While out on a beer run in the mid-1990s, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder discovered a ukulele in a Hawaiian convenience store and was instantly smitten. Along with the six pack, he took home the four-stringed instrument and began writing songs on it. The little ukulele soon became his traveling companion and songwriting tool in tough times. And then one day, it became his muse—challenging Vedder with its limitations to refine and expand his range, to step out from the thicket of noise and open to the intimacy of his art.
What resulted is the recently released Ukulele Songs. As the title suggests, Vedder, rock’s king of pain, has written an entire album's worth of music on the ever modest uke, and as if taking his cue from the instrument's lighthearted tones, Vedder is more joyful than brooding and somber on this, his second solo effort. The sixteen-song set is a mix of covers and original material culled from more than a decade's worth of writing. Calmer and more introspective than any of his previous work, Ukulele Songs invites the listener to be still long enough to savor this beautifully nuanced work—each and every dulcet note and smoldering syllable.
With its somewhat corny reputation, the idea of one of rock’s most prominent frontmen putting out a record performed solely on an instrument that is often associated with novelty acts like Tiny Tim and Don Ho seems a strange one indeed. But when it comes to Eddie Vedder, and his band's renegade reputation in the music industry, few eyebrows were raised. After all, Vedder's been grooming fans for years for this very moment. He began experimenting with the ukulele on the song "Soon Forget" from Pearl Jam's Binaural in 2000 and occasionally pulled it out during the band’s encores. More recently the uke was featured on his Into the Wild soundtrack and subsequent tour in 2008.
As if to ground his listeners and reassure us before casting off into unknown territory, Vedder opens Ukulele Songs with Pearl Jam rocker, the driving "Can't Keep," from the band's 2002 album, Riot Act. Once he’s gained our trust, he launches into more placid waters with songs lamenting lost love and celebrating a new one. Plaintive numbers like "Sleeping By Myself," "Goodbye," and "Broken Heart" seem to speak to the disintegration of his first marriage, while the more hopeful tunes "Without You," "Satellite," and "Longing to Belong"—which includes a most welcome, gentle counterpoint in cellist Chris Worswick—pay homage to his second. Vedder laughs off such personal interpretations, maintaining the album is "a work of fiction."
Ukulele Songs also features a handful of covers like the 1920s classics "More Than You Know" and "Tonight You Belong to Me," which pairs Vedder with vocalist Chan Marshall. Glen Hansard (The Frames, The Swell Season) joins Eddie on the country standard "Sleepless Nights," made famous by the duo of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons back in the 1970s. Also included are the vintage numbers "Once in Awhile" and a stark, sensuous version of "Dream a Little Dream," which concludes the album.
Recorded in studios in Seattle and on Oahu, Ukulele Songs is about as naked as an album gets. It peels back the layers of Vedder's oeuvre, from the eardrum-annihilating rock of Pearl Jam, to his folksy work on Into the Wild, to the utterly austere collection on the new album. With such minimal backing, Vedder's heartfelt lyrics and honeyed baritone—descending a scale, note by note, or sliding into falsetto—are arresting.
According to Vedder, the ukulele project started as a writing exercise, the impetus for which began around a campfire late one night. "One of the locals was a fisherman I'd met before,” he says. “We got into a serious discussion about environmental issues and then after that talk was over, some instruments started getting passed around. There were a couple of musicians in the group—a Brazilian guitarist, and then me and this fisherman. He's maybe 60, 65, but could easily arm-wrestle me to the ground. He'd lived off the land and sea for probably his whole life. He picked up the ukulele. His hands were so big it was hard to imagine he could get chords out of it. And he played the most beautiful rendition of "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You." Elvis. You would have never known. So it's like, imagine the possibilities with that little instrument!"
Vedder’s infatuation with the ukulele doesn’t surprise Jake Shimabukuro. As the leading young virtuoso of the uke, he suggests its humble nature might be one reason stars like Vedder find it so attractive. "I love that people don't take the instrument seriously," Shimabukuro says. "Audiences all over the world have such low expectations of the music." Vedder plays from a variety of ukuleles on the album and coaxes some impressive sounds out of the instrument. It flutters and skips, is at turns tender, frenzied, discordant. Its reserved nature and chipper outlook are what most appeal to him. "It is a happy sound, and by using it to process some emotions that were less than joyful, it somehow balanced it out to where it didn't sound like suicide music," he says.
Ukulele Songs has received generally favorable reviews. It landed at the #4 spot on the Billboard 200 and gave Vedder his first top ten album and his highest charting release since his Into the Wild peaked at #11 back in 2007. More than a curiosity piece, Ukulele Songs is a sincere, weird and wonderful listen and a testament to the talent of this multifaceted songwriter. The album is a must have for romantics, ukulele enthusiasts and those fans who gladly follow Eddie Vedder no matter where his flights of fancy may take him.
Pearl Jam are pulling out all the stops this year in honor of their 20th anniversary. The band will play a Labor Day music festival in Wisconsin and have a documentary, directed by longtime pal Cameron Crowe, coming out this fall. A book and a series of album reissues are also expected. Ukulele Songs isn't officially part of this commemorative process, yet because it features material written over more than a decade of the band's life, Vedder's album presents itself as part of the band's history. In this, The Year of Pearl Jam, consider Ukulele Songs a souvenir.
