Pearl Jam
– Ten
Ten burst out of Seattle like a molotov cocktail lit with raw nerve. Everything about it bleeds conviction. From the moment Eddie Vedder’s voice crests over the mix, it’s clear Pearl Jam isn’t playing dress-up in grunge flannel—they’re testifying from somewhere deep and jagged. It’s not polite. It’s not tidy. It’s gut-spill rock, soaked in dread and desperate hope.
Best of…
Stone Gossard and Mike McCready lace the songs with riffs that lean into classic rock territory, but they never feel borrowed. The guitar work isn’t flashy—it’s felt. There’s an ache in every bend, a fire in every slide. Jeff Ament’s bass lines anchor the storm, and Dave Krusen (before Matt Cameron ever stepped in) drums like a man chasing ghosts. At the center is Vedder, still rough around the edges but magnetic, howling his truths from the bottom of a metaphorical well.
What gives Ten its staying power isn’t nostalgia—it’s the way it still feels immediate. These songs speak from a place of bruised idealism, of rage without a clear direction, of trying to survive in a world that offers few handrails. The production may be slicker than its grunge peers, but that sheen doesn’t dull the sting. This is an album about holding on even when your fingers are bleeding.
Choice Tracks
Alive
The riff is practically mythological. McCready peels off one of the best solos of the ’90s, but it’s Vedder’s rising-from-the-ashes vocal that cuts deepest. What could have been triumph sounds like someone clinging to life by their teeth. And still—somehow—it soars.
Even Flow
Funk-rock grit collides with social commentary, all filtered through a cyclone of guitars. The groove is tight but never stiff, and Vedder rides the wave like a man possessed. It moves, it growls, and it doesn’t blink.
Black
Pearl Jam’s emotional cornerstone. No chorus. No resolution. Just waves of grief and surrender. Vedder sings like he’s exhaling his soul. It’s not a ballad—it’s an unhealed wound put to tape.
Jeremy
This track refuses to fade into the background. A chilling narrative delivered like a thunderclap. Vedder’s vocal is part witness, part warning. It’s unnerving and unforgettable, built on Ament’s eerie bass and a slow-burning sense of dread.
Release
The closer, and a quiet exorcism. It unfolds like a prayer whispered into the dark, building slowly, painfully. Vedder’s plea to a father he never knew makes the song feel suspended in time. It doesn’t end so much as dissolve.
Ten doesn’t just capture a moment—it wrestles with it. Every track pulses with honesty, tension, and emotional weight. Pearl Jam forged something that still echoes decades later: an album that punches, aches, and refuses to sit quietly.