10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Grunge Music

It was never going to be easy for Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard to start over after Mother Love Bone. While Temple of the Dog helped tide them over in the waiting period, losing someone with Andy Wood's stage charisma was going to be impossible to replace, and no Andy impersonator was going to last very long. Stone was still writing riffs though, and his demo landed in the hands of a kid from San Diego named Eddie Vedder.

Coming up to jam with the rest of the guys, what turned into Pearl Jam's debut album was them just starting to perform together in public, keeping some parts of Mother Love Bone's sound and making it sound a lot more anthemic. Although the lyrics to songs like Even Flow and Jeremy are not for the faint of heart, the riffs behind them feel like a tribute to the '70s era of rock and roll, from Mike McCready's Jimi Hendrix like guitar wails to the rhythm guitars sounding like a mix between Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Aerosmith at the exact same time.

This may stand as Pearl Jam's most successful album, but it was never meant to be the album that set the world on fire, with Eddie describing it as just an excuse to get the band out on the road and play the songs to the people directly. There was much more ground to cover from this record onward, but it's hard to really go wrong when this is the foundation that you have to stand on.