“I really feel like Adele,” grins Eddie Vedder, giddily consuming within the huge crowd earlier than him. He may typically have worn his stardom with unease, however the Pearl Jam frontman clearly loves his individuals, and may make even a large-scale an occasion as this really feel by some means intimate.
Tonight’s slate of underground rock luminaries all show adept at translating their once-cultish sounds to the large open areas. With little between-song banter, Pixies are taut just like the Ramones, a twisted pop juggernaut of swooning surf ballads, abrasive punk, simmering perversion and tunes about incest. As soon as a martyr to debilitating stage fright, Cat Energy’s Chan Marshall is magnificent this night. Her band chugging suavely, just like the Velvets in the event that they’d been raised in Memphis, the hypnotic likes of Cross Bones Fashion are elemental and soulful.
However the grand-scale environs really appear to be house to Pearl Jam. Inexperienced Day and the Purple Sizzling Chili Peppers – fellow alt-rock figureheads who’ve equally ascended to big-ticket heritage act standing – have additionally headlined big-production open-air reveals in London this summer time, however grunge’s Final Males Standing eschew the fireworks and the flash, relying as an alternative upon substance: enduring anthems, stirring rockouts, and the everyman heat of Vedder.
Vedder’s lyrics really alchemise Pearl Jam’s fusion of traditional rock heroics and punk dynamics. Their earnestness was used as a stick with beat the band with early on, however tonight they make resonant poetry of a kid’s battle with studying difficulties with a hovering Daughter, rewrite prescient anti-white supremacy screed WMA as a pro-choice anthem, and shut out the apocalyptic visions of Shut Escape with some Johnny Rotten-worthy howls of “No future for you”.
Vedder means it, man, however it’s how he means it that issues – devoted to a British fan who died within the weeks earlier than the present, Mild Years is however one peak, its slow-burning meditation on grief constructed for stadiums. Borne aloft by sagacious, electrifying riffs and Mike McCready’s seemingly inexhaustible stash of fiery solos, Pearl Jam’s transition from insurgents to establishment hasn’t come at the price of their subversiveness, or their potential to conjure new thrills from traditional rock’s carcass. Lengthy might they run.
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