Let's Rank All The Pearl Jam Albums!
I love Pearl Jam. They’ve always felt like “my guys” - all between 4 and 7 years older than me and they broke huge during my senior year in college when grunge exploded - those couple of years were pivotal for me in a lot of ways and music was obviously a huge part of it. These bands all had something to say beyond singing mostly dumb songs about chicks which hair metal had mined for almost a decade (and the reason I gravitated towards 1st wave alternative music during that time). They wore long sleeve unbuttoned flannel shirts with t-shirts beneath and cargo shorts. Clothes I could actually wear!
Of the “Big 4” Seattle grunge bands I’m not even sure Pearl Jam is my favorite per se (that title probably goes to Alice In Chains) and yet they are the ones I’m most comfortable having represent me and my generation as OUR rock band if that makes sense. So if I choose Alice In Chains as the band I like to listen to more it’s literally by a hair.
Meanwhile I thought it would be interesting to start with Pearl Jam and their 11 albums. Green River and Mother Love Bone notwithstanding, Pearl Jam is the band that nailed it out of the gate and endured from that time with the core band intact to this day. I’ve seen them live twice - the first time on March 22, 1994 at the Cleveland State Convocation Center - pretty sure that was the first time I saw a singer do a legit stage dive which Eddie did…
So let’s get to the ranking shall we? The criteria is simply full length studio Pearl Jam LPs - no collections or live releases (Lost Dogs is not included even though it’s great and would probably fall somewhere in the middle). And yes I’m aware that many of the best Pearl Jam songs aren’t on albums such as Crazy Mary, State Of Love And Trust, Yellow Ledbetter, I Got Shit and that there’s a great Pearl Jam album that isn’t even a Pearl Jam album when they were the backing band for Neil Young. But here I’m sticking to the 11 proper LPs.
Let’s Rank All The Pearl Jam Albums
11. Binaural (2000) - One of the band’s musical detours you might say… But even at last place on this list it’s not an album I dislike - there are no “bad” Pearl Jam albums. It’s just…..odd. Not all of it works for me. It starts off strongly enough with Breakerfall but nothing else really stands out until the final track Parting Ways which is really good - almost a mythical feel to it. But songs like Of The Girl, and Sleight Of Hand while having a loose feel (which might be cool in theory) just don’t go anywhere. Nothing As It Seems, Thin Air, and Light Years are all pretty good but many of the rockers like Evacuation and God’s Dice for example just aren’t very memorable.
10. No Code (1996) - Binaural wasn’t the first weird Pearl Jam album - No Code was. The difference is the good songs are better and even some of the odd ones are cool. Present Tense is the real classic here - how can a quiet intimate song be so heavy and powerful? The song interestingly enough was given a new life and context as the closing song on the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls. The opener Sometimes is the first opener that signals this outing is going to be a bit different - sometimes you just take the road where it leads, but Hail, Hail reminds us that yes this is still a rock band and we’ll jam some. The first single was Who You Are which is an unlikely single with almost a nursery rhyme quality to it but I do love it. Smile sounds like a deliberate Neil Young tribute and it’s just okay, and my other complaint on this album is it closes with a few throwaways in my book - I’m just not a big fan of Mankind, the spoken word I’m Open, and Around The Bend. Just a boring sequence for me. But In My Tree, Off He Goes, Habit, Red Mosquito and the one minute blast of Lukin are all really good.
9. Backspacer (2009) - Backspacer kicks off with 4 straight uptempo jams and they’re all good, just not great. The greatness that does exist in this album begins with Just Breathe which is a gorgeous acoustic track followed by more anthemic fare such as Amongst The Waves and Unthought Known - soaring tracks that represent Pearl Jam at their best in my opinion. Supersonic and Speed Of Sound are both damn good and then closing out with Force Of Nature (which should have been a single instead of Fixer) and the beautiful The End which are both fantastic. Backspacer is backloaded and so it took me a while to discover how good it really is.
8. Vitalogy (1994) - Vitalogy is not my favorite Pearl Jam album and it’s tough for me to rank because the highs are so high and the lows relatively low… I remember the first time I heard Not For You - who doesn’t? That performance on SNL on April 16th, 1994 with Eddie poignantly moving his jacket to the side to reveal a “K” on the shirt underneath for Kurt Cobain who had just ended his life 11 days earlier. One of those moments you never forget. Eddie seemed to be singing on Kurt’s behalf even though the song wasn’t written with Kurt in mind nor were the bands close and while that moment was big at the time, the song is not my favorite - it served its purpose in the moment. As for the rest of Vitalogy, there are 4 total classics here which supports any claim for this album - for me they aren’t enough to rank it higher than here at 8, but Nothingman, and especially Better Man, Corduroy and Immortality are classics of the band and the genre itself. Beyond that I like Satan’s Bed, Whipping and…..not a whole lot else. But that’s okay and Pry, To, Bugs, Aye Davanita and Hey Foxyblah blah blah aren’t really songs anyway. It’s an amazing half an album… The thing is the first 4 albums kind of progressively decrease in quality so by No Code I was still firmly on board but itching for a true return to form. I got it on the album ranked #3 on this list.
