It is not a little terrifying when an album you identify so closely with your own musical development is re-issued as a ‘legacy’ edition some eighteen years after you first heard it. Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ album is the platter in question and it was recently re-released as a special edition (over a variety of formats detailed below), heavy enough on features to satisfy even the hardiest of fans. For this review we will be looking at the vinyl edition.
Working on a similar principal to the masterful reissue of the Manic Street preachers’ ‘Holy Bible’, ‘Ten’ comes as standard spread over two discs, but the basic version eschews the usual array of b-sides and live tracks to offer a re-mastered version of the original mix and a ‘redux’ mix courtesy of long-time band producer Brendan O’Brian. As a result the bare edition comes shorn of extras, but it does offer two versions of a classic album and it has never sounded better.
Opting for the vinyl edition, you get a gatefold sleeve, two heavy-weight (180g) vinyl discs and what looks like a promotional card (a piece of circular card with the album artwork and details printed upon it). As packaging goes it is well presented, with the new gold-inflected print looking pretty damn fine, but it’s a shame the band didn’t stretch to a booklet like Nirvana’s Bleach reissue offered, or some liner notes. Nonetheless it is an alluring package. The discs themselves are of high quality, beautifully finished to minimise skipping and housed in paper sleeves to keep wear and tear to a minimum.
So much for the presentation, what you really need to know is that the audio is pristine. Derided in some sectors at the time for offering ‘too clean’ a sound, ‘Ten’ has aged surprisingly well, and the re-master has really bought out the glorious solos that allied the band more closely to classic rock than to the punk vein that fellow Seattleites mined. Eddie Vedder’s voice, always a thing of power and beauty, is also clearer, standing out from the mix on anthemic tracks such as ‘Oceans’, ‘Jeremy’ and the evergreen ‘alive’. What really hits home is the astonishing confidence of a band recording their debut album. Surging out of the speakers with a vitality that veteran bands often fail to match, ‘Ten’ still sounds as vibrant and vital today as it did back then and the excellent mastering afforded the vinyl means that it isn’t overly quiet anymore either.
While the re-master does a good job of presenting the album in the best possible light, the Brendan O’ Brian version works hard to produce the album in a manner that the band, never truly happy with the original reverb laden mix, would be proud of. As a result he strips the sound down to the bare minimum, removing the studio flourishes grafted onto the original and presenting the album in a mix which has more in common with Vs’ dark sound. That said, Brendan is clearly reluctant to stray too far from the sonic template laid down by the original (he was famously unwilling to revamp an acknowledged classic but it seems he changed his tune after submitting several tracks for the best of compilation a few years back) and his ‘redux’ version augments the original release rather than trampling upon its grave as REM did recently with their sonic redressing of ‘murmur’.
The second disc also features a few rare tracks not featured on the ‘lost dogs’ album including a version of ‘brother’ complete with vocals. While not the comprehensive raiding of the vaults found on the Sonic Youth reissues, there is an argument to be made that these are more or less the only tracks not to have already been released at some point or other although it’d have been nice to see ‘wash’ and ‘dirty frank’ returned to the set (they featured on the European re-release of the album) if only to sample the humorous delights of ‘dirty frank’ one more time.
Special edition notes
Released in a dizzying array of versions, what do you get for your hard earned cash? Well, the basic CD / LP sets are double disc affairs offering the re-master and ‘redux’ versions. A deluxe CD edition adds six bonus tracks to the second disc, a forty page booklet and the band’s legendary ‘Unplugged’ concert on DVD (unreleased up till now) which is a fantastic bonus but comes at a hefty price (the three disc set averages at around £27 as opposed to £13 for the 2 disc edition) which does cause some pause for thought. For the truly dedicated there is an exclusive special edition which comes with (deep breath) all three discs, an exclusive live concert on vinyl, the album on double vinyl, a reproduction of Eddie’s original notebooks, postcards a tour pass replica, a cassette of the original demos and a selection of photos and art work. This is, quite simply, the holy grail for Pearl Jam fans, but the price (varying between £90 – £130) will put off all but the most rabid of fans. Nonetheless it is a package to drool over, but whichever one you go for you won’t be disappointed at the quality of what’s on offer.
