Pearl Jam’s last Melbourne show was a decade ago. For fans, it was worth the wait

MUSIC
Pearl Jam ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
Marvel Stadium, November 16

Writing about a show like this is a bit like reviewing the spiritual fervour of other people. For Pearl Jam fans, their shows are sacred experiences. They’ve released more than 300 live albums due to fan demand. And it’s been a decade since their last Australian tour.

A diehard Pearl Jam fan warned me: “Eddie must be spoken about with reverence. And Jeff, and Stone, and Mike.” He paused. “And Matt.”

Disclaimer: I’m not really a fan. So it’s with trepidation that I came along tonight, and I repent for anything I get wrong here.

The main support tonight is the Pixies, a fellow early ’90s veteran guitar band with pseudo-religious vibes of a different kind – the dark and violent kind, full of blood and sliced eyeballs and incest. They’re still a force of hell. Lead singer Black Francis’ growl on songs like Debaser and Monkey Gone To Heaven is apocalyptic still, and it remains so on the slower, doomier, newer stuff. But the crowd is mostly indifferent. Why would you bother with some Old Testament Bible-thumpers when your actual gods are about to take the stage?

“Holy f---!” cries Eddie Vedder when he sees the size of the audience. A near-packed Marvel Stadium is indeed a sight to behold. And there are moments of crowd response in some songs tonight, particularly Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town and Corduroy that are breathtaking to be in the middle of. They’re earnest and direct and warmly anthemic.

Fans cheer the arrival of Pearl Jam on stage at Marvel Stadium on Saturday night.Credit: Paul Rovere

“Earnestness” is key here. Pearl Jam to me have always represented a kindly masculinity, thoughtful and good-hearted, and tonight bears that out. There’s a Welcome to Country, which is rare at these kinds of events. Vedder, in a trucker cap and shorts, is consummately nice. He revels in the good vibes of the crowd, greets children and applauds good dads in the audience, and brings out AFL player Jonathan Brown to highlight his work for Vedder’s epidermolysis bullosa charity, EBRP.

It doesn’t all work for me. Several songs in the middle, like In My Tree, collapse into guitar pedal sludge, and new songs like Wreckage are a bit of a drag. But the true believers are into it.

The final part of the set is too infectious to deny. Vedder changes into a cowboy hat at some point for a round of pure top-tier Americana hits like Better Man, Alive and a version of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World.

The oddly euphoric Yellow Ledbetter closes the night. The house lights go up all the way, and the crowd somehow sings along to the infamously inscrutable, ever-shifting lyrics, their meaning hidden behind Vedder’s trademark yarl. It’s uplifting regardless. Vedder kneels down on the stage and bows to the audience, arms outstretched. The reverence cuts both ways.

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