7. Riot Act (2002) - Sometimes I lump this and Binaural together but this is clearly the better of the two. This was a time when 9/11 was still fresh - only a year earlier - and it seemed that everything was different. I wondered what Pearl Jam would have to say and how their music might be impacted. Reading up on the album now it seems that 9/11 coupled with the accidental death of 9 fans at the Roskilde Festival during their performance since Binaural did indeed have a big impact on the topics and lyrics - but I frankly didn’t notice. I guess I was never quite sure what I was expecting. The album is still somewhat in the vein of Binaural with a few detours and an experimental feel at times, but the overall quality of the songs is stronger to me. There are 15 tracks. If the album ended after the 10th track it would be stronger… the last 5 fall somewhere between odd and average, but the first 10 straight are pretty strong and a few such as Love Boat Captain, I Am Mine, You Are and Green Disease are fantastic. The real standout for me though is Thumbing My Way - a beautiful classic, and hearing Eddie sing the line “No matter how cold the winter there’s a springtime ahead” was definitely the comfort I was still looking for in music at the beginning of that decade.
6. Pearl Jam (2006) - AKA “Avocado” this album was more of a return to a rocking and soaring Pearl Jam album as the band entered their 40’s after the slight “detours” of the previous two albums and I’m a big fan. Marker in the Sand and Gone have that classic Pearl Jam soaring anthemic feel and I can’t help it - I’m a sucker for those - #sorrynotsorry. Beyond those two there are a lot of great songs here - from here on out we’re getting into some real greatness with these albums. After two albums that had a bit of an experimental feel this is a return to the soaring and rocking Pearl Jam that I love. This is the part of the list that I frequently find myself struggling with when I do these because I think this album deserves to be higher - and yet when I see what’s ahead it’s tough to move it up lol… Whereas the album that followed this one (Backspacer) followed a similar format of starting off with a handful of uptempo rockers but with fairly limited results in my mind, these songs are all awesome. World Wide Suicide might be my fave of the first 4 and then they unleash yet another rocker that deserves a spot among the soaring anthems that they have given us over the years with Marker In The Sand. Pretty sure they’ve never gone until the 6th track on an album before finally taking the foot off the gas with the relatively slight Parachutes in this case, and the next couple tracks are decent but then they hit us with Gone which is the real winner. One of my favorite Pearl Jam songs ever, and I love how Eddie wrote it in a hotel room in Atlantic City and performed it the next night. A brief reprise of the opener Life Wasted brings the main act to a close so to speak and sets the stage for a change of vibe for the final three songs - all great including the epic and introspective closer Inside Job that builds to a nice rocking finish.
5. Vs. (1993) - The sophomore follow up to the world-storming debut Ten, Vs. didn’t succumb to any potential slump if anyone was wondering if these guys had staying power. This is made clear immediately with what in my opinion is the best album opener of their catalogue - Go - a frantic high energy rampage that just slays. Animal and Daughter are both classics as well - a pretty impressive start to a sophomore album. Granted these guys were not all newbies on Ten but still - there’s not much dropoff. In my mind there are 4 more tracks here that are absolute classics so any album with 7 songs at that level is legend status in my book. Rearviewmirror is a truly powerful and personal song written by Eddie Vedder with the brilliant lyric “saw things so much clearer once you were in my rearviewmirror”. *As a side note Pearl Jam has always gotten songwriting contributions from multiple members of the band, and Eddie, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Stone Gossard have all created some amazing music outside of the band, and Gossard’s band Brad is what led me to Shawn Smith’s music. To me there’s a progression in the band’s sound on this album too - it’s not just a by-the-numbers repeat formula of Ten - Dissident is really the only song that sounds like it’s straight off the first album and it’s great - the verses have a nice loose feel musically & vocally - a band sounding comfortable in their prowess and Eddie really belts out the chorus. Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town is brilliant for starters just with that title! This was an era where it was particularly cool to have one word cryptic song titles -18 of the 23 song titles on the first two albums are one word. The song itself is a beauty and I love the story behind its creation - seems like some of Eddie’s greatest songs (I guess this is true with many artists) just kind of happen without a ton of effort or planning. The other real classic is the spare and powerful closer Indifference. Beyond that I’m a big fan of W.M.A. and Rats. The tour supporting this album was the one I saw in Cleveland - awesome.
