A long while ago, Pearl Jam decided they couldn't take it anymore. They didn't want to be the great American rock and roll band; they didn't want to be labeled. Listen to Vitalogy (in essence, Pearl Jam's last Billboard hit) and you'll hear hints (and outright directness) about Pearl Jam's disdain for the public image that is "rock stardom." And so Pearl Jam have stayed out of the press, out of the interview circuit, and, as a by-product, out of the public eye.

       The release of Pearl Jam's newest album, Riot Act, has produced a seemingly friendlier, more promotionally-enthusiastic band, though. Lead singer Eddie Vedder offered this explanation to the Australian media outlet, www.news.com.au: "I would talk to people who were apparently great fans of the band and they would ask me when we were releasing a new album, and we had one just out." The new smiles could also be attributed to the fact that PJ is now looking for a new "friendlier" contract from Sony with whom the band just completed its 7 album commitment. But let's not speculate.

       While Riot Act is being hyped as Pearl Jam's return to the sound, ala Ten and VS, that made the band one of the world's biggest, it is not any such return. Riot Act, is in step with the direction the band has been moving since digressing from the limelight with the release of No Code, in 1996. And in case you were wondering, this is a good thing; in fact, it is a great thing. Riot Act is an extremely tight album both musically and in subject matter. The songs work very well of each other.

       There are several high points on the album including the opening track, "Can't Keep," a straight rock and roll song, and "Help Help," contributed by bassist Jeff Ament, with a great finish. "The man they call my enemy, I've seen his eyes / He looks just like me, a mirror." As the album shows, Pearl Jam certainly have not lost their activist tendencies. Songs like "Bushleaguer" (an anti-tribute to our commander in chief), "½ Full" (Vedder sings, "Don't see some men as ½ empty / see them ½ full of shit"), and the great sounding "Green Disease" display in symbolic bright-lights the social agenda the bands continues to embrace. The political discourse even becomes humerous at some points as with "Ghost" in which we hear the sarcasim: "the tv, she talks to me / breaking news and building walls / selling me, what I don't need / didn't know soap made you taller."

       The album also, of course, has its love songs. Love seems to be a theme Vedder carried throughout the album. "Love Boat Captain" is about the Roskilde festival in which nine concert-goers died. "Thumbing My Way," a defining song on the album, could be the most emotionally pact song to ever come from Pearl Jam, or Vedder in particular. "I let go of a rope…thinking that's what held me back / and in time I've realized…it's now wrapped around my neck" … "I can't be free with what's locked inside of me / if there was a key, you took it in your hands." And there is, of course, the first radio single, "I Am Mine," which reminds us of what we own "I only know my mind / I am mine," and what we can't always control, "And the meanings that get left behind / all the innocents lost at one time."

       Riot Act is vintage Pearl Jam. That may seem an odd thing to say, for among other reasons because it's hard to be vintage when a band only has 7 albums and has only been around for a decade. It's necessary to say though. The hype is that Pearl Jam is returning to something old; something that is "successful." Those of us who have followed Pearl Jam throughout their career have enjoyed the way the music has quietly changed, and has, album-to-album, become better. Pearl Jam are not taking steps to the past, and while the path they are taking might not be a straight line, they are certainly moving in another direction.

Mike Kaveney
EMPYRE Lounge

Agree or Disagree??? Let me know what you think, email me at kaveney@empyrelounge.com