To Ten-finity and Beyond: Pearl Jam's "Lightning Bolt" and the Elusive Great Tenth Album

Yesterday, to the delight of Singles fans everywhere, Pearl Jam released Lightning . . . YAWN. Sorry . . . let me start over. Yesterday, to the utter joy of Cameron Crowe, the band formerly known as Mookie Blaylock released its tenth album, Lightni . . . YAAAAAAAAAAAWN . . . Jeez. What's wrong with me? Let's try this one last time. Yesterday, as Kurt Cobain's mascara rolled in its grave, Pearl Jam released its tenth studio album, Lightning Bolt. The good news is that the album, which is Stone Gossard & Co.'s second on their own independent label Monkeywrench, is pretty o.k. for a post-1999 Pearl Jam album. Sure, "Sirens" may be a staid attempt at the masterful post-power balladry of some of the band's best earlier work, but songs like "Mind Your Manners" and  "My Father's Son" are retreads that are at least lively enough that they would have fit in well on classics like Vs. and Vitalogy. And the critics seem to agree, in general. As of last night, Lightning Bolt's Metacritic score was a respectable 72, with 14 positive reviews, 10 mixed, and 0 negative (although the NME's assertion that "there's something very 'mopey American teenager' about Lightning Bolt" is definitely on the negative side of "mixed"). And you can bet that, as sure as the sun will rise, enough "dude, did you see them in Albuquerque??" fans will pick it up this week that it will make a respectable showing on the Billboard charts, where the band has never peaked lower than #5. But the bad news -- if you want to call it that -- is that no one really cares. If they're being honest with themselves, even the guys in Pearl Jam would have to admit that their band hasn't been musically relevant in . . . what, fifteen years? Don't get me wrong, there's no shame in a band chugging along, playing live shows for the faithful, and releasing an album of safe, generally predictable new music every couple of years or so, especially when the number of albums it's released starts encroaching on double digits. But isn't that just the equivalent of making the Elite Eight every year? Wouldn't you rather strive for greatness than achieve consistent goodness? But it has to be hard to make your tenth album legitimately great, right? Seriously, how many bands or artists have released a tenth album that was both reasonably commercially successful and artistically vibrant? Seriously. Uh oh. I think I feel a li . . . YAWN. Dang it. Sorry again. I think I feel a lis . . . . YAAAAWWWN. I think I feel a list coming on.   Bob Dylan, Self Portrait  Released: 1970 Chart Peak: #4 Sandwiched in between the Johnny Cash collabs of Nashville Skyline (1969) and the Lewboskiing glory of New Morning (1970), Self Portrait was everyone's choice for worst Dylan album before he released Saved in 1980. Featuring head scratchers like "All the Tired Horses," covers of songs written about him by haters (eat me, Paul Simon), and inferior live versions of songs he recorded elsewhere, Self Portrait is so bad that generations of Dylan fanatics have spent years convincing themselves that it's so brilliant that they just don't get it. The fact that it charted as high as it did is a testament to Dylan's previous nine records, at least seven of which are stone-cold classics. But the dearth of quality material (on a double album for chrissakes) might also be indicative of what happens when you record ten albums in eight years.   Aerosmith, Pump  Released: 1989 Chart Peak: #5 Dylan's Self Portrait might have been a bummer of a tenth album, but Aerosmith's classic Pump was anything but. Pump not only featured the best songs about child abuse and doing it in the elevator ever, but also served up some of the best videos that a bunch of elementary school kids watching MTV in shop class could ever hope for. The album's second single, "Love in an Elevator," was Aerosmith's first to reach #1 on the mainstream rock charts, marking a major resurgence for the band. Follow-ups Get a Grip (1993) and Nine Lives (1997) would also score major hits for the former Led Zeppelin rip-offs, and their 1998 song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" would go on to haunt million middle school dances for all eternity.   U2, All That You Can't Leave Behind  Released: 2000 Chart Peak: #3 Evidently, for some bands, the tenth album can serve as a turn-around. After a solid decade of delving into dark continental electronic explorations and wearing really weird sunglasses, U2 claimed to treat All That You Can't Leave Behind as their reapplication "for the job . . . [of] the best band in the world." I guess the world at least gave them a second interview, right? "Beautiful Day," "Elevation," and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" were all super big hits, and their 2004 follow-up How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb continued the momentum.    