Backspacer

The four-star reviews are in.

Rolling Stone: 

Fans of Pearl Jam's chest-beating angst mode might look for some metaphorical resonance in 'Amongst the Waves.' Yet the more you listen, the more it just sounds like Vedder's spending a nice day surfing. After toughing out the Bush years, Pearl Jam aren't in the mood for brooding; at long last, surf's up.

Los Angeles Times:

A thousand rock 'n' roll clichés have been built around the idea that guts and glory belong to the young. Pearl Jam's ninth studio album, "Backspacer," due out Sunday (Sept. 20), makes the opposite argument. Its 11 breakneck rockers and candidly emotional ballads, adding up to barely more than a half hour of optimally toned catharsis, gain power from the band's calm but constant awareness of life's ticking clock.

Spin:

For the first time in years, Pearl Jam are seizing the moment rather than wallowing in it.

Chicago Tribune:

But the taut songwriting on “Backspacer” is a bracing reminder of a less-celebrated facet of Pearl Jam’s personality, the step-on-it-and-go attack of “Spin the Black Circle,” “Lukin” or “Do the Evolution.”

I’ve yet to hear the album in full, but what I’ve heard—“The Fixer,” “Got Some,” “Force of Nature,” “The End,”  "Just Breathe" and the below “Unthought Known”—work. It’s not their best effort, but I’m not sure that’s the point. There’s no big message here. It’s simply a record of five guys playing songs together, with a lifetime of experiences at their feet. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Pearl Jam’s never going to scale again the stratospheric levels of success and creativity they reached in the 1990s. They are, thankfully, a vastly different band now. And their fans, myself included, are vastly different people than when we were teenagers. We stopped waiting for Pearl Jam’s “11” years ago.