Pitchfork

As many others have done this year, the other night I went to see the Pixies' reunion tour. Next week, the Nirvana box set is finally released, as is a new two-disc expanded version of Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral; Low's upcoming Sub Pop record kicks off with a track whose rhythm section and vocal melody sound like a miniature version of Alice in Chains; Q magazine named The Red Hot Chili Peppers the Best Act in the World Today at its 2004 awards show; TV commercials for Green Day's American Idiot reminds us that 10 years ago they released Dookie; and now Pearl Jam are lionized with the two-disc, 33-track, best-of album, Rearviewmirror. I'd be frightened that we're about to undergo a full-blown 90s alternarock revival-- an era depressingly and backhandedly praised as much for what it was not (e.g. the hair metal that it "kicked out," or the nu-metal that some of it slowly morphed into) than the music it produced. But then, it never went away, did it?

In recent years, Billy Corgan's Zwan, a reunited Jane's Addiction, the Scott Weiland-fronted Velvet Revolver, and the Chris Cornell/Rage Against the Machine mashup Audioslave have released records to varying degrees of commercial success. Prior to that, the nascent sounds of grunge remained among the dominant North American hard rock templates throughout the 90s and into this decade, living on in a lineage that extended from its Seattle roots through Bush and Candlebox to Creed and Nickleback.

Oddly, Pearl Jam have remained a constant since the days when 120 Minutes graduated to Alternative Nation, transitioning from stadium fillers to one of American rock's largest and most beloved cult bands, a Grateful Dead for the great washed. After deftly turning their backs on fame just as much of the public seemed poised to turn on them, Pearl Jam cultivated the unwavering support of a cabal of devotees who followed the band across a string of studio albums that casual observers have likely forgotten-- No Code, Yield, Binaural, and Riot Act-- and the almost comical release of every live show from their 2000 tour, a move that, depending on your level of cynicism, was either a thank you or an unintentional fuck you to their lemmingesque fanbase. Musically, Pearl Jam slightly spiced up their sound over the course of a decade, adding a few Eastern-tinged delicacies and some garage-rock snackfood to their typical meat-and-potatoes diet. By the time Creed became a permanent fixture on late-90s rock radio, the Florida band sounded as much like Pearl Jam as, well, Pearl Jam themselves.

Rearviewmirror divides the band's career into an "up side" and a "down side"-- the former are the earnest rockers, the latter are the earnest ballads-- although the monikers would also have been appropriate had they arranged the record chronologically. The "down side" to Pearl Jam's career allowed many people to romanticize the group's shift away from the spotlight as one purely of choice, and the band has since been characterized by honesty, good intentions, and yeoman's work, the sort of qualities that often make for turgid, sometimes rote, faceless music.

In truth, Pearl Jam were always planted squarely in the middle of the road. While Nirvana was characterized by punk's sound as much as its ethos, Soundgarden had one foot in contemporary metal, Smashing Pumpkins mixed 80s goth and new wave in with their glam, and Green Day, NIN, and the RHCP were clearly creatures of the post-punk era, Pearl Jam was always a classic rock band, the one alt-nation superstar that completely ignored both punk and its aftermath. Pearl Jam were all solos and riffs and lighters-aloft, arena-rock sentiment; like so many 60s rockers, they looked to the Asian sub-continent for their first flirtations with "growth" and "maturity"; they even cuddled up to the "right" rock 'n' roll architects (Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, Neil Young). To claim Pearl Jam as the greatest rock band of our time-- as many listeners and critics do-- is virtually a negation of the past 30 years of guitar-based music, a relieved sigh that the values of the 70s aren't completely lost.

