Inside Nokia Music

Everyone knows Pearl Jam, the trouble is that so many don’t realize they’ve enjoyed a hugely successful career far beyond the era defining debut that would forever pigeon-hole them as a Grunge Band. Catching the back end of the Grunge era myself, I only ever saw it as just that… an era and not a genre. The reality is that Pearl Jam have been releasing far better records than ‘Ten’ ever since.

Oddly, the fact that they’re mostly recognized for ‘Ten’ rather than either of their 9 studio albums is testament to their longevity, considering they chose to scale back promotional efforts for future releases and refused to make music videos much to the disapproval of their label. This would ultimately put them in a position to attract fans of the music they chose to make rather than that of label and mainstream demand and would aid in sustaining the bands career in my opinion.

Unluckily for me, I was unable to acquire a pre-sale copy and am not reviewing it in this post but felt I had to express my love for the album artwork and the pre-awareness advertising campaign. The first hint at the album covers design came with release of the cover art for first single ‘The Fixer’, the image would turn out to be one of nine that would all come together to make up the final cover. This was then followed with an internet scavenger hunt to reveal the remaining eight images, each time an image was found it was then linked back to a personal puzzle layout page and filled in it’s respective position. Upon completion the participant was awarded with a solo acoustic version of  the Backspacer song ‘Speed Of Sound’. Although there is nothing truly groundbreaking here, I did however enjoy seeking out the individual images that were fly-posted throughout London in a similar manner.

A comprehensive back-catalogue is available to download through the Nokia Music Store