Radio Exile | Backspacer Sticks to Your Ribs

Backspacer Sticks to Your Ribs

By James V. Mitchell September 14, 2009 Post a comment | Email the author

On their 9th studio album, Pearl Jam complete the arc their career shifted toward back on 2000’s Binaural. If that album was the dusk to their youth, then Backspacer is the new sun most bands never see. Backspacer kicks off with the raucus “Gonna See My Friend”, a song pitting Pearl Jam’s strongest talents against one another to great result. Eddie Vedder barks and howls his way through Stone Gossard and Mike McCready’s guitars as drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Jeff Ament propel the rest of the band forward. It’s an odd feeling. For much of its early career, Pearl Jam seemed to rely more on volume than sheer energy, as if the two weren’t mutually exclusive. Aware of restraints the band has placed on itself over years, and even more aware of their strengths, Vedder screams the opening line to the record: “Do you want to hear something sad/We are but victims of desire/I’m gonna shake this day/I wanna shake this day before I retire”.

It’s the promising start and the band’s ability to maintain that start that makes Backspacer stick to your ribs. Not until the album’s fourth track does the band decide to slow down; “Got Some” rips through a metaphor describing rock music as a good drug, “The Fixer” is Vedder’s tongue-in-cheek description of his role in Pearl Jam, and “Johnny Guitar” finds Vedder rolling syllables a-la “Satan’s Bed” over a Soundgarden-esque arrangement.

Things pick back up after “Just Breathe”, a nod to Vedder’s instrumental “Tuolomne” off the Into the Wild soundtrack. “Unthought Unknown” builds to a soaring anthem, while “Supersonic” emulates early Elvis Costello. It’s strange and unexpected. Where Pearl Jam’s eponymous record screamed and sulked over “Bush Americana”, Backspacer seems to acknowledge his absence by simply not acknowledging it, the band filling its rage-shaped hole with upbeat, up-tempo songs celebrating life. Perhaps that’s the only flaw: that the majority of the lyrics stick to a 2-dimensional view of life (light good, dark bad, etc.). Maybe so. Or maybe for a band always seen as too serious for their own skin, perhaps affirmation of a lighter side is what they need to keep moving forward.

It’s fitting then that this record about life and those who champion it ends with a song about death. On “The End”, Vedder sits alone, save a backing orchestra and acoustic guitar. He ambles through the story of a man dying young from a “sickness” in his bones, leaving wife and child behind to fend for themselves. Vedder’s desperate, trembling voice is cradled by the music, beautifully crafted and executed. It’s a shocking piece in light of the rest of Backspacer, a reminder that this is still a band with a message, and no matter what that message is, they’re more than capable of delivering it.