“The Fixer”, “Amongst the Waves”, “Just Breath” and “Unthought Known” is the strongest stretch on the album in my opinion.
It’s a song that seems to just want to build and build, with a minor key bridge that effectively fleshes out the song.
Next up is “Unthought Known”, a song that continues the atmosphere built up on the album so far. The emotions sound believable enough, the melody and lryics are decent and there is some expanded backing instrumentation which isn’t common for PJ. “Just Breath” is the tear in the beer, somewhat sappy sound I mentioned earlier. The extremely cheerful, sunshine and surfing on Venice beach vibe moves excellently into a hard rock instrumental section with some creamy twin lead guitar work. “Amongst the Waves” is one of my favorites on the album. I believe I read somewhere it’s a tribute to Elvis Costello and Costello’s influence is notably on the song and in other spots on the album. “Johnny Guitar” always stood out to me as the least engaging song on the album right away, but it sounds like a Brahms symphony in compassion to a song later in the album, “Supersonic”. To their credit, it’s very catchy and does well what it obviously sets out to do. “The Fixer”, the main single, is a huge departure. “Got some” in particular can be fun in the right mood. The album starts with “Gonna See My Friend” and “Got some” two punchy pop/punky numbers that are decent enough. This is just an observation and that fact doesn’t necessarily imply quality. While all the member write or co-write musically somewhere on the album, it largely sounds like one voice, and 5 out of 11 songs are completely written by Eddie alone. “Riot Act” was revolving lineup of lyric/music collaborations between all members. For a good strech, PJ albums were heavily collaborated. This album is very Eddie Vedder circa 2009. Obviously, just like the high pitched voice, this means some material benefits and some material suffers to a certain degree. By the time we get to “Lets Play Two” in 2016, Eddie is singing “Release” and “Black” in the deepest register I’ve heard since the bands first couple of years. Well starting with Backspacer, likely due to age, or just wanting to change, his voice began deepening again (although it’s only just beginning in 2009). On the 2000 tour, he was mainly singing from the throat voice it seemed, like he was doing his version of the Neil Young voice or something like that (there were some glorious exceptions like the occasional Daughter tag). Eddie’s voice has changed a lot of the years, but to simply, he started singing in a higher register over the years. Whatever changed Eddie mentally/spiritually, his voice changed again. Their next album “Lightning Bolt” is a big improvement on the “Backspacer” headspace, so that’s also good news. Its better that Eddie be himself and who he is now then try and put on airs for fan expectations. Honestly, despite it being my least favorite Pearl Jam album by a decent margin, its good news in the long run. “Backspacer” is the start of “Pearl Jam 2.0”. Every album, from “Ten” to “Avocado/Self-Titled” feels for the most part of the same progression musically. There is hardly a trace of Pearl Jam here. This is really the other end of the spectrum from the Eddie we had known up to this for the most part. At some point Eddie really started to have some extreme empathy for people, at times, in kind of a mushy, tear in your bear way. So the Pearl Jam of “Backspacer” will be a shock to the system, good or bad, to any Pearl Jam fan who lived through and loved that era. The Pearl Jam I lived through in my formative years (The Vitalogy – Riot Act) was hard headed, fiercy independent from the mainstream (considering how huge they became in 1992), experimental and artsy. There is still some stuff I enjoy on here, however. So in that context, 2009’s “Backspacer” is Pearl Jam’s weirdest (by being so populist) and least engaging album for me. Well over the last half year, I’ve had one of my biggest Pearl Jam phases of all time and have had the chance to reevaluate all their albums, a number of their concert bootlegs, live albums ect. My interest would come and go, just cause there is so much music out there in the world and recorded history, it’s only natural things will come and go, and come back again. I remember being at the record store the day “No Code” came out in 1996, so I’ve been around their music for a while. Just a little background this review is coming from a fan who got into Pearl Jam in 1994 when I was 9.
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