And... that works for a lot of people. Pearl Jam struck chords within listeners like few of their contemporaries. Those diehards probably looked at the Rearviewmirror tracklist and chuckled, wondering why it didn't include this rarity or that B-side (it does have a few key ones, e.g. "Yellow Ledbetter") or a handful of what the album rock stations used to call "deep cuts." This comp isn't for them, though; it's for the rest of us, and a lot of listeners will likely glance at it, wonder where the hell "Crazy Mary" is, and consider it a handy career-spanner-- all the Pearl Jam they'll ever need. If they buy it, those listeners will likely be surprised that-- despite some non-descript titles ("Corduroy", "Go", "Immortality", the title track)-- they remember most of these tracks, and despite slipping well below the radar, the band has, in many ways, improved over the years.

The record seemingly begins the same way as their debut, Ten, but this version of "Once" (like "Alive" and "Black") has been slightly re-mixed by Brendan O'Brien. Hardly radical and barely noticeable, the new versions buff the shine from the originals, actually improving three of the band's better, more melodic early tracks. On the album's first disc, the band's years of popularity-- through third album Vitalogy-- are only highlighted by the Singles track "State of Love and Trust" and the forceful "Not For You".

A lot of the other big guns are better left unremembered: The five-against-one mutterings of "Animal"; "Evenflow", "Rearviewmirror", and "Go" plod along, monuments to the appropriateness of the tag "grunge"; "Spin the Black Circle" is their first step toward the clumsy romanticism of bygone days; and "Jeremy" remains as painful as ever. Perhaps that last track is only truly powerful when coupled with images of Vedder's emotive pantomimes, hard-scrawled title cards that say things like "the serpent was subtil [sic]" and "90210", or a shirtless boy both wrapped in the American flag and standing in front of a wall of flames and crouching in the woods in front of an overblown photo of a teeth-baring fox...

On the up side, the garage-esque "Do the Evolution" is either over-the-top fun or completely ridiculous, depending on whether or not you believe Pearl Jam actually possess a sense of humor (in this case, I think it's the former), and "I Got Shit" (formerly "I Got ID"), "Save You", and "Hail, Hail" have a few more shades than the gray of the band's grunge era.

On the way down, things are also scattered. Like they do on the early rockers, Vedder's vocal diversions, tics, and lack of enunciation occasionally move from exaggerated emoting into self-parody (see, in particular, "Given to Fly"). His voice is still the band's hallmark sound-- a mealy-mouthed, gravely style that influenced a decade of really, really shitty music-- and it's still fun to impersonate; unfortunately, on pain-wracked attempts to convey more universal emotions (the glib "Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town", the lyrical disaster "Wishlist", "Better Man", the awkward cover of "Last Kiss"), it's not very fun to listen to.

Even when Eddie's opening his mouth, the tunes are often excruciatingly drab dirges-- "Immortality" and "Nothingman" are the biggest offenders. (Yet ironically, the most overtly dirge-like track-- the almost mantra-esque, Eastern-tinged "Who You Are"-- is one of the set's most effective.) Elsewhere, the patient "Off He Goes", "Nothing As It Seems", and "Man of the Hour" and the solipsistic "I Am Mine" all carry a more weathered, wise sense of self, and these tracks greatly upstage the more youthful and clumsy neo-emoisms of the band's better known songs-- in particular its ballads.

In some ways, it makes sense that Pearl Jam are improving as they slip further from the gaze of contemporary listeners and into the neolithic caves of mid-70s classic rock. For all the harm it unwittingly did to rock radio-- and for as comical as it can be in its most unchecked moments-- Vedder's voice is powerful and can even be captivating. The more considered and time-tested tones it now carries fit the band's more subtle shading.

In full ham-fisted stadium rock mode, Pearl Jam now oddly seem miles away from Nirvana, still the best of their one-time Seattle contemporaries. Instead, they're not-so-distant cousins to the denim brigade, the faceless 70s arena rockers who dutifully punched time clocks and produced no-nonsense, sometimes hook-filled rock. Today, Pearl Jam seems bruised, ever so slightly more adventurous, and, thanks to the devotion of their fans, they're afforded the chance to dress up as rock iconoclasts rather than take a slide toward VH1-ready adult contemporary balladry. It's like punk never happened.