SEEDLESS IN SEATTLE

MUSIC Pearl Jam

SECC, Glasgow

EDDIE Vedder would kill himself to be Kurt Cobain. That's the snide broadside which, for years, has seared Seattle's Pearl Jam, a band whose 1992 debut album Ten eclipsed Nirvana's Nevermind in terms of sales, but who have been constantly pilloried as pale imitators. They haven't played Scotland since those days and, tonight, they still have a lot to prove.

While principled professional whingers Radiohead get headlines for buying a tent to perform in, so avoiding summer festivals sponsored by global brands, Pearl Jam have been there, done that, and probably not bought the T-shirt. Anyone who would dismiss them as stage- managed corporate lackies should check out the spartan setting of this gig - bereft of MTV-sponsored video screens or backdrops by Bud.

On such a stark platform, it isn't until half a dozen songs in that the band really comes alive. Introducing Even Flow - a much- loved early single - with a shrugged "I guess this is one of the big ones" singer Vedder bounces around, bathed in golden light, while the crowd even sings the wooohs in the right places. It has that anthemic quality you really need to fill cavernous venues like this. Material from the new album Binaural gets an appreciative, if muted, response in comparison.

In a set comprising 20-odd songs there's something for every-one though, if just a few too many plodding ballads. Save for the obligatory axe solos, it's pin-up boy Vedder who remains the focal point, wailing while strumming a guitar or hunched over the microphone in a pose that screams: "My angst is eating at my very core, but hey, don'tcha think I'm lookin' pretty?"

In fact, Vedder is much more likable when he stops being so narcissistic and intense and lets his guard down between songs. "F*** you, I had laundry to do!" is offered as the reason why Pearl Jam haven't played Glasgow since a gig in the tiny Cathouse a whopping eight years ago, a likely story coming from an icon of the grime- loving grunge scene. Still, it gets a laugh and isn't the last one. Coming onstage for a solo encore, Vedder treats the audience to an amusing Mike Scott impression, citing the Waterboy's vocal style as an influence on Binaural's Soon Forget. Maybe so, but his song's acoustic ukelele-fest sounds more like George Formby tonight.

It's too easy to make digs like that about Pearl Jam. None of their peers have survived the death of grunge or the birth of younger upstarts such as Korn, but this not-so-merry band sold out the SECC within 48 hours. The audience is full of kids who would have been, well, 10 when Ten was released, and they bob their heads up and down throughout the two-hour set trying to catch a glimpse of Vedder. They're quite right to do so - who knows how many years it will be before we get the chance see this unfairly scorned outfit in Britain again?

Jane Gough

Copyright 2000
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