Rearviewmirror divides the band's career into an "up side" and a "down side"- the former are the earnest rockers, the latter are the earnest ballads- although the monikers would also have been appropriate had they arranged the record chronologically. By the time Creed became a permanent fixture on late-90s rock radio, the Florida band sounded as much like Pearl Jam as, well, Pearl Jam themselves. Musically, Pearl Jam slightly spiced up their sound over the course of a decade, adding a few Eastern-tinged delicacies and some garage-rock snackfood to their typical meat-and-potatoes diet. After deftly turning their backs on fame just as much of the public seemed poised to turn on them, Pearl Jam cultivated the unwavering support of a cabal of devotees who followed the band across a string of studio albums that casual observers have likely forgotten- No Code, Yield, Binaural, and Riot Act- and the almost comical release of every live show from their 2000 tour, a move that, depending on your level of cynicism, was either a thank you or an unintentional fuck you to their lemmingesque fanbase. Oddly, Pearl Jam have remained a constant since the days when 120 Minutes graduated to Alternative Nation, transitioning from stadium fillers to one of American rock's largest and most beloved cult bands, a Grateful Dead for the great washed.
Prior to that, the nascent sounds of grunge remained among the dominant North American hard rock templates throughout the 90s and into this decade, living on in a lineage that extended from its Seattle roots through Bush and Candlebox to Creed and Nickleback. In recent years, Billy Corgan's Zwan, a reunited Jane's Addiction, the Scott Weiland-fronted Velvet Revolver, and the Chris Cornell/Rage Against the Machine mashup Audioslave have released records to varying degrees of commercial success.
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