That’s a rad riff, man! It swaggers! Rock ’n’ roll! Let’s do this! Pearl Jam albums in the 21st century follow a reliable pattern: righteously grouchy guitar-hero jams up front, craggily melancholy moonlit reveries in the back, and maybe a modestly gargantuan power ballad in the middle somewhere. In 2020, I have unironically played robust air guitar to a new Pearl Jam song called “Superblood Wolfmoon.”.I listened to all of them, in full, and agonized over determining the best version of “Corduroy.” (I forget, but let’s say Saratoga Springs, 8/27/00.) In 2001, a magazine paid me ~$75 to listen to ~23 full-length official bootleg Pearl Jam live albums (first leg of the 2000 North American tour) at ~90 minutes per album and then write ~350 words, total.and Vitalogy in whatever order) on acoustic guitar at college coffeehouse open-mic nights, to tepid applause and no tips or romantic prospects whatsoever, which IMHO only added to the artistic purity of the experience. In 1998, I’d play one of my all-time favorite Pearl Jam songs, the exceedingly wistful and gentle “Wishlist” (that year’s Yield is their third-best album IMHO after Vs.My favorite song on Ten as of this hour is “Release.” In 1991-the year Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten, invented grunge, Seattle, dudely romanticized moping, growling, and guitar solos-I rocked the classic PJ “Stickman” shirt under various flannels and was consequently the coolest kid in any junior high anywhere in America, along with the 80 million other dudely junior high mopers wearing the same thing.Real quick, my credentials are as follows: I grimaced a little while typing out the words “a tragedy of errors,” but a little valiant grimacing is a core component of the Pearl Jam experience, and extra-gruff frontman Eddie Vedder-his voice still a strident, scrawny, yearning weapon of mass introspection-is for sure not having a laugh.
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