I own many Pearl Jam albums on cd but this is the only one I have on vinyl. I was introduced to them at school by a friend named Johnny. He'd become a very big fan of theirs very quickly and I remember him getting very excited when Binaural came out in 2000. He lent me a copy of Ten and I quite enjoyed what I heard. I wasn't instantly blown away with a lot of the big singles on there, but I was particularly taken by Black (and, eventually, came around to liking the hits). I say he introduced to them to me, he introduced their music to me; they were already a name I knew but had no idea what they sounded like. The picture of them in the sleeve of Ten made me think they weren't going to be very cool, but he reassured me that they were a cool band.
I bought a copy of Ten on cd a short while later and followed that up with Binaural just after Riot Act came out. Binaural did very little for me and I became a bit sceptical of their more recent releases. I also bought a copy of No Code and began to wonder if Ten was a bit of a fluke in terms of Pearl Jam music I enjoyed. A little while later again I bought this copy of Vs. in Selectadisc in Nottingham for a relative bargain of £8. I never planned to have much of a Pearl Jam collection, I was just buying whatever cool vinyl I could get my hands on back then.
Vs. had more going for it than No Code, but still didn't grab me as much as Ten. Go and Animal are a strong opening duo but I always thought Daughter was too slow too soon and ruined the flow of the album for me. There are other highlights (in fact the opening duo on side 2 - Blood and Rearviewmirror - are great too) but there weren't the real highlights I was hoping for. Maybe it's because Ten was scattered with so many hit singles that every other album was always going to sound sub-par.
Buying Vs. made me realise I should stop buying Pearl Jam albums. They were always so cheap in record shops that I kept finding myself nearly buying them but I knew I wasn't very likely to enjoy them. It was quite a relief to skip past the Pearl Jam section in the shops without feeling the need to see how much their other albums were. I eventually broke my rule in 2013 when I found a brand new copy of their double-disc best of album in a charity shop in Clapham for £1. For that price it seemed rude not to and enough time had passed that I might get more out of it. Plus, I hoped at some level that just having the singles would be what I needed to like them more. The album is split over the two discs with the heavier songs on one and the softer on the second; unsurprisingly, the first disc gets much more play the second. I've not bought any more of their albums since then.
Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 15/03/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
