Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam's Vitalogy casts a long, dark shadow upon first listening, as many of the songs included here are brooding, uncompromising offerings that demand attention. Songs such as "Corduroy" and "Better Man" are some of Pearl Jam's very best work, but, ultimately, Vitalogy is a hard nut to crack. Casual listeners would be better off with Ten.

It's a sad paradox of these times that the artists who most successfully express our fears
and anxieties are the ones who are least able to cope with the burdens of fame. Whether
it's Sinéad O'Connor, who masochistically invites humiliation with public displays of
emotional nakedness, or Kurt Cobain, who finally just gave up, it's sometimes tempting to
say what Frank Sinatra once told George Michael – that is, "Stop complaining an... More >

Eddie Vedde's struggles with stardom have a concreteness missing from more mythic epics of resistance. But it isn't his MTV boycott or TicketMaster stand that make his third album his best--it's his need to live up to Kurt's musical example and expiate Kurt's mythic pain. Three or four of these songs are faster and riffier than anything else in P. Jam's book, token experiments like "Bugs" are genuinely weird, and in an era of compulsory irony his sincerity is something like a relief--a Kurtlike relief at that. (Grade - A-)