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Great Astoria review in this week's Kerrang!

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edited May 2006 in Given To Fly (live)
Apologies if it's already been posted:

THE SECOND COMING - Grunge Legends cut another slice of rock history with rare uk club show.

Pearl Jam
The Astoria, London
20.04.2006
KKKKK

There are some gigs that you're lucky enough to witness in your lifetime that are 'special'. Gigs that people will talk about in years to come and you can say with a smug smile, "I was there".

Pearl Jam playing The Astoria is one of those gigs. To celebrate the release of their eponymous, eighth studio album, the grunge legends mark their return with a one-off intimate UK show. The last time frontman Eddie Vedder and his bandmates travelled to our shores was six years ago, on a tour that saw them sell-out the likes of Wembley Arena. So the first ever live airing of the band's new album taking place in the smallest London venue they've played since they graced the stage at Brixton Academy in 1993 is a big deal.

Vedder and his cohorts wander onto the stage at 8pm to a symphony of rapturous cheers but in true Pearl Jam style, no time is wasted on polite pleasantries. The band fly frantically into four of the eight new tracks they'll debut during their two-hour set and the likes of "Worldwide Suicide" and "Life Wasted" - with Vedder's lashing howl, Mike McCready and Stone Gossard's epic thunderclap guitars, Jeff Ament's towering inferno bass licks and Matt Cameron's driving beat-blasting - highlight exactly why this band have survived and remained so fervently adored, nearly two decades after the start of the scene they catapulted in on.

But it's when the band dip into their back-catalogue that things get really exciting. The furious opening riff of 'Even Flow', from the band's breakthrough debut 'Ten', shakes the room like a hurricane. Close your eyes and it could be 1991 again. It's only during McCready's rocket-fuelled five minute solo, which he delivers with razor-sharp album precision, that the crowd is reminded that it's not. Once upon a time, Vedder would be swinging from the nearest rafters at this point. Tonight, though, the 41-year old shuffles to the side of the stage for a swig of red wine and a smoke.

Some things may have changed but it's in the songs that Pearl Jam are immortalised, armed with all the urgency, fight and fire that they ever displayed. The ragged fury of 'Porch', 'I Am Mine', with its triumphant glorious soar, and the Hendrix-tinged glow of fan-favourite 'Yellow Ledbetter' prove that the band members, despite pushing middle age, can still kick it out. And they do at every turn.

The fact that they end this momentous occasion with grunge anthem 'Alive', is fitting in a truly emotional sense, when you consider the journey this band have travelled during their 16-year career. As Vedder growls, 'You're still alive.../do i deserve to be?' with the crowd backing him with the grace of a church choir, not a hair on a neck in the venue isn't tingling. Moving, euphoric and utterly life-affirming, this is the stuff that rock legend is made of. Alive? Pearl Jam are reborn.

Nicola Browne.
"This town deserves a better class of criminal... and I'm gonna give it to them."

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