Music

At the risk of sounding crass, I’d venture that the warning signs of Neil Young’s recent brain aneuryism were there back in 1995, when he hooked up with Eddie ‘I’m not your fucking messiah’ Vedder and co for their ‘Mirrorball’ LP. No marks for guessing what Vedder had in mind, but what the hell was the king of gloriously ragged guitar rock thinking?

In 2006, Pearl Jam could surely do with another leg up the credibility ladder. The self-titling of their eighth studio LP suggests that they’re not hugely confident of their current status and indeed, you wonder who the hell might still give a toss but, 15 years on, here they are again.

Track titles such as ‘Life Wasted’, ‘Comatose’ and (snigger) ‘Unemployable’ are rather asking for trouble, but it’s their clodhopping, over-earnest idea of what constitutes grit and gristle in ‘real rock’ that makes Pearl Jam so tiresome. Their grunge lite of yore has been replaced with a low-grade aggregate of U2, Foo Fighters and yes, Neil Young – anything likely to fill a stadium, it seems.

‘Army Reserve’ (Vedder hasn’t trashed his political drum) positions the singer as a Peter Frampton for the noughties, but it’s the ghastly, faux rootsy C&W strains of ‘Come Back’ – a honking blend of U2 and latter-day Van Morrison – that take the banal biscuit. ‘Pearl Jam’ will likely sell by the shedload. Sigh.