Ten was Pearl Jam’s first record, released in 1991, and for a debut it carries an unusual amount of grief. The band had formed out of loss, and you can hear that weight settle across the album, even in the songs built to fill arenas.

It’s the sound of a group still figuring out who they are, which turns out to be its own kind of power. The guitars reach back toward blues and classic rock rather than chasing the scene around them. Vedder sings like the words cost him something. And the band recorded it before the world had decided what they were supposed to be, which is part of why it still sounds like nobody performing for anybody.

The hits came later and stayed. But the album works best taken whole, as the document of a band that arrived already knowing what it wanted to protect.