Eddie Vedder

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Eddie Vedder

Eddie Vedder "Ukulele Songs" album

- Release date : May 2011 -

Ukulele Songs is the first solo studio album by Pearl Jam frontman, Eddie Vedder. It was released on May 31, 2011. The album is composed of original songs and covers.

"Ukulele Songs" album tracks and lyrics

"Ukulele Songs" album reviews

There is no irony in the title of Eddie Vedder’s first full-fledged solo album: these are indeed songs performed on a ukulele, an instrument uncommon but not unknown to rockers. George Harrison was a well-known advocate of the small four-string instrument, and Vedder’s hero Pete Townshend once cut a lovely little gem called “Blue Red and Grey” on ukulele, a song that could easily slide onto this gently ramshackle collection of covers, re-recordings, and new tunes. To say that this is a minor album is to dismiss its intimacy and miss its appeal: Vedder’s self-imposed curse is that he takes everything very seriously indeed, so to hear him without the weight of the world on his shoulders is disarmingly inviting. He has nothing more in mind on Ukulele Songs than singing, whether it’s with duet partners Glen Hansard and Cat Power or just on his own, tossing out love songs, something he generally has avoided with Pearl Jam. Vedder never has been ashamed of his bleeding heart -- it’s something that grounds Pearl Jam even when they’re in full-blast bombast mode -- yet it’s refreshing to have a record where that heart is pushed toward the center, beating fully and proudly on his lightest, sweetest album yet.

*** By Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music ***

Ukulele Songs shows us a Vedder with nothing to hide behind. There are no thunderous drums or wailing guitars to play off of, just the quiet pluck of a ukulele, an instrument whose most agitated moments sound more like dances than tantrums.

“I’m all right / It’s just tonight / I can’t play the part,” sings Vedder on “Broken Heart”, explicitly narrating the unmasking we are hearing. Ukulele Songs removes the rockstar, the activist, the raging ball of fire. It’s about the husband and father. They’re songs to be sung in the living room, the bedroom, songs to be sung around a backyard campfire just as the evening is coming to a close. They’re songs for cold breezes and glowing embers.

As if to exorcise the ghost of the band that typically defines him, Vedder begins Ukulele Songs with a Pearl Jam song that opened a different album: “Can’t Keep”, a song whose swirling, building atmosphere once introduced us to the weighty, intimidating Riot Act. Where that version sounded like the futile struggle of an individual forced to conform, however, the version on Ukulele Songs feels like freedom. The tightly-strung strings ring an insistent, kinetic alarm under Vedder’s baritone, and when Vedder sings “you can’t keep me here”, you believe him this time. This is a different man than the one we’ve come to know.

That out of the way, Vedder is freed to tell us about the difficulties and joys of relationships, of fatherhood, of love in general. He begins, as is his tendency, with the difficulties: “Sleeping By Myself” reveals the heartbreak of discovering the betrayal of a lover, while “More Than You Know” starts out like a sweet little love song until Vedder’s obsession becomes clear as the unrequited nature of that love reveals itself.

Eventually, the album turns. “Longing to Belong”, the album’s first single and halfway point, is where the rays of hope shine through, a sentiment underscored by the striking cello work that lends some weight to the ukulele. “I may be dreaming, but I’m longing to belong to you,” he sings, and then he lets the ukulele take over in a joyous little coda. “Light Today” also uses a sound other than the ukulele, but this time it’s not an instrument—it’s the ocean. “I saw the light today,” Vedder sings, and you know he won’t give up until he finds his happy ending.

And then he does! First he duets with Chan Marshall on a campy but sweetly-performed cover of “Tonight You Belong to Me”, following that up with a serviceable Leonard Cohen impression on another cover, “Dream a Little Dream”. It’s a finish that suggests that all the heartbreak and hope and struggle that came before was worth the outcome.

It leaves you feeling happy for a man who has found peace.

*** By Mike Schiller, Pop Matters ***