Pearl Jam
Riot Act

THE REVIEW

This is an important title. A challenging title, especially for a band like Pearl Jam. However, years later, I still wonder what this title means and how it connects with the album's content.

We are in 2002. The world has obviously changed since the '90s, even from a musical perspective. Rock no longer holds that instructive role it had in the past, a consequence of both the power of utility and the natural aging of the genre, which reached its peak a decade earlier and is now condemned to an inevitable process of decline. ‘Riot Act’ by Pearl Jam exactly expresses this situation of musical, cosmic, and personal crisis. Personal because, with due caution, Pearl Jam has never been a band with a well-defined character. In the '90s and still today, they are mistakenly defined as a grunge band, considered founding fathers of the genre by Green River, and if identity is a social product, being from Seattle, they perhaps felt obliged to hitch themselves to the wagon of a non-existent genre that included completely different bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden, to name the most cited. And it would certainly be wonderful to indulge in the illusion that there was a movement called grunge, driven by the same intents, and to imagine Cobain and Staley eating together and writing a song. But it wasn't exactly like that, and Pearl Jam demonstrated multiple times a lack of personality, songs lacking bite, embarrassing if not downright ridiculous episodes, as in this album.

The beginning is already disheartening: "Can't Keep," a song without head or tail, which some grunger-snob might consider a singer-songwriter's piece, but reveals more than anything an inability to establish a compact, decisive discourse. The embarrassment grows with "Save You," where it's pitiful to hear Vedder repeating ‘fuck you’ or ‘fuck me’, and I'm bored with "Love Boat Captain," where he quotes the Beatles, like Folliero. In "Bushleaguer" it seems he's having a go at Bush, but it doesn't impact me. In truth, I only save "I Am Mine", a sort of reflection on staying true to oneself despite the senselessness of things. And this is very difficult. Difficult like making rock ‘n roll at the threshold of 40, especially if one has grown up poorly. For the rest, if I had to cite any influence on this album, I can only think of Bruce Springsteen, who at least fills stadiums, and certainly nothing related to that supposed musical tradition within which they are listed. But that's not even the point. It is not so much about demonstrating the diversity, if not the complete estrangement, of Pearl Jam from certain environments, from certain canons, as it is to highlight the failure of rock ‘n roll as a genre that proposes a social and cultural project, and not merely musical.

The act of revolt announced in the title is completely unmet, not because generational anthems were expected, but precisely because the record itself is a symbol of inconsistency and fragility of that revolutionary claim intrinsic to the nature of rock ‘n roll, and emphasized by the inventors of the term ‘grunge’. Evidently, it was a short-term claim because once the golden years are over, the push for opposition appears rather weakened. And lacking this, the very ontological possibility of making rock disappears. Consequently, it makes no sense, and above all, it is not necessary to continue perpetuating an image, clearly induced, that does not withstand the passage of time. Quoting Neil Young: "...it's better to burn out than to fade away."