharp, dynamic sideman. There are no displays of ego.
Vedder salts his heartfelt but enigmatic lyrics with acerbic commentary on U.S. politics.
The album’s second half shifts pace adeptly into slower numbers, ending with majestic ballad River Cross, in which Vedder sings about resilience and hope.
The Financial Times Limited (2017). All rights reserved. FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Limited. Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.