Into the mystic

Pearl Jam leap into a spiritual quest with their latest

by Ted Drozdowski

Odd that the voice of a man seemingly plagued by neurosis and doubt would be a balm for our times. But there's something undeniably soothing about Eddie Vedder's baritone -- no matter how disturbing or introspective his words. It's especially apparent in Pearl Jam's ballads, where Vedder's allowed to croon like a brooding Broadway star, working his circular melodies into a kind of hypnotic drone that has the capacity to move the band's songs into the realm of the spiritual. Yes, for a band who have, ostensibly, dealt in old-school heavy rock, Pearl Jam have a surprisingly New Age attitude; they're sensitive guys bearing clubs. If their message can't beguile its way into your heart, they're willing to soften that muscle with a few loud sonic blows to make it a little more susceptible.

Although they haven't laid those bludgeons down altogether on the new No Code (Epic; available in stores this Tuesday, August 27), Pearl Jam have taken a deeper spin into the realm of the spirit. Their new single, "Who You Are," bears the influence of Vedder's fascination with the Pakistani vocalist and musical spiritualist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Vedder began being cited at concerts by Khan and his party of singers, percussionists, and pump-organ players early in 1995, and that led to a collaboration between Eddie and Nusrat -- the song "The Face of Love" appeared on the soundtrack for Dead Man Walking (Columbia).

"Who You Are" sways to an Eastern beat; it rests on a small, percussive mountain, clapping and chiming beneath the roil of Vedder's chanted melody line. The lead guitar line picks out a simplified version of what in its home culture would most likely be a weaving musette or oud melody. The lyrics dabble inconclusively with faith, omniscience, knowledge of the spiritual world via knowledge of self -- the usual issues that float on the horizon of seekers. It's not pop or rock in any commonplace sense, which makes Pearl Jam's selection of the tune as a single laudatory. (Hell, please, anything that sounds different from Bush or No Doubt at this point is so welcome. Is alternative-rock radio flatter than hammered shit, or what?) And supremely evolutionary: when their debut, Ten, hit stores back in '91, the band sounded filtered through a prism lit by the auras of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. "Who You Are" doesn't jam with the speed, freedom, or melodic invention of Khan's own sound, but that's nitpicking. The goal here, besides making good music, is smashing cultural barriers and possibly opening up some listeners to more spiritual thought, or at least a little high-minded introspection. And too few people have done that since Marvin Gaye caught a bullet.

Mentioning Gaye and Pearl Jam as kindred spirits isn't such a stretch. Vedder seems so tightly wrapped he may never be capable of the naked expression that's the bedrock of African-American soul music, but Pearl Jam have evolved in five years into a kind of Anglified, postmodern soul group. Vedder's voice sometimes approaches the gravity of a James Carr; the band's guitars embrace the past and present, straddling the line between blues and the modern-era anger and alienation of punk rock. Vedder's lyrics aim for the heart in ways most contemporary rock frontmen never approach. He asks questions, offers reflections from his own living. And the ballad-heavy mix of No Code -- a sharp snap back from the high-energy roar of their last, '94's windstorm Vitalogy -- lets us hear almost every one without the big machinery of heavy rock rumbling over the top.

In songs other than "Who Are You," No Code's Eastern flow eddies within the easily spilling numbers more as essence than as form. There will be a snatch of a vocal done as chant. A guitar lick that's clearly not from the pentatonic tradition. A sense of ease, relaxation -- almost a tai-chi-like molasses fluidity to the way the arrangements live their two-to-six-minute lives.

And there's a lot of beauty within their graceful architecture. It's heard in the gentility of "Around the Bend," the album's closing ballad. This is a lullaby with acoustic guitar and piano, subtle electric guitar occasionally hitting a shimmering chord and pulling the kind of major-key string bends usually heard in country music. Vedder puts his voice in the laid-back frame of a simple melody, intoning lines of comfort to a child he's helping drift into sleep. With its word of comfort, it could also be the dialogue of a benevolent deity helping a humble seeker around the bend of death.

Vedder lays his status as a spiritual quester at our feet on the first track, "Sometimes," his voice mixed over the spare, pulsing instrumentation in a manner so naked, so dry, that every creak in his singing seems magnified. It's so human a sound that it's awkward. We're conditioned by decades of recordings to hearing superhuman voices lacquered in layers of reverb and other effects. So something as humble and natural as this actually sounds wrong. But it's absolutely real. And it eliminates confusion about his sincerity in these lyrics: "Large fingers pushing paint/You're God and you got big hands/Colors blend/The challenges you give man/Seek my part/Devote myself/My small self/Like a book amongst the many in a shelf."

Encountering this kind of spiritualist idealism on the part of one of our largest pop stars is encouraging; millions of people idolize Vedder, and at the risk of sounding terribly '60s, he does have the power to influence others to define their own humanity in more empathic and possibly spiritual terms. In the days of Calvin Coolidge -- when the US was naively considered to be a positive influence on the rest of the globe -- they used to call it "beacon diplomacy." Eddie as an example for us all? Maybe not such a bad thing. But for Pearl Jam, it's a big risk. The loud-rock genre's been defined by meatheads for years. The solace is that with diverse-but-smart artists like Nas, Alanis Morissette, Metallica, the Fugees, and Tracy Chapman all in the Top 10 album chart, we may be heading into a place where intelligent songs are valued again.

And since Vedder is, perhaps, offering himself as an example, let it be noted that there are muscular rockers on No Code too. "Hail Hail" separates the spiritual odes "Sometimes" and "Who You Are" with a no-man's-land blast of punk rock, its lyrics struggling with issues of love, commitment, and gender. After all, strength is part of spiritual well-being too. "Habit" also rises with the sting of punk; "Red Mosquito" -- about the unexpected trials of experience -- sounds as if Vedder were being backed by a combination of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, guitarist Mike McCready alternately mixing Clapton-style legato lines with Hendrix hip thrusts of space-blues power. And "Mankind," a bauble with a harmonized vocal chorus about how we basically spend most of our time doing useless stuff, sounds catchy and poppy as any of the Foo Fighters' hits.

"I'm Open" sets its own course, Vedder speaking what follows as the song's introduction: "After spending half his life searching/He still felt as blank as the ceiling at which he stared./He's alive/But feels absolutely nothing/So is he?/When he was six he believed that the moon overhead followed him/By nine he had deciphered the illusion/Trading magic for fact./No tradebacks./So this is what it's like to be an adult./If he only knew now, what he knew then." And then -- as the band lay down textural bedrock of chiming guitars, a subtle beat, and spacy, vaguely melodic pads of sounds -- Vedder chant-sings "I'm open/Come in." Another invocation -- or at least invitation -- of the spirit.

To say the least, No Code finds Pearl Jam in a strange space by the usual rock standards. No major artist has gone this far into the mystic since Van Morrison, and the trip turned him from a hitmaker into a cult figure. Is Vedder pulling away from the rest of the band in his spiritual quest? Or are they with him? Often the kind of questioning No Code's lyrics imply is the product of a troubled soul. Is that the case here? And if so, what does that trouble portend for Pearl Jam's future? Doubtless they're disillusioned with the industry that sustains them, not only because of their dispute with TicketMaster (which will apparently keep them from doing any Boston-area dates this fall) but because they're smart guys who recognize shark-infested waters when they're swimming in them. All reasons to seek the answers within. And in No Code, Vedder and company are asking the right questions.