Pop albums

It's not quite "unplugged", but No Code is a much more restrained, low-key affair than Pearl Jam's previous albums, and certainly a far more approachable proposition than the wretched Vitalogy. Songs such as "Who You Are" and "Sometimes" sound like the band are trying for something like the magical mood REM achieved with Automatic For The People, but, oh, for a tune worth whistling, and a lyric not completely submerged in dithery self-absorption.

That's not to say that the whole LP eschews rocking. "Hail, Hail" and "Lukin" are louder and rowdier, the latter belting along like Bob Seger's "Get Out of Denver", while "Smile" finds them aiming more for the raw depth of Neil Young's Crazy Horse recordings, with a sort of ragged, stalking guitar style and plaintive Young-ish harmonica from Eddie Vedder. Sadly, it only approximates the meagre impact of Neil's last album, his least in some time. And compared to Young's complex, emotional reaction to the drug deaths of friends (on his Tonight's The Night album), Eddie Vedder seems cynically unsympathetic on "Habit", where with no discernible irony, he declares himself "so happy with my righteous self... speaking as an individual who will see the year 2000". That is not only callous; it is also tempting fate in a big way.