Pearl Jam's "2000 Mile Blues"

I'm not a fan of grunge but I've got a lot of respect for Pearl Jam. They're fans of the Who and Neil Young. They play a good kind of melodic hard rock but also have experience with high quality ballads which is a rare thing ;-) They're evolving, they don't have two same or even similar albums: each one is a step in another direction. The first live show I attended was by Pearl Jam and I loved it. They are indeed a great live band! And they know a little blues, too.

For PJ fans, their best release is the debut album called "Ten". Indeed a lot of their greatest hits come from that one. I like it. The reason I'm writing this post is simple, really: I was skiing in Austria whole last week with "Ten" in my ears and I broke a couple of speed records :)


Of "Ten", I like "Even Flow", that's surely a nice riff. And "Alive", it's probably their best song, I don't care much for the solo, though. "Black" and "Release" are great ballads and "Jeremy" is a moving story about a boy who shot himself in the classroom. The rest of the album is too hard for my liking, but I can listen to it once in a while.

I have downloaded just released extended version of the album. On second CD there are remixed versions of all album tracks and a couple of bonus tracks. "Breath And A Scream" is a great mid-tempo tune I listened to ten times in a row. Eddie Vedder's singing is adorable, really, and though the track is a little dark, it makes me feel good :-)


Another one I need to note here is "2000 Mile Blues"... It really is a blues song. A long way to go so it's understandable ;-) It's the dirtiest, ragged kind of blues I have heard in a long time. Slow, angry and loud. Fantastic guitar interplay (most of the time it takes two guitars to make a great track!). I tried to think about a bluesman who played that way... I still have no idea. Wasted Hubert Sumlin at five o'clock in the morning, maybe. Yeah, it was a compliment.

Another Pearl Jam tune I could easily recommend to fellow blues fans is "Come Back" from their self-titled album released in 2006.