Pearl Jam rose (I'm not going to say "like a phoenix" because... trite) from the ashes of another band. When the vocalist for Mother Love Bone died of an overdose, guitarist Stone Gossard started jamming with his friend Mike McCready who urged him to reconnect with his MLB bandmate bassist Jeff Ament. They found young precocious vocalist Eddie Vedder through their friend (and ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer) Jack Irons.
This album is considered one of the cornerstones of the grunge movement, a genre label that seemed to cover a range of sounds. Nirvana were raging punk with a sense of melody, Soundgarden were sludgey Zeppelin-meets-Sabbath metal, slowly giving way to a more melodic mode, Pearl Jam started off with 'classic rock' riffs over funky mid-tempo rhythms and Vedder's growling voice. I guess that they had in common a darker, grittier more cynical sound than some of the other artists that had been filling the rock charts at the time.
In some ways, it's odd that "Ten" is the album that a lot of people associate with the band. It certainly is a good album, and it was commercially successful, but it doesn't feature feature either of their longest serving drummers Jack Irons or Matt Cameron, and the bulk of the songwriting is undertaken by Ament and Gossard, rather than the more even spread of input and large input from Vedder that would characterise later albums. The album has much less variety than later releases, to the extent that "Even Flow" and "Why Go" have almost identical riffs, and Ament admitted that "Jeremy" was largely written around an E chord!
There are some great tracks though, with the heartfelt "Black", the raging "Porch", the meditative drone of "Release" and the anthemic "Alive". That last track was originally pitched by Vedder as the burden of being left behind when others die but over time has been taken by fans to be a life-affirming track. The band have come around to that interpretation too.
Mention should be made of lead guitarist McCready, whose songwriting contributions are minimal on this album, but who is allowed pretty free-reign and sprays blistering blues lead all over the songs, including "Alive" which ends with an extended guitar solo.
I was quite late coming to Pearl Jam. I have friends who were into them in the 90s. I actually got into them (being serious for a moment, fam) when I was going through a bout of depression. I've often found something that can help push me out of that kind of funk is to listen to music that I'm unfamiliar with, or don't know that I really like it. There were one or two PJ songs I liked and I was peripherally aware of one or two other things of theirs. I dove in headfirst to their oeuvre and I've not regretted it at all.
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