4. Lightning Bolt (2013) - Man I love this album… Kicking off with 3 straight rockers that are all fantastic. I love the opening salvo of Getaway “Everyone’s a critic looking back up the river” but all the boats are leaking and Eddie has found HIS place and it’s alright. Not everyone has to think the exact same way - solid message - let’s enjoy this batch of tunes. Sirens is the unquestioned classic here - you can feel it, and it’s mellow and gorgeous. The title track rocks, Infallible is a cool mid tempo jam and Pendulum has a very cool loose ethereal feel to it. Swallowed Whole is the next instant classic - I know I keep using “soaring” and “anthemic” to describe certain Pearl Jam songs but this is the best way to put it for this category of Pearl Jam song. If you know you know. Let The Records Play and Sleeping By Myself are fun and then the final two mellow tunes are incredible. Yellow Moon and Future Days are amazing, and it’s wild the things you find out when Googling a little for a post like this… Future Days is about Eddie’s friend Dennis Flemion who drowned in a lake in 2012. He was the drummer in The Frogs - I saw The Frogs open for the Smashing Pumpkins in 1993 and they were just a ridiculous spectacle - like a couple idiots doing their absolute best to piss off the audience and that was their gimmick. Dennis “performed” in blackface and a security guard wanted to kick his ass… I had no clue if the whole scene was real or what… Basically it was guerilla satire - portraying negative stereotypes about race and homosexuality in a crazy over the top way not unlike the stuff Sasha Baron Cohen does. I’m shocked that I’m finding out now that this beautiful song I love was written about that dude…
3. Yield (1998) - I was so fired up about this album when it came out - to me it was Pearl Jam being what I loved about Pearl Jam again - BIG songs. With these guys commercial doesn’t equal “bad” - there are just some Pearl Jam songs that sound at home…..everywhere, and there are a handful of these here. This album kicks ass. To me these top 3 are THE Pearl Jam albums that really define who this band is - at least for me. The opener with the little “false start” is an uptempo rocker - Brain Of J has a fantastic riff - “The whole world will be different soon” - you think? In 1998 I’d say they got that one right. The classics start coming at this point with Faithful, No Way, Given To Fly and Wishlist. Wow. People have said Given To Fly was directly borrowed from Zeppelin’s Goin’ To California. Mike McCready acknowledged the influence but in no way is the song some “ripoff”. The song follows the soft-loud-soft dynamic with great effect with the beautiful verses and the building soaring awesome chorus. One of their best. Pilate is pretty good - for some reason I always felt Pilate and MFC (one of my favorites on the album) had a little R.E.M. feel to them. Maybe it’s me. Do The Evolution is a great rocker and a little bizarre in the best way, and leads into Untitled - a funny segue curiosity before those awesome opening ringing chords of MFC kick in. I guess I haven’t listened to this LP in a bit because I almost forgot about Low Light, which would be a highlight on most albums - it’s so beautiful, it’s just that this album has so many monster songs on it. We’re just getting to what could be the best song on the album In Hiding. Another classic anthem with those unmistakable intro chords that unexpectedly soften and lead us gently into the first verse allowing the song to properly build and build until the first time we get the chorus a full 2:24 into the song and the payoff is worth it. The song ended up charting without being listed as a single (not even sure how that happens). That’s pretty much where the album really “ends”. Push Me Pull Me is one of those weird spoken word things that Eddie has done here and there but this one is oddly enjoyable to my ears, and the closer All Those Yesterdays is a bit anticlimactic with a strange instrumental outro... neither are bad, just not essential.
