When Something’s Lost, I wanna Fight to Get it Back Again

It seemed like someone made a conscience effort to make Pearl Jam’s last album, the self titled one, a comeback album with a full media blitz behind its release (or as full as the media shy band has had in a while). The band even appeared in their first music video fourteen years. But the album just didn’t stand out from their other four albums since they were last a cultural phenomenon with the release of Vitology. The band’s ninth studio album Backspacer may not be getting the comeback buzz the last one did, but it is actually better and possibly their best this decade.

What may or may not be coincidentally, this is the first time the band worked with producer Brendan O’Brien since 1998’s Yield. And the album is better for it with much of the songs short and to the point with eleven songs crammed into thirty-six minutes. And you can tell that from the beginning with the rapid fire beginning of the first three tracks Gonna See My Friend, Got Some, and The Fixer barreling through in less than nine minutes and you will be surprised it took that long after listening to them in a row. It is like the band reminding everyone they are a rock band first and foremost.

That’s not to say the album slows down with the next track Johnny Guitar slows things down that much sounding like Eddie Vedder singing over lost track from Bruce Springsteen’s seventies catalogue. Things do get slowed for Just Breathe which may be the most melancholy song the band has ever recorded. Backspacer may not get Pearl Jam back to their former glory (granted the record business isn’t creating many cultural phenomenons anymore) but it should get some of the fans that wrote off the band earlier this decade back.

Please note, if you buy Backspacer on CD or through iTunes, you can download two concerts from the band in their entirety from a virtual vault that features eleven concerts spanning from 2005-2008. Also the only big box retailer selling the album is Target (you should also be able to find it at your local record store with a different cover than the one at Target) and the only online store you can find it is iTunes where it is available in its new iTunes LP format (see banner below).

Song to Download – The Fixer

Backspacer gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.