Pearl Jam's Greatest Album (Ten)

I didn't rank them.  I'm just passing the word on from Charles Peelle's Examiner posts.  Go check 'em out.  Harrass him.  It's good fun.

The packaging has been damned. The glossy late-80's carry-over production has been bashed. The songwriting's tendency toward anthems has been mocked. Regardless, Pearl Jam's debut album remains its finest LP and the greatest album of the last two musical generations. Tenshines, taking a basic band philosophy, simple instrumentation and fundamental rock and roll song styles and transforming it all into something intense and magical. Last week I ranked the rest of my top 5 Pearl Jam albums and consider all of them masterful classics, but no collection of songs the band has produced has reached the heights of this record. Knowing that these guys had been in previous bands but had never seen any success even approaching the vicinity of what the record would result in makes listening to Ten akin to watching someone catch lightning in a bottle, not once, twice or even three times, but instead 11 times over. With a huge sound, heavy intensity and something indefinable that has carried the band from its infancy to its now mellowing middle age, Ten built the foundation upon which Pearl Jam was based, but managed to help form the house's walls, ceiling and roof, decorate and furnish its rooms and even be the smoke puffing out of its warm fireplace. Emotional, raw, powerful, majestic, anthemic, soaring, spiritual, cathartic, therapeutic and loud, Ten is Pearl Jam's most passionate and greatest album.

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