This year marks the 30th anniversary of Pearl Jam’s third album, Vitalogy — aka the most significant release in the grunge survivors’ long discography. And that’s not just because it remains the only Pearl Jam album where you’ll find an accordion lullaby about insects butting up against psychedelic mantras and freeform sound collages. While it was initially received as an anti-pop reaction to the hypestorm engulfing the band’s blockbuster 1991 debut Ten and its equally earthshaking 1993 follow-up Vs., in hindsight, Vitalogy was less a Kid A-style gateway into some new avant-garde phase than a stress-relieving exorcism of all tensions weighing on the band from within and without: the death of Kurt Cobain, the mounting legal battle against Ticketmaster, the imminent dismissal of drummer of Dave Abbruzesse for being too much of a bro.
