Getting Back to Fundamentals

PEARL JAM

“No Code”

Epic

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For a rock band that is widely perceived to be overly serious, Pearl Jam sure seems to be enjoying itself on its fourth album. Don’t pick up the 13-song collection expecting the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of the Macarena, but, more than on any other album by the group, there is the feel of soaring spirits.

Recorded in the months after the pressures of its battle with Ticketmaster and subsequent touring problems, this frisky and freewheeling album has the feel of musicians who have shut out the rest of the world, including the expectations associated with being the leaders in ‘90s American rock.

The goal was to simply reconnect with what made Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Jack Irons and Mike McCready want to be in a band in the first place: the joy of making music.

In that way, “No Code” shares some of the “musician as rock fan” innocence and exuberance of U2’s “Rattle and Hum.” In that greatly underrated 1988 album, the Irish quartet worked with some of its heroes, including Bob Dylan and B.B. King, and saluted others in the music, including the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

Pearl Jam didn’t actually go into the studio with any of its influences, but you feel the cleansing purity of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on “Who You Are,” the glorious first single from the album, and the wistful reflection of Neil Young in the restless “Off He Goes.”

Rather than being inspired by a single figure, the snarling “Habit” is a tip of the hat to the punk tradition that inspired Pearl Jam and so much of modern rock. It’s a track that kicks through the speakers with the insistence of someone caught in the confusion of trying to explain his own actions. “Taking off for what’s an obvious fall . . . ,” Vedder growls. “Another habit says it’s in love with you. . . . / Another habit like an unwanted friend.”

“No Code” is deceptive on first listening because it lacks both the everything-is-on-the-line urgency of 1994’s “Vitalogy” and some of the signature touches the band unveiled in its first two albums. Yet there are gratifying moments of growth, notably in the way some of the songs comfort and caress. “Around the Bend” exudes the tenderness of a lullaby. Guitarist Gossard even takes over on lead vocals from Vedder on the pop-ish foundation of “Mankind.”

The real breakthrough rests in the band’s greater confidence and openness. Where Vedder has tended to express his vulnerability in angry or desperate terms, he lets down his guard this time in more subtle ways. In the whispered intimacy of the opening “Sometimes,” he speaks of the exhilaration and inadequacies of being a center of attention in rock. “Sometimes I rise, sometimes I fall / Sometimes I walk, sometimes I kneel / Sometimes I speak of nothing at all / Sometimes I reach to myself.”

Over the course of the album, he and the band show once again they are worthy of that attention.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).