Vs. (studio album) by Pearl Jam

A triumphant record like Ten must have felt impossible to follow, so Pearl Jam decided to go in the opposite direction and make a dirtier-sounding, dryer record, as a way to dismiss the commercial appeal of their debut, which comprised of reverberating, huge anthems. Their sound also changed significantly when they hired drummer Dave Abbruzzese, with his more aggressive approach and style. This resulted in the band’s angriest album to date, and an album that is, in many ways, as essential as the first, featuring some of their most beloved songs, including the country rock classic Daughter, Dissident, Rearviewmirror, the anthemic Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, and the closer Indifference.

Ten is an epic debut, but Vs. is arguably just as great, and far more eclectic. Whereas Ten swung for the stadiums with great big anthems, Vs. is a radically diverse record, equally suitable for mosh pits (Go, Animal, Blood) car stereos (Dissident, Rearviewmirror) and campfires (Daughter, Elderly Woman.) A desert island album from a great band.

My favorite of their studio albums. Reasons being it has the most constant high caliber of songs with the least amount of filler. The better songs standing strong but most are not dating well.

Took me a while to get into 10 and this isn't one of my go-to type of albums. Only hearing this in Oct 2022 and I found it to be okay without really drawing me in - rearviewmirror if my favourite, although there is nothing particularly bad on the album, for me apart from rearviewmirror there is nothing really calling me back - although I will revisit as some albums take a while to spark for me.

This is slightly different to their debut but there is still loads to love on this record and it is an under rated follow up. It is very tough to follow an album as good as Ten is and you can see they struggled a little to figure out which way they wanted to take the music. Once the record gets started though we are kicked right into a storm with 2 extremely energetic tracks which are possibly my favourite on the record. This really gives us an idea of what the rest of the album is going to be like and they follow this pattern, to a varying degree of success, on the rest of the tracks. It can be a bit up and down in spells but when the group get going they really create some powerful and enjoyable songs. Songs like Daughter and Rearviewmirror are prime examples of this and are very catchy. It does drag on a little too long for me however and it is let down by some filler cuts. Overall, this flies a little under the radar of some listeners due to the quality of Ten even though it deserves a lot of praise and is a very strong follow up.

From Jboy56 03/29/2022 14:06

PJ is my favorite band of the era and this album is good, but I really miss the great guitar solos from Ten.

Superb. Ten was a tough act to follow but this album does a pretty good job of it. There are even times where I consider them on a par with each other which is high praise indeed. Very consistent album. My favourites are Rearviewmirror, Rats, WMA and Go. Some great ballads on here like Elderly Woman and Daughter.

From VictorVale 04/10/2021 15:43

Pearl Jam estava com tudo nesse período! Imensa força criativa e autêntica!

From llibnanoon 06/22/2020 18:25

Average Track Rating = 86.70

From llibnanoon 06/10/2020 17:00

Love this album!