Pearl Jam
Gigaton

Gigaton, or Long Live Jeff Ament

Just a couple of preliminaries. I love music to madness. Music is the love of my life, and it’s a matter of feeling, not technical competence. It follows that the review is written without the pretensions of using the right terms, cultured references, or journalistic jargon.

And that was the first premise. The second is that Pearl Jam has been my favorite band. I was born in 1975, so just do some math and use a little imagination to see me there, in the first half of the '90s, one of the many kids standing along the tracks of a station waiting for the train to high school and then to university, with jeans tucked into boots, a plaid flannel shirt, and a walkman taking turns with Ten, Bleach, Jar of Flies, with my body in Tuscany but my mind and heart in Seattle.

I avoid retracing what happened in the years after, both to me (because no one is interested) and to grunge and rock (because everyone knows it), and I arrive at Gigaton.

My level of expectations regarding this album was almost zero. As far as I'm concerned, the last Pearl Jam record I totally liked and that moved me was Riot Act. The subsequent production (4 or 5 albums, I might be wrong, the one with the avocado to the one with the lightning bolt) left me somewhere between indifferent and indignant. I have nevertheless continued to follow them, especially live, in order to keep the love alive, even if the solo live of Vedder last year and those of the band in 2018 left me a bit puzzled…

So perhaps it's because of this disenchantment that, I'll say it right away, Gigaton pleasantly surprised me. After a week of listening, I have come to the conclusion that, as far as I'm concerned, this album, despite its limits and defects (not few), is the most listenable of the last 15 years. I would divide the tracks into three (very personal) categories: those that convince me, those that "meh," and those that just don't work.

I'll start with "Those That Convince Me":

Dance of the Clairvoyants. The single that preceded Gigaton's release is quite a nice little piece of song, dance, as the title says, almost experimental for a band like Pearl Jam. It made me hope for a "new" work, made me hope that they were exploring uncharted territories and we could receive new joys. Lyrics that are not trivial, sound between new-wave and post-punk, perfect for listening alone but also in a club, that "pulls" until the last second, driven by a nice bass line and a singing tone that right now is perfect for Vedder (a special mention for the line "I'm positive, positive, positive!" Which who knows what it was supposed to mean when it was written, but in Covid times it means one thing only… and it would be nice to hear it sung by Trump… oops…)

Quick Escape: Chris Cornell would have liked this song. Maybe more the Audioslave one rather than the Soundgarden one, but we are clearly in Emerald City territory. Nonetheless, Quick Escape does not have that somewhat stale effect that a blatantly grunge piece played in 2020 by people over 50 might have. It sounds "fresh," it sounds believable. Jeff wrote a song that, in my opinion, is not just relatively beautiful (i.e., within a record like this) but more "absolutely," that is, in the general panorama of Pearl Jam's production.

Alright: the third piece of the three that convince me is again written by Ament. And this Montana boy shows here a side of the many he has shown over the years to have. The lyrics of Alright are delicate, intense, sweet without being cloying (a hard feat for an American, forgive the generalization). And again, Jeff's music and lyrics offer Vedder the opportunity to sing at his best.

Let's move on to the group of "Meh" tracks:

Who ever said: it's not "ugly, ugly," but I find it "warm." Placed at the beginning of the record, it makes one think that the band (or Vedder, as I've always thought he decides everything) wanted to send out a series of warnings to the listeners: Hey, this is a rock record. Hey, we still have energy and anger in the body… from my point of view, and as my mother would say, every thing in its own time, so by now from Pearl Jam I don't expect either anger or rock, much less if (inevitably) dusted with silver. And when Eddie writes philosophical lyrics, he doesn't convince me.

Superblood Wolfmoon: the first time I heard it, I found it really horrible. I have to say that after a dozen listens, I've at least partly re-evaluated it. And basically for two reasons: for the final bass riff (groovy just right) and because I appreciate the attempt to still try something a little "different."

Seven o'clock: just nothing special about it. Not that it's unlistenable; you can listen to it, you’ll just forget it soon afterward.

Take the long way: a track by Cameron, and it oozes Cameron from start to finish. And I consider Matt (along with Jeff) the best part of the band, and of the record. Nevertheless, the track, as far as I'm concerned, doesn’t exceed mere adequacy. It's perhaps the only jolt of the second half of the album (and that's why it's in the second of my three categories), but one can't help but think it's a kind of "filler" (even a rather long one)...

