rearviewmirror (greatest hits 1991-2003): Volume 2

This is the Down Side. If Volume 1 is Pearl Jam with their fists up, Volume 2 is Pearl Jam with their chest open — slower, heavier in a different way, and in some respects harder to shake. Black. Daughter. Better Man. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. Yellow Ledbetter closing it out the way it always did at the end of every show. The two volumes were deliberately split by mood — Up Side for the harder rock, Down Side for the ballads and slower cuts — and both run chronologically, which means Volume 2 is also a quiet document of a band growing up in real time across twelve years. Accio

The compilation originally dropped in 2004 and went platinum in the US. It didn’t make it to vinyl until September 2022, which means if you want this on wax, you’re working with a relatively recent pressing — gatefold sleeve, printed inner sleeves, the full treatment. Collectors who missed the first run have been hunting it since. AccioRareVinyl.com

We stock this one because it’s the kind of record that belongs in any serious collection regardless of genre preference. Pearl Jam’s catalogue holds up not because of nostalgia but because Eddie Vedder was writing about things that don’t expire — loneliness, identity, time passing. Volume 2 is where that hits hardest.