The Pearl Jam leader’s first solo album in over a decade is an amiable, tuneful set with appearances from Stevie Wonder, Ringo Starr, and Elton John.
To imagine the Eddie Vedder of 1993 one day sharing a mic with Elton John is like imagining the Billy Corgan of 1994 eventually writing for Marianne Faithfull: not an improbability, a reimagining. But there they are, Elton and his piano, on a rollicking little number on Vedder’s Earthling called “Picture,” his voice as crinkled as a damp leather wallet. Amiable, tuneful, and inessential, “Picture” exemplifies the spirit of the Pearl Jam frontperson’s first non-soundtrack solo album since 2011: a suite of crunchy rockers intermingling with chamber pop, recorded with the help of Stevie Wonder here and Ringo Starr there, a space for musicians who, as a pandemic raged, still wanted to bro down, virtually or otherwise. Imagine Live From Eddie’s House, not Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1.
Steeped in the mythos of bands as the last gangs in town, Vedder allows these superstar friends to garnish tracks instead of bullying them; this Neil Young and Pete Townshend devotee betrays not a hint of lèse-majesté. (Stevie and company come in at the end as if at a concert, he observed in a recent interview.) The backing band—Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, former Chili Pepper guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, and co-producer Andrew Watt on bass—don’t pestle the material. Listeners, presumably Vedder’s age and who keep their Pearl Jam CDs close, may find the petulant confidence of those guitars a reason to endure this dirty world; it’s as if the mutant disco jive “Dance of the Clairvoyants” from Pearl Jam’s last album, 2020’s Gigaton, were a bad dream after eating spoiled tuna salad. “Good and Evil” and “Rose of Jericho” will not repulse fans of bullshit-free churners like No Code’s “Lukin” or the eponymous 2006 album’s “Comatose.”
Earthling’s sturm und drang avoids potted gestures of dads-jamming-in-the-garage rebellion. A feminist in an aggro scene in which Courtney Love endured a lot of shit, Vedder has told women’s stories as early as “Alive.” The hard acoustic strummer “Fallout Today” gets into the mind of someone “drowned in her perceptions/reaching out in all directions/No escape.” It’s lovely to listen to “Invincible” open up to a multi-tracked Vedder wordlessly scraping at the ineffable like the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan taught him long ago; I don’t suggest Vedder is at his level, but the effort to escape the strictures of language redresses the image of the Soundscan-era scold. But despite the clawing after transcendence, songs are fictions, momentary in the mind. “Can’t escape the timeline,” he concedes on the pillowy, Tom Petty-indebted “Long Way” as Heartbreaker Benmont Tench adds organ washes. Brother, take a number.
As the morose soothsayer ceded ground to the ukulele strummer of the last decade, Vedder has accepted with dignity his position as one-fifth of what was once—briefly—the world’s biggest band. He’s lither; he sings with a spring in his step, trusting the deepened range of his indignant burr. After several Pearl Jam albums of material pounded into meat sauce, the airier delights of Earthling’s end run let Vedder stretch—cautiously. Ringo offers the usual super-steady drum work on “Mrs. Mills,” an ode to British pianist Gladys Mills and elegy to Vedder’s own musician father, his sampled trumpet shimmering like a memory of Swinging London. “Try” boasts Stevie Wonder’s harmonica, his skirls a pair of stirrups driving Vedder and Klinghoffer’s rhythm work. “Good men don’t have to pretend!” Vedder shouts. He may even have cracked a smile.
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