Eddie Vedder - Earthling

"Fun" isn't a word normally associated with Eddie Vedder, a singer who has specialized in earnest sincerity ever since Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" blanketed MTV and modern rock radio in 1992. His guileless gravity served as Pearl Jam's lodestar in the ensuing decades, steering the band toward such weighty statements as Gigaton, a searing ecological warning the group delivered at the eve of their 30th anniversary. Earthling, the solo album Vedder released two years later -- it's his second, following the subdued Ukulele Songs by about 11 years -- feels as vigorous as Gigaton even as it sounds nothing at all like it. Vedder peppers Earthling with a few righteous rockers that are precisely in Pearl Jam's wheelhouse -- "Power of Right" helps kick off the record in a high gear -- but he spends most of the album playing the kind of vibrant, colorful rock Pearl Jam consciously avoids. Often, it seems as if Vedder is intent on reconnecting with the kind of rock that filled the airwaves in the days pr