Before moving on to the last category (those that just don't work), I mention Comes then goes, and I place it in a class of its own. Simply because putting it among the bad bad ones might be excessive, even if it leaves me decidedly perplexed. The piece is liked, and will be liked, it will be sung by the crowd at concerts with cell phone torches lit, because people love to close their eyes and sway. It must be said that Eddie sings it fairly well, and even plays it fairly well, but both the lyrics and the melody sound stale. In short, a ranch-style ballad, catchy enough to sound ingratiating.

Category "Those That Just Don't Work":

Buckle up. Every now and then Stone Gossard writes a lullaby (for children? Grandchildren? for his guitars? We don't know). Buckle up immediately seemed like the poor copy of Around the Bend (which didn't need a poor copy, being already quite poor itself). It must be said, however, that if the purpose of a lullaby is to put someone to sleep, the experiment succeeded.

Never destination: I don't have much to say, the song is really not worth noting. On more than one occasion, Pearl Jam references themselves, and at the same time introduce effects that sound really strange (it seems like you hear horns, and even a female voice in the background)…

Retrograde and River Cross close the album, and both leave me quite stunned. Both written by Vedder, a Vedder who seems trapped between the lands of Into The Wild and the organ he brings on stage in his solo shows, a Vedder who has reached the age of wisdom, or resignation. A Vedder who has lost much of his vocal range, who if he goes up towards too high notes doesn't reach them (and that's age, you can't blame him) but if he goes down towards the low notes, now lingers in trembling vowels and excessively aspirated consonants (and that's mannerism, and I'm tempted not to forgive him for it). A Vedder who probably dreams of getting lost in nature, living as a solitary surfer, while in reality, he finds himself playing the part of the life of a surviving rock icon and husband of a lady who spends her days posting videos of their daughters on Instagram and who first teases his hair then brings him to Los Angeles to attend the Oscars.

So. Ultimately, excluding the tracks in this third category, I find the rest of the record listenable, even at times enjoyable. I would give it a solid pass which, I repeat, could depend both on its objective value and my low expectations.

Gigaton is a record by a group of musicians, rather than a band, and you can feel it. A club sandwich record, with many layers, stuffed with whatever was found, sometimes in the fridge (among fresh stuff), sometimes in the pantry (among long-preserved leftovers?). Everyone put in their ingredients, the impression is that the musicians never met together in the same room except (maybe) to shoot the videos. This distance among them, which seems to vanish when the guys get on stage, personally does not offend me. I think, on the contrary, it has been the antidote to the specter of splitting up all these years. Pearl Jam is the classic group in which the gap between the charisma of one member and the sum of the charisma of all the others is astronomical. Having crossed 3 decades must not have been a walk, and whatever stratagem has preserved a balance (for example each living their own life) I bless it.

Pearl Jam are not Radiohead, who put everything they had to say about rock into 4 masterful albums and then threw themselves into something else, and this something else came out brilliant for them as well. Pearl Jam, even if they realized they didn't have much more to say, either don't know how or don't want to try something else. For this reason, I expected nothing from Gigaton and expect nothing from future albums, if there will be any. Albums aside, they remain a band whose live performances are among the best, and which has masterpieces in its discography that, at least for my generation, transcend the category of "songs," pieces that have entered our DNA and mutated it, transforming us from once-tormented teenagers into the nostalgic and distrustful 40-45-year-olds of today. Nostalgic because (with the exception of those who were young in the '70s) we are probably the generation that enjoyed the best music at the right time in this century; distrustful because we are in need of new musical emotions, but the current panorama is what it is. And so we cling to what is left to us, to what neither heroin nor suicides have taken away. We cling to Pearl Jam, to Smashing Pumpkins, because they remind us of who we were and help us understand who we have become. Gigaton does its part in this complicated existential journey. Grunge has died, triumphantly, and as far as I'm concerned rock is dead too, and its funeral is celebrated every time 70-year-olds who insist on wearing their hair long take the stage (that said, Keith I adore you and you know it). We have to decide what makes us suffer more: the candle that goes out in a puff, at the moment of maximum flame (like Kurt, or like Layne - after all, it is April 5 today), or the one that slowly extinguishes itself, like the Pearl Jam of the last years. In fact, I've already decided.