Pearl Jam offers mix of classics

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder at the mike on Friday night. AMY QUINN / FOR THE HERALD

Every good band enjoys a musical half-life, a period in which its albums can expect an enthusiastic response from fans and critics, regardless of their quality.

Pearl Jam's reign ended six years ago, when the winds of pop blew away from humorless grunge bands like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, and towards boy bands and, interestingly, Pearl Jam clones like Slipknot and Puddle of Mudd. They're bands that can, in the Whitesnake tradition, bellow catchy choruses about being white, fit and having a lucrative recording contract.

Pearl Jam had nothing to prove at its Sound Advice Amphitheater concert in West Palm Beach Friday night -- nothing except the ability to resonate beyond sales and waning fan interest. Kicking off with the nonalbum obscurity Long Road, singer/guitarist Eddie Vedder and his four mates played a mix of classics like Evenflow and Alive as well as selections from last year's Riot Act, which, like most of its post-1996 albums, demonstrates more assured songwriting and tighter rhythms than its predecessors.

Songs like Given To Fly, Last Exit and Whipping, performed without wasted motion, are what Pearl Jam does best: midtempo rockers that churn and boil without making too much of a fuss. Since the band's problem has always been an inability to signify beyond classic-rock sonorities, Vedder compensates by injecting as much punk rage as a song can contain while honoring the band's unspoken ethos, to quote the heartfelt early ballad Elderly Woman Behind The Counter, of changing by not changing.

Sometimes the mix is queasy. Mike McCready remains a proficient, unimaginative lead guitarist compared to the cinder-block solidity of bassist Jeff Ament, drummer Matt Cameron and Vedder's own rhythm guitar playing, and you get the feeling Vedder yelled so much in the early days in an attempt to get the rest of the band to catch up with him. But Vedder now understands that his rage is best contained within tight three-minute structure instead of messy sprawls.

Vedder reprised his recent anti-Bush rhetoric toward the end of the two-hour set. After a beautiful version of Steve Van Zandt's I Am A Patriot, Vedder mumbled, in a voice trembling with anger, reminded the squirming crowd, ''I'm an American, and have a right to express myself.'' The band then launched into Better Man, its subtext now a sullen resignation inspired by the Bush administration.

As for show openers Sleater Kinney, America's best rock band demonstrated why it sucks to be, well, show openers, when you're still at the peak of your powers: The girls wanted to be not just Joey Ramone, like their most famous song said, but Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam too.

Playing a fair chunk of 2002's best album One Beat, the trio's slash-and-burn rhythms were lost in the open-air setting. But when singer/guitarist Corin Tucker exhorted the crowd to shake a tail for peace and love on Step Aside, the song became not just a middle finger to America's post 9-11 foreign policy, but a rebuke to the passive guys on the lawn, impatient for Pearl Jam oldies.