Album Reviews

22 Years after “Ten, Pearl Jam has released their tenth album, “Lightning Bolt”. If you’re looking for innovation, feel free to pass up on this one. But if you were hoping for a solid rock album, these Seattle natives are aiming to please.

“Getaway”, “Mind Your Manners” and “My Father’s Son” are fired off in quick succession and come with the kind of sparkling riffs that you wouldn’t automatically expect from a band that has been around this long. They slow things down with “Sirens”, the quirky “Infallible” or the moody “Pendulum”. And like on so many other Pearl Jam albums, there is that one song that you consider filler at first but which digs its claws in a little deeper every single time you hear it. This time around that song is called “Let The Records Play” and it can be found a little before the melancholy closer that is “Future Days”.

You can pretty much tell what a new Pearl Jam will sound like before you’ve even started listening to it but it’s still pretty amazing to see how they manage to come up with a batch of new songs this good every single time.