Backseat Critic II: Review of Pearl Jam's "Get it Back"

Pearl Jam's newest release "Get it Back"

By now it sounds cliche, but 2020 has been an enigma of a year. 

March feels as if it was both a lifetime ago and like it was just yesterday. A paradox of time and the epitome of how fast life seems to fly by, thanks in large part to the digital and social media landscape surrounding us. 

Pearl Jam, the last group standing from the heyday of grunge in the early to mid 90s, has seen this before. 

Well, not a global pandemic, but the band has experienced rapid change, from the overnight explosion of grunge music and their own success just short of 30 years ago, to the explosion of the internet, to the near-collapse of the music industry. They’ve weathered it all.  

Back in March, Pearl Jam was ramping up its efforts for the release of Gigaton, the band’s first album in seven years. Singles for the upcoming album such as “Dance of the Clairvoyants” and “Superblood Wolfmoon” were mainstays on my playlist at the time, thundering through my car speakers and my headphones daily. 

Growing up in a post-grunge era, I had idealized the group due to their angelic mix of classic-rock style guitar licks and their now-parodied grunge sound. 

The band’s earlier concerts looked wild. Singer Eddie Vedder’s energy and voice are truly unmatched even by the standards of Nirvana and the classic rock groups that came before.

I was supposed to see Pearl Jam live in concert in April. Obviously, this didn’t happen.  

Apparently no one told Pearl Jam that the world came to a screeching halt in 2020, or at least that’s what you’d initially think based on the energy of the group's new song “Get it Back.”  

“Get it Back” was released as part of a compilation album on Bandcamp titled Good Music To AdVert The Collapse Of American Democracy, Volume 2 and was only available to purchase for a limited time - shout out to YouTube recommendations. 

The song begins with clean guitar and relatively tame singing from Vedder. My primary thoughts upon my first listen was that the song is easy to listen to, melodic, but quite frankly nothing special. 

By the end of the song I was converted. The roaring electric guitar comes in at about the second chorus and upon listening the first time it struck me like a bus fueled by an engine of distorted power chords and wheels turning with every crashing cymbal. 

The song’s sound is reminiscent of songs from the now-classic album Ten - building momentum throughout towards a fiery release of Vedder-energy and distorted soloing guitar.

The blazing energy and fury of the song’s second-half is a musical rendition of what many of us have been feeling throughout the year - anger. 

Pearl Jam is no doubt angry that the North American tour to accompany its new album was canceled, working class citizens are angry that they are unemployed, and those who have lost loved ones are angry that COVID strikes without regard to how much life an individual had left to live or how much joy they still had to offer the world. 

Upon closer examination, the song’s lyrics paint a much more depressing picture when taken at face value without the energy of the song to back them up, but it is this eventual combination of writing and music that produces a unique quality reminiscent of songs like “Jeremy” or “Alive.” 

If anything, the lyrics are some of the most timely and relatable the band has ever produced. The phrases “Lost and alone,” “Frozen in time,” and “All used up/I’d give anything to talk to you” conjure a feeling we can all relate to, and that feeling is that navigating 2020 has been like treading water looking for something to hold onto so you don’t drown.

At face value, the lyrics (and the pandemic) make us want to put our proverbial ostrich head in the sand and hide until things mellow out; however, what happens when there is no end in sight? What happens when lives have been lost, politics are in disarray and many jobs aren’t coming back even after a vaccine is produced? 

People harden. They become angry out of necessity to move forward, forging their own livelihood against the will of the forces of nature. 

That’s the type of energy “Get it Back” exudes - the type of energy that can no longer be tamed by the contexts of one’s own head and the type that is only produced when anxiety turns into madness. It must be released. 

Pearl Jam condensed seven months of attempted patience, resilience and frustration into a four minute ballad. It’s the quintessential song of 2020 and ripe with the emotional fluctuations that this roller coaster of a year has dragged us into.  

Eddie Vedder and company have experienced trials and tribulations. In the 90s, the group was labeled as sellouts by music critics even as they boycotted Ticketmaster and refused to interact with the press, whenever possible, to the disappointment of music industry execs to who how much money stood to be made from capitalizing on the group’s success. 

When their record label was begging Pearl Jam to change and create music videos to become commercially viable, they stayed the course and didn’t falter. They dug their heels in and came out the other side when so many others were propelled to the burning glory of fame and subsequently trickled out into darkness. 

They’ve weathered the ups and downs of a shifting industry, and ageing fan base, and, to put it simply, have fared far better than their grunge counterparts Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. 

Adapting to change is necessary for survival, but so is staying true to oneself and believing in our own ability to overcome adversity. This is the story of Pearl Jam’s existence, and one that we could all learn from during these trying times.