"Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs: Rarities And B-Sides"

Way back in the early '90s, when grunge was just getting underway thanks to the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, I somehow found myself (being of the pubescent age at which angst becomes very appealing) listening to Pearl Jam. I stuck with the band through their third album, Vitalogy, and then lost interest, receeding into rock and roll history and listening to almost exclusively classic rock for the next several years.

Thus it was with a hint of apprehension and a dose of anticipation that I picked up the odds-and-sods collection Lost Dogs yesterday. I knew there would be at least two songs on there I'd like--the incongruous "Last Kiss," an oldies tune the band covered on a whim, and the elegant, emotive "Yellow Ledbetter," arguably one of the coolest songs ever made up on the fly.

To say that I was pleasantly surprised with the rest of the collection would be a gross understatement. Lost Dogs gathers together the best of Pearl Jam's non-album material and presents it in one exceptional package. Over the course of about thirty songs, the listener discovers just how diverse and yet consistant Pearl Jam's music has been over the past almost decade and a half.

There is no thematic or stylistic division between the two discs, though the first disc seems to contain most of the straight-ahead grunge rockers. The songs on the first disc to tend to rock harder and heavier, but this is not uniformly the case. There's not a bad song on the first disc, and tunes such as the aforementioned "Yellow Ledbetter" (which closes the first disc) are a testament to the power this band possesses. The first disc does contain one of the most unusual songs in the band's body of work, the surfer song "Gremmie Out of Control" (complete with a traditional surfer guitar solo courtesy of Brendan O'Brian).

The real gem is the second disc, though, which seems to contain the more adventuresome and tuneful songs the band recorded. Acoustic guitars are more prominent, Eddie Vedder spends more time singing and crooning than screaming, and the melodicism and songcraft that is inherent in Pearl Jam's songs comes to the forefront. Unlike their contemporaries (such as Nirvana), Pearl Jam seemed to realize from the start that there were other ways to use a guitar than just cranking the gain up to 10 and playing as hard and fast as possible. Vedder also proves himself to be a varied and effective vocalist, working in more emotions than just angst and anger. The second disc is full of highlights, including "Footsteps," "Drifting," the amusing and wry "Sweet Lew," and the downright absurd "Dirty Frank" (which proves that Pearl Jam really does have a sense of humor).

It's really a shame that so many of these songs were relegated to b-sides and fan club releases. Lost Dogs proves that Pearl Jam's non-album material is equal to anything they released on an LP, and probably better than 90% of the stuff most bands release as their LP material. This collection is a must for anyone who likes modern rock and remembers when it was played by real bands instead of Creed and dozens of other post-grunge clones.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Pearl Jam, "Gremmie Out of Control"