0149. Pearl Jam
Ten
I got to admit that when this album blew up I totally missed it. It took about three months from when I first heard Alive before I got swept away (possibly when I started to listen to the lyrics).
Ten, an album named after a basketball player's jersey (coincidentally the basketball player who gave the band their previous name: The Mookie Blaylocks).
The music's mainly written by Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, and is intense and melodic grunge rock with fantastic hooks. The one track that's written by Eddie Vedder though, Porch, has a whole other friction to it - like a skin graft on a burn victim (too graphic, I know).
The theme of Ten is the darkness of life, dealing with topics ranging from abuse and other social problems to fantasies of murder. And even though Pearl Jam themselves think Ten's overproduced with too much reverb, I say Ten is a GotToGet and probably one of the top fifteen releases of all time. Love it!
