Click to watch

Pearl Jam performs "Parachutes"

Pearl Jam have never been critical faves. When they broke wide as unlikely MTV darlings during the glorious grunge takeover of the early 1990s, many unfairly derided them as classic rock retreads while neighborhood rivals Nirvana, always getting critic’s backslaps, were consistently heralded as the coming of a new age of punk. The band’s stop-gap release between their last record, 2002’s Riot Act, and this latest album was a rare tracks collection called Lost Dogs. I can already see ageist rock scribes and of-the-moment music bloggers detourning a title like that and saying that Pearl Jam in 2006 have gone from lost dogs to old dogs that aren’t going to learn any new tricks. The notion that the band’s eighth album is nothing new for them is silly. but, like the days when Pearl Jam was just a pup, this self-titled record bursts at the seams with impassioned, intelligent and inspired rock and roll. In a career that has now stretched to 15 years, Pearl Jam is sounding younger, hungrier and more explosive than ever before. And, for the record, Pearl Jam has never really worried about the critics. So much like the artists after whom they have purposely molded themselves (Neil Young, Patti Smith), Pearl Jam long ago made the decision to create music on their own terms and eschew the passing fancies and tastes bound for the wane. That strong constitution has proven them built to last. While catalytic frontman Eddie Vedder has his hands in every one of these 13 tracks, the band’s four other members share the songwriting chores for what arguably results in the Seattle’s quintet’s most realized, fully formed record to date. The stirringly translucent “Parachutes” is an engaging meditation where Vedder contrasts love (“One can’t seem to have enough”) and war (“Break the sky and tell me what it’s for.”) War is on the agenda throughout this record but Vedder is a smart enough writer not to time-and-date-stamp this album as entirely about Bush’s Iraq snafu. He abstracts his thoughts and words enough but still plainly expresses outrage, pain and disgust with directness. “World Wide Suicide,” though, booms with anthemic verses that pointedly berate the greed, corruption and bloody hands of the current administration. But, as serious as their mission and message is, Pearl Jam are a band delighting in their youth—regardless of what the wrinkles might suggest—delivering rock and roll like they haven’t since their earliest albums. “Comatose” is a pounding, existential investigation highlighted by drummer Matt Cameron. Clocking in under three minutes, reckless abandon earmarks the power of “Big Wave,” while the angular guitars of “Unemployable” pit Stone Gossard and Mike McCready in a Verlaine/Lloyd-like tradeoff. This powerful record is among Pearl Jam’s two or three best and is more proof that, for a decade and a half, Pearl Jam has deservedly sat at the forefront of American rock on their own merits and by their own rules.