Pearl Jam (Self-Titled)

Pearl Jam is the eighth studio album by American alternative rock band Pearl Jam, released on May 2, 2006 on J Records. It was Pearl Jam's first and only release for J Records, their last album issued by Sony Music. It was the band's first full-length studio release in almost four years, since Riot Act (2002). The band commenced work on Pearl Jam in November 2004 at Studio X in Seattle, Washington and finished in February 2006.

The music on the record was proclaimed as a return to the band's roots, with an emphasis on up-tempo songs with an aggressive sound. The song lyrics are mostly told from the point of view of characters and deal with the socio-political issues in the United States at the period, such as the War on Terror.

Pearl Jam was critically well received and a commercial success, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 chart and eventually outselling the band's previous release, Riot Act. The album also produced three singles—"World Wide Suicide," "Life Wasted" and "Gone"—which were moderately successful. The band supported the album with a full-scale world tour in 2006. Writing for Kerrang!, George Garner called the album "criminally underrated".

According to Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 74, based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

The album was named in Rolling Stone's top 50 albums of the year at number 13. Rolling Stone staff writer David Fricke gave Pearl Jam four out of five stars, calling it the band's best album in ten years. He said it's "the most overtly partisan—and hopeful—record of their lives," adding that it's "as big and brash in fuzz and backbone as Led Zeppelin's Presence."

Allmusic staff writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album four and a half out of five stars, saying that "Pearl Jam has embraced everything they do well, whether it's their classicist hard rock or heart-on-sleeve humanitarianism."

Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+, saying that Vedder's "passionate howl seems more valuable now, pitted against the navel-gazing emo whine that's commandeered the landscape," and he went on to say that "in a world full of boys sent to do a man's job of rocking, Pearl Jam can still pull off gravitas."

This article uses material from the Wikipedia page dedicated to this album. No copyright infringement is intended.