2. Gigaton (2020) - I may have to do a separate blog post on bands who created their best albums with the most years between them. I love that Pearl Jam for the moment has bookended their career with these two masterpieces starting with their latest, Gigaton. This album came out on March 27th, 2020. The first Covid-19 lockdown happened here in Michigan on March 24th - three days earlier. I was pretty damn scared and Pearl Jam came to the rescue just in terms of giving me an incredible masterpiece of an album to focus on and I’ll always be grateful - I’ll never forget listening to this album on headphones while taking walks around my complex. I’ll always have a strong association with this album and that time and I suspect it will always provide a degree of healing for me. Something about the vibe of this album fit the time too that I just can’t put my finger on. The song Alright for example (music and lyrics both by Jeff Ament) - it’s a hypnotic meditation that was a perfect soundtrack to the silence of the world - no cars on the road, everyone locked in place, and that break from normal life was alright - it’s alright to be alone, it’s alright to shut it down, it’s alright to turn it off, to listen for your own heartbeat…. Seven O’Clock with its thoughtful lyrics and ruminations on the world and this “fucked up situation that calls for all hands on deck” and a searing condemnation of the president… Then there’s the mysterious Dance Of The Clairvoyants with Eddie’s David Byrne-ish vocals that also fit the narrative - “when the past is the present and the future’s no more”? But you still feel these guys are there with you so just “stand back when the spirit comes…” I’m bouncing around here a little but there’s also Superblood Wolfmoon. I’ve always pondered the sky at night when there’s a war, or when the sky was quiet after 9/11 or in this case a pandemic - when I know I’m looking at the same stars and moon that the rest of the human race is all looking at - “Throughout the hopelessness focus on your focusness” - inspired by the actual Superblood Wolfmoon that occured on January 21st, 2019, and the song caught the attention of Space.com. I also like the pacing of this album - the first 4 songs are all jams but they still vary in style keeping things interesting. Quick Escape is fantastic too - a song about escaping an uninhabitable planet and heading to Mars. What’s interesting is that during the lockdown it seemed Earth was given a breather from human pollution - nature started to reclaim the planet and I even saw a big hawk just standing on the grass next to me as I walked by one day - I’ve never had a random encounter with a big beautiful bird of prey like that before. We all bring our own context and experiences to music we connect to don’t we? But this album just seemed to be so prescient in its relevance to the pandemic that exploded immediately after its release. Never Destination makes great use of just a bit of space in between repetitions of the riff that is genius to me. The homestretch of the album is the best of any Pearl Jam album - full stop. The last three songs are just incredible. Comes Then Goes seems to be a tribute to Chris Cornell even though they’ve never come out and said it. Eddie did the vocal in one take Retrograde with all its beauty and yet such a dire message and call to action about climate change with an incredible outro - and that video…. wow. And then the closer River Cross. Eddie played this on an 1850’s pump organ on the demo and that’s what they used on the album. He performed it on television during the One World: Together At Home special from his house with candles lit - it’s a moment I’ll never forget and I’ll tell my grandkids about. Content was running out to show on TV. Nothing new was being produced together - everything had to be on zoom - no one had contact with each other. It’s just hard to explain the comfort that the performances on that show brought to people (or at least to me), and Eddie’s performance in particular is just otherworldly. So there it is - secretly this may prove to endure as my favorite Pearl jam album… it’s just too soon to rank it #1. Here’s a great track-by-track rundown by producer Josh Evans of the album.
1. Ten (1991) - One of the greatest debuts in music. I can’t think of too many stories like the Mother Love Bone —> Pearl Jam story. Dynamic front man (Andrew Wood) dies on the eve of launch for the band and they have to regroup. Joy Division —> New Order comes to mind but Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard recruited a new singer who would go on to be one of the greatest front men in rock history. New Order’s singer stepped to the mic from within the band and it took them time to conquer the world. Pearl Jam reached the stratosphere with their first album together with a masterpiece that helped define a genre and an era. Eddie Vedder’s deep baritone was something new and he had incredible range. Not too many vocalists have been attempted to copy by so many. And the songs… So much has been written about this album it just seems like an obvious rehash to go through it track by track. Even Flow was the first Pearl Jam song I heard and it made an impact right away - it was unique but it rocked and what’s cool about it and the whole album is that all the elements are there and fully realized in terms of what makes this band so great. Great storytelling, awesome playing, incredible songwriting and chemistry - indeed the band is shown together with their hands joined high in the air in a circle like a team breaking a pre-game huddle and that visual informed the vibe of the album. Eddie was not afraid to share his truth in songs like Alive - a semi-autobiographical telling of his childhood and only knowing his real dad as his stepfather. It was the first song he recorded vocals for the band on, the title coming from the KISS album and Stone Gossard’s solo being borrowed from Ace Frehley’s solo on She which was borrowed from Robby Krieger on Five To One. Black and Jeremy are the other two monster hits here - both worthy, both iconic. It was songs like these with heartfelt lyrics that meant something that helped grunge destroy hair metal. It became cool to listen to songs about thoughts, feelings, childhood and life in general instead of Girls Girls Girls, Cherry Pie, Let’s Get Rocked and all that garbage. Cheesy dudes wearing spandex and stupid hair teased to the sky were replaced by thoughtful guys with just normal long hair wearing flannel - a huge upgrade. As with many subsequent Pearl Jam albums many of the greatest moments come at their quietest and here it’s Oceans and Release. I love that Release as the album’s closer has actually been the opener for many Pearl Jam shows over the years including the first time I saw them. It’s an introspective song about pain and loss, and yet it’s just beautiful. So is Oceans - where we can drift and dream of when the currents will bring us together - a lovely metaphor. That’s not to say the most aggressive tracks aren’t also awesome though - Why Go and Porch for example both kick ass. The album was actually re-released almost two decades later with much of the reverb stripped away and to me gives it a more immediate and intimate feel. Even though this isn’t the way I knew this album for all that time I actually prefer it - as does the band from what I gather.
So what do you think? Do you agree with the order? I want to hear your thoughts on Pearl Jam - tell me in the comments below!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here.
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