Bruce Springsteen, Lucky Town Released: 1992 Chart Peak: #3 Oy. Here's another stinker. Just look at that cover art. It looks like somebody's cousin made it in Windows Paintbrush (remember Paintbrush??). Again, though, we've got a pretty high chart -- based, like in Dylan's case, on prior work that created a rabid fan base, obviously. And it's not like those fans were wrong or anything. From 1973's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. through 1982's Nebraska, Bruce was either great or borderline great. And then there was Born in the USA in 1984, which . . . I mean, argue against it if you dare. Lucky Town just happened to fall right in the middle of a decade-long nadir that he'd break out of with 1997's The Ghost of Tom Joad.    The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) Released: 2002 Chart Peak: #50 Of course, we'd have to go to a psycho-punk band from Oklahoma City to get our first tenth album that charted lower than #5. But Yoshimi represents the rare occasion on which a band's tenth album is actually their commercial breakthrough. By 2002, the Flaming Lips already had a long career pushing musical boundaries, organizing car stereo orchestras, and releasing albums that you needed three stereos to play properly. And they had even sniffed commercial success back in the nineties, when they played "She Don't Use Jelly" on Beverly Hills 90210. But while 1999's The Soft Bulletin was their critical masterpiece, Yoshimi, and especially the single "Do You Realize?" is what got them into heavy rotation in Starbucks across the country.   Neil Young, Hawks and Doves Released: 1980 Chart Peak: #30 So, Hawks and Doves didn't chart very high. In fact, the *thirst* for this album was so low that it wasn't released on CD until 2003. TWO THOUSAND AND BY-GOD THREE. And that's ok, because everybody who didn't buy and/or like this album was a sucker. We've talked a bit about awesome streaks so far in this list. Dylan had a fantastic run from '63-'69, with his 1965-66 streak of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde constituting probably the best 12 month span in the history of recorded music, and Springsteen's 1973-1982 run was stellar. But nobody, and I repeat, NOBODY was consistently as great for as long a period of time as Neil Young from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. From 1969's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere to 1982's Trans (that's right, I said Trans), every single album Neil released is a must-own. And Hawks and Doves is no exception. It's a whacked-out concept album in the greatest of Neil Young traditions, with the first half devoted to "doves" (all psycho-trippy acoustic numbers about dream birds and such) and the second full of foot-stomping "hawks" songs about how great it is to live in the U.S.A. So, sometimes a tenth album is a clunker, and sometimes it's a turnaround. But other times, when you're Neil effing Young, it's just another classic.   The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed  Released: 1969 Chart Peak: #3 Looking back on the career of The Rolling Stones, it's hard to believe that Let It Bleed was their tenth album (released in the U.S., at least). The follow-up to Beggars Banquet (1968), which marked a return to form from forays into psychedelic pop like Their Satanic Majesty's Request (1967), Let It Bleed was the second in a string of four blues-based rock records that would define the Stones's classic rock period. After Sticky Fingers (1968), and Exile on Mainstreet (1972) solidified that sound, songs from Let It Bleed like "Gimme Shelter," "Midnight Rambler," and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" seem almost like they come from the beginning of a recording career, rather than from ten albums in. Of course, that's the sort of thing that happens when your band is active for five hundred years.   Ray Stevens, Boogity Boogity  Released: 1977 Chart Peak: #159 Hello, everybody this is your action news reporter with all the news that is news across the nation, on the scene at the Funkhouser. There seems to be a disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, but did you record an absolutely incredible album on your tenth time out? Yeah, I did. Ok. So, Boogity Boogity was actually Ray Stevens's eleventh studio album, but it was so close that I couldn't leave it be. Don't look, Ethel. So, yeah, it is entirely possible to make a great album on your tenth try. But it's obviously not easy. If Bob fricken Dylan couldn't pull it off, then I don't suppose we can reasonably expect goofy hat wearing Jeff Ament to do it either. The sentimental side of me really hopes that Pearl Jam has at least one more great album in them. From this small sample, though, there doesn't seem to be any way to tell what it takes to make seriously great albums deep into a career, other than being Neil Young or Keith Richards. That, and either a touch of risk or a serious desire to regain the spotlight -- two things that, honestly, Pearl Jam has never exhibited much of. Maybe ten more decent-to-good records and a few hundred excellent live shows are more than enough to ask for.