Every Pearl Jam Album Ranked Worst to Best

Around 30 years ago, Seattle band Citizen Dick fired lead singer Matt Dillon and replaced him with a moody surfer who was almost as handsome and could actually sing. After their debut album went bugfuck up the charts, the band now known as Pearl Jam took a baffling but crucial step back from the spotlight. They fought Ticketmaster, refused to make videos, and released songs that wouldn’t sound out of place around a campfire. With 11 albums under their belts, they’ve outlived most of their peers and carefully cultivated a rabid fanbase who hopefully don’t look up the addresses of lowly album rankers.

11. No Code (1996)

Pearl Jam has a tendency to open their live shows with a softer song, which is a terrible thing to do. Even worse is to open a rock album with a song like “Sometimes,” a melancholy ode to some times. By the time “Hail, Hail” gets the party started you’ve probably gone home, and the record doesn’t ever bother to invite you back.

Play it again: “Hail, Hail”
Skip it: “I’m Open”

10. Gigaton (2020)

“Gigaton” is a Pearl Jam album the same way that Papa John’s is pizza – it technically is, but it sure as goddamn hell is not. Maybe that’s not fair, maybe having “Even Flow” floating in your head for most of your life causes a bias. You can’t fault them for seeming a little more somber in 2020, and Eddie Vedder sounds less like an Adam Sandler character than ever, but it would be easier to fuck to “Wind Beneath My Wings” than anything here.

Play it again: “Quick Escape”
Skip it: “Buckle Up”

9. Binaural (2000)

There’s a running gag in “This is Spinal Tap” where the band just keeps losing drummers, which was reportedly based on Pearl Jam’s real-life percussionist problems. Their fifth and apparently still-functioning drummer joined in 1998, and he’s a dead ringer for Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron. Shame that his first album with the band isn’t a dead ringer for “Badmotorfinger.”

Play it again: “Grievance”
Skip it: “Thin Air”

8. Lightning Bolt (2013)

There are many awesome things going on at this very moment within the cells of your body. The nucleus is protecting your personal DNA info, lysosomes are repairing and digesting, ribosomes are making proteins. None of this would be possible without an energy source – the mitochondria that contain, pound-for-pound, the same amount of energy as a bolt of lightning! There’s also a lot of goopy cytoplasm sitting around doing fucking nothing.

Play it again: “Mind Your Manners”
Skip it: “Let the Records Play”

7. Self-Titled (2006)

If you’re going to make a visual statement, your instinct is to go big. Lead single “Life Wasted” marks the return of Pearl Jam to the MTV world, and the resulting video is grosser than Tool’s old stop-motion disgustoramas. Seeing the band’s dismembered heads covered in ants or invaded by snakes or consumed in flames is much easier to take if you pretend they’re all human traffickers or terrorists or your landlord.

Play it again: “Comatose”
Skip it: “Gone”

6. Riot Act (2002)

Pearl Jam have reacted to loss and tragedy admirably, and they’ve had to face more than their fair share. The bursts of anger and love are welcome and appreciated, but these are five men at their sexual peak – they shouldn’t be lamenting or wailing, they should be singing about love in elevators and shaking someone all night long. In a perfect world, Pearl Jam would fucking suck.

Play it again: “Save You”
Skip it: “½ Full”

5. Backspacer (2009)

Post-Bush and pre-joyless hellhole full of Nazis, this could be the happiest Pearl Jam has ever sounded. Of course, there’s got to be a line in A.A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood stories which is the happiest Eeyore ever sounded. Framed that way, happiness doesn’t really mean anything, does it? Let’s just enjoy the brief burst of sun as PJ fully let out their inner Who for the first time.

Play it again: “The Fixer”
Skip it: “Just Breathe”

4. Ten (1991)

If you attended a public high school in 1992, you remember the unspoken but highly enforced rule that at least 30% of the student body must be wearing the Pearl Jam “Alive” t-shirt at all times. This particular album isn’t really what Pearl Jam sound like, and shows off hardly any of the range that will become a signature – those aren’t surprising notes for a band in its infancy – what’s surprising are the songs, massive songs that moved the earth.

Play it again: “Once”
Skip it: “Why Go”

3. Vs. (1993)

Funny how the untold number of Pearl Jam imitators always seemed to stop at “Ten.”
They would put on an affected baritone honk, throw it over a multi-pedaled riff and try to sound angry and sad at the same time, album after album. “Vs.” came out before any of them and negated them with such finality that the government should have to send us checks for ever hearing them. Those bands never tried to make an album like this, their one trick was lifting from the first one. They don’t compare.

Play it again: “Rearview Mirror”
Skip it: “Indifference”

2. Vitalogy (1994)

This is the band firing on all cylinders, and the fact that the cylinders are misshapen, rusted, cracking – that just makes it better, man. You won’t find better loud Pearl Jam than “Spin the Black Circle” or better quiet Pearl Jam than “Nothingman.” Producer Brendan O’Brien, who has spent more time with the band than most of their drummers, says that recording “Vitalogy” was tense. If tense sessions deliver albums like this, we urge each member of Pearl Jam to drop what they’re doing and start texting each others’ wives.

Play it again: “Spin the Black Circle”
Skip it: “Bugs”

1. Yield (1998)

Stock and stone, blood and bone. If “Vitalogy” was made of firing cylinders, what we have here is made of the very mountains and gorges from which the metal was mined. “Yield” is a physical experience, like a triathlon, only it’s better to start this with two drinks or an edible inside you. It also makes you feel like there’s a villain to defeat at the end. Maybe triathlons should end with mortal combat, to really separate the strong from the weak. It’s evolution, baby.

Play it again: “Do the Evolution”
Skip it: “The Color Red”