Pearl Jam’s 10 Studio Albums Ranked From Top to Bottom
By: Rafie Simantov
Tags: Grunge, Music, Pearl Jam, Rock, Top 10

CREDIT: Danny Clinch

Anyone who was listening to music in the early and mid 90’s should know who Pearl Jam is. As one of the pioneers of the grunge revolution, their music helped change the way we perceive rock and roll music to this day. Many younger musicians name Pearl Jam as one of their biggest influences. Maroon 5’s Adam Levine even offered to quit his band just in case Pearl Jam needed a replacement drummer while drummer Matt Cameron was touring with Soundgarden in 2012!

The band, made up of core members Eddie Vedder on vocals, bassist Jeff Ament, lead guitarist Mike McCready, rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard and 5 different drummers throughout the years have added the Hawaiian organ player, Boom Gasper, to their live shows since 2003. When on stage together, these six men give one of the most memorable live shows you can find today.

With nearly 30 years as a band, Pearl Jam have put out hundreds of live albums, 10 official studio albums, a 2 CD B-sides compilation album and much more music. Add to that their induction into the rock and roll hall of fame in 2017 and you have one of the most prolific bands in rock music history.

Their 11th studio album (and first in over 6 years), Gigaton, is scheduled to come out on March 27th. Pearl Jam fans are a crazy breed and can go on for hours debating which album is their best. Don’t even get me started on the endless debate over which drummer was the best (Jack Irons FTW)! While there is no such thing as a bad Pearl Jam album, I thought that this would be a good time to rank Pearl Jam’s current 10 studio albums from top to bottom, as seen by this author:

10) Pearl Jam (Avocado) (2006)

This self titled album is known better as “Avocado” due to the album’s cover art. Recorded during the pinnacle of the United States military involvement in the Middle East, the album has a highly political feel to it. Pearl Jam, who have never kept quite regarding their political beliefs, hold no punches on their criticism of the Bush administration’s policies. “World Wide Suicide”, “Marker in the Sand” and “Army Reserve” all describe the hardships of the soldiers and their families, while “Unemployable” and “Gone” critique the economic recession of the time. The album closes with 2 of its stronger tracks: “Come Back”, Vedders lamentation to friends and family who have passed and “Inside Job”, an uplifting message of resilience and faith.

A highlight of this album came out of the Italian tour promoting it. These shows were documented by photographer and film maker Danny Clinch who created the film “Immagine in Cornice”, a DVD released by the band in September 2007.

9) Backspacer (2009)

The shortest of all Pearl Jam albums clocks in at under 37 minutes. This album by far gets the most hate amongst the hard core Pearl Jam fans. The tone of Backspacer is a complete opposite to the bands previous 2 albums (Riot Act and Pearl Jam). Those albums, written during George W. Bush’s presidency were highly political and pessimistic. By comparison to them, Backspacer is all optimism riding the high of Barack Obama’s election a year earlier as the president of the United States. This attitude is most upfront in the first single, the upbeat “The Fixer”. The song’s lyrics describe one man’s ability to fix pretty much everything wrong in the world.

Despite being the first Pearl Jam album to reach number one in the United States since 1996’s No Code, the album does not stand the test of time. There are only 2 stand out tracks on the album: the instant classic “Untought Known” and the touching love song “Just Breathe”. These 2 songs are the only ones off the album to still be regularly played at live shows.

8) Lightning Bolt (2013)

Pearl Jam’s latest (for now) album displays a much more mature band. Lyrics on this album touch on aging (“Future Days”) and mortality (“Pendulum”) with the requisite political statements (“Infallible”). Considered a solid rock album, Lightning Bolt has given us some modern anthems with a message: The hard edge quick tempo of “Mind your Manners” openly criticizes the church and organized religion in general. “Let the Records Play” is a love song dedicated to vinyl.

The 2 stand out tracks on the album are without a doubt “Lightning Bolt” and “Sirens”. “Lightning Bolt” has quickly become a fan favorite at live shows erupting in crowd sing-alongs. “Sirens” has the Pearl Jam fan base divided between those who love the song and those who hate it. Despite that fact, Sirens has turned into an epic live song with the band regularly giving it an extended outro sing-along.

It is worth noting that the album won a Grammy award for the band in 2015 (Only their second ever) for “Best Recording Package”.

7) Binaural (2000)

Don’t shoot me! Binaural is the first album to have Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron on the drum kit. Many fans consider it to be one of the bands top 3 albums for that fact alone. Named for the method in which the album was recorded, Binaural has a unique sound amongst the Pearl Jam catalogue. The band went through some difficult times while recording the album: Singer Eddie Vedder was dealing with writers block and guitarist Mike McCready entered rehab for addiction, all while the band changed drummers for the fifth (and last) time.

