Another 4/5 review, this time from Uncut (and by far the best written review so far):
Like a grunge version of A Christmas Carol, 2009 has seen Pearl Jam be visited by a ghost of an album past. Instead of rattling chains and terrible foretellings of misfortunes to come, however, the handsome reissue of Ten seems instead to have pointed to a positive way forward for the band. Perhaps some aspects of the album - the big shorts, the hays, the heavy metal production - needed to be left behind. Others - the energy, the agenda-free simplicity of a band making its first album - seemed to warrant a revisit. After all, wasn't it these that got them where they are today?
Backspacer, PJ's ninth album, is a record that would seem to bear out some of these ideas - resulting in what you might called a meticulously contrived spontaneity. A bright, breezy and at 36 minutes, refreshingly short album, it's a collection that shoots for, and often attains, a kind of sonic innocence. Much as, say, REM attempted to do with last year's Accelerate, Backspacer is a spirited attempt to find the kind of energy that accompanied the band's earliest days, when the musicians played without baggage or expectation. Don't think of us as the stadium-filling rock filling rock band of conscience, or writers of such impressive ballads as Given To Fly, it says. Underneath it all, after all, we're just a band. Whether you buy into that idea completely or not, certainly, the best feature of the album is the charming naivete it creates. Rather than the raw thrashing that announced the arrival of Vitalogy - also produced by Brendan O'Brien, and an earlier example of the musical self medication on display here - this seems to hark back to an idealized new wave, nostalgic look back, perhaps, to some of the band's formative, late 70s pop memories. A track like Got Some meanwhile, connects the band with the kind of primal, Blue Oyster Cult branded guitar soloing that the younger and hairier Pearl Jam would use to fill every vacant space on their debut. Sketchy it may be at times, but the intention seems to blow away the accumulated cobwebs of 15 years well-intentioned, high level, rock music.
Undoubtedly the opening of the LP does just that, the sequence of four tracks from opener 'Gonna See My Friend' to 'Johnny Guitar', via enjoyable single 'The Fixer' all delivered in a fraction over 10 minutes. What happens next, though, is probably a more honest to God reflection of how things truly are in the house of Pearl Jam. 'Just Breathe', a touching ballad, with stirring strings, finds an emotional Vedder effectively counting his lucky stars, and pondering mortality. The mid-paced 'Amongst the Waves', meanwhile, finds this emotional surfer contemplating his lot: 'Remember back, the early days/When you were young/Suddenly the channel changed'.
To be honest, it's more of these contemplative, forty-something man with a young family-type songs you'd imagine Pearl Jam to be writing right now. As it is, the achievement of Backspacer is to satisfactorily accommodate them alongside what sounds as if it's otherwise been a refreshing valeting of their upholstery - one they've managed to perform without, say, the giveaway signs of going to Morocco, or employing Brian Eno. Certainly, no-one in their right mind would listen to this LP and think Pearl jam were the bratty punk-pop band that at times they attempt to be here, but those tracks (more, like 'Supersonic', follow later) dovetail well with the general mood of reflection on display elsewhere. This, they seem to be saying, is as much about taking stock of who we were then, as much as where we are now.
As good as the band performances are here, as with REM, Pearl Jam rely a lot on the singer's delivery to elevate them into something spectacular. Lyrically, the faster songs her function better as a mood-establishing collection than as actual songs. But the commitment that Vedder brings to all this material, from the rowdiest thrashing to the schmaltziest ballad makes this feel like a unified and ultimately convincing project. Back a space, maybe, but forward two.
4/5
, it'll likely be.
