Eddie Vedder's
Into the Wild is a collection of nine original songs and two covers for Sean Penn's film of the same name, based on Jon Krakauer's novel. The novel and film are concerned with the short life of Christopher J. McCandless, an honor student and athlete who literally walked away from his life, donated his 24,000 dollars in savings to Oxfam, and left what he perceived to be a sick society behind. He stepped into the hinterlands of Alaska and never returned. He eventually died of starvation. Penn handpicked
Vedder to score the project.
Vedder in turn came up with this collection of folksy, rootsy tunes where rock & roll makes fleeting appearances (most notably on the opener, "Setting Forth," and the first single, "Hard Sun"). It's a true solo project in that he played virtually everything on the set, and had help in only two places, backing vocals by Corin Tucker on "Hard Sun" (written by Gordon Peterson), and a little extra acoustic guitar assistance and backing vocals from Jerry Hannan on "Society," a tune Hannan authored. There are no enormous emotive vocal explosions like there are on
Pearl Jam records save for one restrained attempt near the end of the album. As the cycle begins on "Setting Forth" ("Be it of no concern/Point of no return/Go forward in reverse/This I will recall/Every time I fall..."), the notion of walking away is one of "for good." The rest of the record deals with existential questions of losing everything in order simply to lose it and find something undetermined instead, rather than in terms of absolute "freedom."
Vedder does a fine job of letting the listener know the cost in "No Ceiling" and "Far Behind." On "Long Nights," one gets the picture that the singer is whistling past the graveyard: "Have no fear/For when I'm alone/I'll be better off/Than I was before/I've got this life/I'll be around to grow/Who I was before/I cannot recall/Long nights allow/Me to feel I'm falling/I am falling...." ~ Thom Jurek