Pearl Jam

This two-disc set from Seattle’s greatest prog-pop band after Queensrche will undoubtedly be overshadowed by Nirvana’s With the Lights Out–which makes sense, as Pearl Jam was overshadowed by Nirvana when both bands actually existed, too. But if Rearviewmirror feels less momentous than Nirvana’s hit-and-miss scrap heap, it’s no faint praise to say that it’s inarguably more consistent than Lights Out: From the bloated float-and-sting of the Ten material to the elegantly streamlined alt-rock of Vs. and Vitalogy to the punk-flecked folk-rock of the band’s underrated recent albums, Pearl Jam chased a sound and vision that is the reasonable, collected alternative to Kurt Cobain’s impulsive, brilliant squall. Listening back now, at a moment when the chugging guitars and portentous bellow Stone Gossard and Eddie Vedder pioneered are making a last-ditch end run around teen-pop and hip-hop on Top 40 radio, what stands out is the unpretentious, impassioned spirit of cuts like “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” and “Daughter,” where they dialed down the banner-waving gravitas and reached out to a single young kid behind the desk in a shitty school. They have a name for this kind of stuff, one Cobain probably hated: classic rock.