Despite the hardships, Binaural gave us some amazing tracks, such as the Jeff Ament penned “Nothing as it Seems”, featuring one of McCready’s most epic guitar solos. But even more amazing are the tracks that got left off the album: “Sad” and “Fatal” are 2 of Pearl Jam’s most touching songs but would only be released 3 years later on the B-Side compilation “Lost Dogs”. The subsequent tour for the “Binaural” album was also marked by the bands decision to professionally record and release every live show (72 in total during 2000–2001). In addition, at the end of the Binaural tour, the band released a DVD named “Touring Band 2000” containing 28 live performances from the North American legs of the tour.

6) Vitalogy (1994)

This is where things started getting weird. From the unique packaging of the album to strange 8 minute tracks with no actual music (“Hey Foxymophandlemama, That’s Me”), Vitalogy forced listeners to redefine their expectations on what rock music could be. Hell, the album was released on vinyl 2 weeks before its CD release! In addition to all that, the band, who were reaching the peak of their popularity, refused to tour using Ticketmaster venues in order to promote the album.

Despite all of these things, Vitalogy holds some of Pearl Jam’s best songs. “Spin the Black Circle” is the only Pearl Jam song to date to win a Grammy award, while “Corduroy” and “Betterman” have grown to monumental live sing-alongs at shows. You can’t help but admire an album with an accordion backed track about insects.

5) VS (1993)

Arguably one of the best sophmoric albums ever released by any band, VS had some big shoes to fill following Pearl Jam’s debut album “Ten”. With powerhouse drummer Dave Abbruzzese manning the drum kit, VS comes out kicking with its one-two punch of “Go” into “Animal”. Originally titled “5 Against 1”, VS was Pearl Jam’s response to suddenly becoming the poster boys of generation X. Songs like “Blood” and “Leash” broadcasted the bands contempt towards all the media attention that they received after their debut album.

A quarter of a century after being released, the social issues highlighted on the album are relevant as ever: sexual abuse (“Animal”), domestic violence (Daughter”), racism (“W.M.A.”), gun control (“Glorified G”). With their second album, the band showed the world that they were so much more than just a group of talented musicians.

4) Yield (1998)

The second and last album to feature drummer Jack Irons, Yield might be one of Pearl Jam’s “funnest” albums. The track “Faithful” gave a name to the league of fans that religiously follow the band on tours. “Given To Fly” is a highlight of any live show (Just watch the version from the 2000 Touring Band DVD. I dare you not to smile). “Do The Evolution” marked the bands return to music videos after 6 years of abstinence with an animated video critiquing mankind’s world domination.

The 1998 Yield tour is considered by many fans to be the bands best tour to date, documented by their first official live album, “Live on Two Legs”.

3) Riot act (2002)

Riot Act was released in arguably the bands most turbulent time (November 2002). They used this album to deal with 2 major historic events: 1) The Roskilde tragedy in which 9 fans were crushed to death during a live show in June 2000; 2) The election of George W. Bush as president of the U.S.A. and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. Vedder is at his lyrical best here being his own (and our) physiologist. Songs like “I Am Mine” and “Love Boat Captain” exhibit raw emotion and Vedder wearing his heart on his sleeve. Riot Act also has some of the bands most political songs ever. Most prominent is “Bu$hleaguer”, a jaw dropping anti-Bush hymn that had Bush supporters booing the band and walking out of live shows.

Although Riot Act has Vedder at his lyrical best, one of the most haunting tracks on the album is “Arc”. This track actually has no lyrics and is made up of a 9 track loop of Vedder moaning — a homage to the 9 casualties of the Roskilde tragedy of 2000.

2) No code (1996)

This is where Pearl Jam lost most of their “casual fans”. With former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons taking over drumming duties, No Code ventured out even further into new musical territory for the band. Irons unique drumming style is dominant on tracks such as “In My Tree” and “Who You Are”. Vedder displays his softer side on tracks like “Sometimes” and “Around the Bend”. They even let guitarist Stone Gossard take lead vocals on “Mankind”.

In general, No Code feels as if the band made a conscious decision to alienate themselves from fame and to throw all commercial expectations out the window. Despite this, in the 20+ years since the album came out, it has become a fan favorite. In October 2014 the band played the album front to back at a live show in Moline Illinois. This is considered by many hard core fans to be one of the best live shows of recent years. No Code is like a great wine: it gets better with age.

1) Ten (1991)

Pearl Jam’s debut album came out in August 1991. Although not an immediate hit, by the end of 1992 you could not escape hearing “Jeremy”, “Evenflow” or “Alive” at least once an hour on most rock radio stations. In addition to the radio play, the music video for “Jeremy” took over MTV, receiving 5 nominations for the 1993 Video Music Awards and winning 4, including “Video of the year” and “Best group video”. What might be the most amazing fact about this album is that one of its arguably best songs, “Black”, was not even released as a single! This album would become the benchmark for the band for the rest of their career and had the most commercial success, selling over 10 million copies.

Some of the bands best songs may have appeared on later albums, but no other album had as big of an impact as Ten.

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I am Rafie, a professional writer and educator. Check out my site at writingrs.com