Eddie Vedder - "Rise" (mp3)
Last week I went to the record store, as I'd been planning to since it was announced a few months ago, to pick up Thurston Moore's Trees Outside The Academy. But I had no idea until reading earlier that day that another solo album by probably the frontman of the other most important band in my life circa age 13 was also coming out. So I picked Music For The Motion Picture Into The Wild up on much more of a whim, not really having any idea what it would be like, other than that it was the soundtrack to some movie directed by Sean Penn that I'd barely even heard of either. I probably could've stood to wait and done a little more research before buying it, though, since I might've realized that I could've gotten four (!) bonus tracks if I'd bought it on iTunes.
Eddie Vedder hasn't done a whole lot outside of Pearl Jam that's been particularly memorable in the past, including his contributions to other Sean Penn soundtracks and the solo sets he sometimes has opened for the band with. He's always seemed more like a guy that benefitted from talented bandmates and his solid chemistry with them than someone who'd have made good records under any circumstances. And he only played guitar on a total of two songs on the first two Pearl Jam albums, before gradually taking on a bigger role beyond vocals on later records. When he did do solo tracks on PJ albums, it was goofy joke songs like "Bugs" and "Soon Forget." And that's what makes the modest but enjoyable Into The Wild all the more impressive.
Vedder wrote and played pretty much everything on the album, except for two songs that were written by other people and feature backing vocals. It's mostly acoustic guitar, with a little organ and what sounds like either a mandolin or the ukelele from "Soon Forget" put to much better use on my favorite song on the album, "Rise." But when Vedder accompanies himself on drums, he's pretty good, which I guess shouldn't be surprising since he did play drums in Hovercraft. One of the covers, "Hard Sun," features his best percussion performance on the album along with some great backup vox from Corin Tucker, whose voice I've always really liked despite never being particularly into Sleater-Kinney.
At nine songs in 33 minutes (2 minutes of which are silence before a hidden track), it's a deliberately minor record, made by a guy who clearly has no intention of leaving his day job any time soon. But it's a pretty nice palette cleanser and affirmation of his talent, after last year's Pearl Jam, an album that got mostly positive reviews and even some "return to form" hype despite being, to my ears, by far the worst record the band's ever done. I also got the impression, from some of the interviews Vedder gave for that album, that the album was the result their democratic to a fault approach, letting everyone contribute to the songwriting with perhaps noone taking the lead.
Most of the songs on Into The Wild seem to have been written from the perspective of the film's protagonist, a young guy who decides to abandon society and go live in the wilderness of Alaska, where he eventually dies. But the songs don't really need that kind of context to work, since themes of self-reliance and loneliness and naturalism are pretty much consistent themes of Eddie Vedder's songs and these are the kind of lyrics he'd probably write without the movie to draw inspiration from. But maybe this is the kind of solitary songwriting exercise he needed to recharge his batteries after the last few Pearl Jam albums have suffered diminishing returns of the band's songwriting chemistry. I hope he goes back to the band with as a stronger sense of his own vision, and acts like a bandleader for once.
Last week I went to the record store, as I'd been planning to since it was announced a few months ago, to pick up Thurston Moore's Trees Outside The Academy. But I had no idea until reading earlier that day that another solo album by probably the frontman of the other most important band in my life circa age 13 was also coming out. So I picked Music For The Motion Picture Into The Wild up on much more of a whim, not really having any idea what it would be like, other than that it was the soundtrack to some movie directed by Sean Penn that I'd barely even heard of either. I probably could've stood to wait and done a little more research before buying it, though, since I might've realized that I could've gotten four (!) bonus tracks if I'd bought it on iTunes.
Eddie Vedder hasn't done a whole lot outside of Pearl Jam that's been particularly memorable in the past, including his contributions to other Sean Penn soundtracks and the solo sets he sometimes has opened for the band with. He's always seemed more like a guy that benefitted from talented bandmates and his solid chemistry with them than someone who'd have made good records under any circumstances. And he only played guitar on a total of two songs on the first two Pearl Jam albums, before gradually taking on a bigger role beyond vocals on later records. When he did do solo tracks on PJ albums, it was goofy joke songs like "Bugs" and "Soon Forget." And that's what makes the modest but enjoyable Into The Wild all the more impressive.
Vedder wrote and played pretty much everything on the album, except for two songs that were written by other people and feature backing vocals. It's mostly acoustic guitar, with a little organ and what sounds like either a mandolin or the ukelele from "Soon Forget" put to much better use on my favorite song on the album, "Rise." But when Vedder accompanies himself on drums, he's pretty good, which I guess shouldn't be surprising since he did play drums in Hovercraft. One of the covers, "Hard Sun," features his best percussion performance on the album along with some great backup vox from Corin Tucker, whose voice I've always really liked despite never being particularly into Sleater-Kinney.
At nine songs in 33 minutes (2 minutes of which are silence before a hidden track), it's a deliberately minor record, made by a guy who clearly has no intention of leaving his day job any time soon. But it's a pretty nice palette cleanser and affirmation of his talent, after last year's Pearl Jam, an album that got mostly positive reviews and even some "return to form" hype despite being, to my ears, by far the worst record the band's ever done. I also got the impression, from some of the interviews Vedder gave for that album, that the album was the result their democratic to a fault approach, letting everyone contribute to the songwriting with perhaps noone taking the lead.
Most of the songs on Into The Wild seem to have been written from the perspective of the film's protagonist, a young guy who decides to abandon society and go live in the wilderness of Alaska, where he eventually dies. But the songs don't really need that kind of context to work, since themes of self-reliance and loneliness and naturalism are pretty much consistent themes of Eddie Vedder's songs and these are the kind of lyrics he'd probably write without the movie to draw inspiration from. But maybe this is the kind of solitary songwriting exercise he needed to recharge his batteries after the last few Pearl Jam albums have suffered diminishing returns of the band's songwriting chemistry. I hope he goes back to the band with as a stronger sense of his own vision, and acts like a bandleader for once.
This entry was posted
on Friday, September 28, 2007 at 7:04 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Mr. Emily : 8:54 PM