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Pearl Jam | 134811__pearljam_l
Pearl Jam: Danny Clinch

Credits

Release Date: May 02, 2006; Lead Performance: Pearl Jam; Genre: Rock
B+

The announcement that Pearl Jam have a new single called ''World Wide Suicide'' is the sort of thing to inspire both hope and apprehension. Their last stab at topicality, 2002's nose-thumbing ''Bushleaguer,'' didn't exactly establish Eddie Vedder as a go-to guy for geopolitical wisdom. On the other hand, his passionate howl seems more valuable now, pitted against the navel-gazing emo whine that's commandeered the landscape. Tell us about the war, Eddie! we might even nervously ask, knowing that, in a world full of boys sent to do a man's job of rocking, Pearl Jam can still pull off gravitas.

But what we really want — and what they've been stingy with for a decade — is fast, furious, breakneck gravitas. Surprise: They stand and deliver on this belatedly eponymous barnstormer, the seriously hopped-up effort fans have been pining for since Vitalogy. Not that Pearl Jam is a perfect Ten. Vedder's lyrics can still be as clumsy as heartfelt, and the album's probably shorter on band perennials than punky firepower. But a shocking late-career freneticism predominates, married to a seriousness of purpose that is no longer high on pesky moral superiority.

What's got them fired up? War collateral, naturally (''Army Reserve''); the impersonality of big business (''Unemployable''); separation due to divorce or death (''Come Back''). But mostly, with apologies to Dylan Thomas, they sound like a band successfully raging against the dying of their own relevance...as well as, you know, the machine.


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