Positive Charge: How Pearl Jam conjured up the great emotions on the masterpiece "Vs."

It's been many years since rock music was still important and extremely relevant. Artists were not pop bunnies who sang with computer voices, but stars with guitars, poets, explainers of the world.

The burden of the second album is particularly heavy when you have sold over three million copies of the first album. And it is also the flagship of a trend from the previous year that Nirvana started, but which made for even fuller halls with Pearl Jam.

When Eddie Vedder's band slowly became aware that they actually worked as a band, they were already "the next big thing from Seattle" and their creative quick-fire debut "Ten" was in the top spots in America's charts. A year on tour for the band members to belatedly acclimatize to each other has welded the Pearl Jam members into a musical unit that can hardly sound better than on their second album "Vs.".

A rock album of the same complexity and intensity was sought in vain this year; the spontaneous energy that Eddie Vedder and his colleagues never forget to mention in any conversation about their band has multiplied its power with growing experience. The portion of everyday tragedy that Pearl Jam has always skillfully clothed in dry guitar riffs, and which is probably crucial for the intimate admiration that their fans show them.

But of course "Vs." is also an album of great emotions, of heart-rending ballads such as "Indifference" or "Dissident", which, carried by the soulful voice of Eddie Vedder, have an almost therapeutic effect. Because regardless of all the harshness, anger, aggression or sadness that Pearl Jam captured like no other band 30 years ago, the energy that emanates from their music is unreservedly positive. But in contrast to the Pearl Jam debut, the successor shows previously unknown facets of the band. The malicious aggressiveness that drives a piece like "Blood" surprisingly and pleasantly breaks the reputation of the peaceful love & peace attitude that the band sometimes had. "Go" and "Animal", the two openers, sweep away any premature suspicion of a willingness to compromise with extreme force.

Perhaps cliché-laden like a sunrise in late autumn, but always perfectly suited to provoking a feeling of "now more than ever!" The means they use to do this are not new: common riffs, wah-wah guitars and a bit of groove, but the tension and dynamics with which Pearl Jam process the usual ingredients into songs, the build-up that a piece like "Rearviewmirror" experiences up to the absolute euphoria of the chorus, is unique. The sales were also unique: in the home country of the USA, "Vs." went straight to number one in the charts and in the first week after its release sold 200,000 more copies than the previous record holder, Guns N'Roses with "Use Your Illusion II".