Pearl Jam
Ten
Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/release/11116451-Pearl-Jam-Ten
Year Of Release: 1991
Review
Some of you might be surprised to learn that I enjoy the music of Pearl Jam, but it shouldn’t be that surprising. Grunge was a nice escape from country and western when I was growing up in a small town in the early nineties, and Pearl Jam and Nirvana were tremendously popular, with their music videos enjoying relatively frequent airplay. So popular in fact that for some reason I found the need to sell my Nirvana CDs in the late nineties to somehow rid myself of the popular grunge thing (I probably just needed beer money). So while I enjoy Pearl Jam, I don’t have many of the band’s studio albums, and I seem to prefer to pick up the various concert bootlegs on vinyl and CD. I don’t get it either, but I’m working on filling in the gaps as best I can.
When Alive was released I remember I bought the CD single (remember CD singles? Almost as weird as cassingles). For some reason I didn’t buy a copy of Ten for many years after that. I don’t know why. I really enjoyed Alive, and I figured I’d probably enjoy the rest of the album too, but for some reason I could never commit. I do remember one of my classmates at the time commenting on the titles of the album all being one word only and maybe that was something we should think was weird. That’s right, super insightful stuff from fifteen year olds there.
This is a great album from start to finish, and has become my favourite album to listen to on repeat when I’m on a long-haul flight across the Pacific. I don’t know how that tradition started, but I imagine it had something to do with the limited range of albums available on the in-flight entertainment during the strange ten years or so where I was travelling to the US four to six times a year. Nowadays I need to listen to it on my phone as the airline I use has removed it from the music catalogue.
Standout tracks are the aforementioned Alive, Once, Black, and Release. But as I said this is very much a no skips album.
Rating: 9/10