“Too quick to keep up”: The album Eddie Vedder struggled to record
Any band getting together to make a record needs to be on the same page for those few months in the studio. Every song might not need to be a masterpiece once they are finished, but if everyone has the same goals in mind and are geared towards making the best that they can at the time, it’s usually going to result in something that is at the very least competent. But that normally involves everyone being in sync with each other, and Eddie Vedder was never afraid to admit when he felt he was out of step with the rest of the group.
But by the mid-1990s, Pearl Jam had unofficially become Vedder’s band. The group’s core ethos may have been Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament in its early days, but the minute Vedder started singing in that thick baritone voice on Ten, everyone realised that they had a new superstar out front with the right amount of charisma to get them to the big time.
In fact, maybe he had a little too much charisma. The brooding character that Vedder came off as onstage may have been fun, but it seemed either too disingenuous for grunge purists or too irresistible for women wanting his poster in their rooms. Vedder didn’t want that kind of attention, and listening through albums like Vitalogy and No Code, it feels like the band are being kept at a distance in many respects.
Both albums have shining moments, but when listening to obscure tracks like ‘Bugs’ or ‘I’m Open’, Vedder seemed more concerned with making his lyrics as impersonal as possible. When someone sheds their superstar skin for that long, though, there comes a point when they start to realise why they got into music in the first place, and Yield was the first time they sounded like themselves again.
Aside from a few moments that flirted with art rock like ‘Push Me Pull Me’, the band had come through with their most solid run of tracks since Vs, with almost half the album being made up of the most radio-friendly material of their career, whether that’s Vedder’s slowburner ‘Wishlist’ or the flagrant Zeppelin rip-off from Mike McCready on the album’s first single, ‘Given to Fly’.
Although Vedder had been the ringleader behind the band’s last few albums, he remembered this being one of the first times where he had take a back seat a lot of the time, saying, “Basically Yield was great because the music was coming too quick to keep up with it lyrically, and the words [the other band members wrote] have all been stuff that I’m proud and happy to sing.” But giving the rest of the band time to shine was far from a bad thing, looking at the tracks.
Some tunes had their artsy tendencies like ‘Pilate’, but Ament’s ‘Low Light’ is one of the most tender ballads of their career, and when Vedder does come to the forefront, his commentary is absolutely savage. His distaste for big business was alive and well, and ‘Do the Evolution’ is the kind of kiss-off song to the kind of person that comes along every generation, who has too much money to care for his fellow man and is determined to prove why he is the best species on planet Earth.
So while Ten, Vs, and even Vitalogy hold a special place in the hearts of Pearl Jam fans, Yield is always going to be one of their most consistently great albums. It was never trying to change the world, but by finding its lane and sticking in it, the band found a middle ground where they practically couldn’t go wrong.
