All Night
The song is a wave, rising and falling, and we’re along for the ride before falling into its gorgeous harmonic foam. It’s a warm embrace as you enter the party.
Deep
This careening, ominous first-album classic about addiction encapsulates the passionate intensity that drew fans in beyond “Alive” and “Even Flow”. Nobody knew what it was about, but it was powerful, it felt dangerous, and the crisp clarity of the vocal pulled you into the feeling, despite whatever the hell Eddie was saying.
Garden
Another mystifying first-album rocker, the song is built on a quickly-plucked arpeggio riff that served as a melodramatic bed for Vedder’s defiant declarations of resistance. A bridge between the late-eighties power ballads and grunge’s dour melancholia, the song builds to a hypnotically captivating, high-velocity fit of finality.
Bu$hleager
A scathing takedown of George W. Bush and the proud-greed elite entitlement he represented, “Bushleager” is politically polarizing – but that’s not what makes it so good. The delicate menace is a delicious poison, a reminder of the sleight of hand we’re suckered into each election cycle. With our hope for change hitting new highs with the pendulum moving back to the left, and the resulting catastrophic disappointment at the continuation of countless Bush policies, the lyrics ring as true as ever in 2013. “I remember when you sang that song about today / Now it’s tomorrow and everything has changed”. Ament’s creep-swing bassline guides us through as Vedder whisper-chants “blackout weaves its way through the city…”
Can’t Keep
This opener to Riot Act was an immediate indicator that the band were headed into more confident, soulful waters. Originally familiarized through Vedder’s solo acoustic/ukulele shows prior to the album’s 2002 release, the track was stripped to bare bones again for his 2012 solo release Ukulele Songs. Given the full band treatment here, the song possesses a more robust, confident atmosphere than the quiet determination of the original version – and just happens to kick ass.
Porch
An urgency of passion drives this classic ride with half gritted teeth, half heartpouring sentimentality in a roaring tide. It’s not an angry song, despite the gnashing – it’s desperate, a realization that all may be lost and a declaration of intent to seize the moment.
Love Boat Captain
Tucked away in this ode to true love’s devotion is a tribute to the nine fans who lost their lives during a rainy push to the front of a PJ show during the 2000 Roskilde festival in Denmark. The line “Love is all you need… all you need is love” is easy to dismiss at face value – after all, it takes a hell of a lot more than love to bring two worlds together in a permanent way. But perhaps love as a verb is the reference here, real love being the catalyst by which we allow change/growth. And maybe in the end that is all you need, because of what it enables when it matters most.
Insignificance
A sharpening of PJ’s protest-song blade arrives with “Insignificance,” stumbling beat shifts frame a sardonic sendoff from a town getting obliterated by bombs. As we’re further convinced of the need to dismiss our Constitutional rights, as we adapt to the sight of militarized local police, criminalized whistleblowers and top-level legislative insanity establishing a full-fledged corporatocracy in America that does not represent the interests of the people, a song like this takes on a new, poignant depth. When the word “freedom” is an utterly hollow political rallying card, a cheap applause-bait device for speeches and televisions, a line like “It’s instilled to wanna live” hits home with a revitalized level of power.
Lukin
It’s not hard to understand why this one was originally called “100 Pacer” – this rapidfire semi-autobiographical tale of Vedder’s encounter with a stalker centers on a personal sanctuary – namely the home of Matt Lukin, bassist of Mudhoney and the Melvins.
Immortality
Vitalogy’s purgatorial third single isn’t about Kurt Cobain’s death, as was widely rumored. A somber synopsis of loneliness in a crowded place through a page torn out of Neil Young’s songbook, the track portrays an inability to escape the confines preventing relief, release. “Some die just to live…”
Indifference
A nearly catatonic pre-dawn meditation, the determination in the narrative is undercut by the existential dilemma: “How much difference does it make?” Live in concert, it’s a haunting, poignant singalong. At home with headphones it’s a sledgehammer to the chest.
All photos: Johnny Firecloud
