If anything, Pearl Jam are vigilant and hopeful -- if sometimes inconsistent -- pragmatists. They're empowered by platinum and unembarrassed by their sense of mission, willing to risk tripping over their own hard line to make a vital point. And they're not so self-righteous as to deny that, yes, success has it's privileges. For example, if you can't put out a glorious , guiltless, mad blend of tunes and weird tangents like No Code when your at the top, what's the point of swimming through all the sewage to get there.

Actually "No Code" -- Pearl Jam's forth album, not counting "Mirror Ball", last year's collaboration with Neil Young -- is abrupt in it's mood swings almost to the point of vertigo. In the first song "Sometimes," Eddie Vedder sings as if he's locked in a confessional, talking to God and wrestling his own bruised and confused irritated ego ("Seek my part/Devote myself/My small self/Like a book amongst the many on the a shelf") in the pregnant atmosphere of Jeff Ament's gently zooming bass and drummer Jack Irons' lightly hissing cymbals. Later Vedder into the 62 second blitz "Lukin" (a nod to Mudhoney bassist Matt Lukin?) with such blurred agitation that the words just come out like bloody spittle. The Indo-Bo Didley glow of "Who You Are," a buoyant electric variation on Vedder's recent collaborations with Pakistani vocal god Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, melts into the black, choleric-guitar clamor of "In My Tree." To get to the sweet, protective ardor of Vedder's closing carol, "Around The Bend," you've got to downshift from guitarists Stone Gossard's punk-rop romp "Mankind" and soak in the echo pool of the narration-with-chant piece "I'm Open."

The cumulative impact of all this twist and shout doesn't hit you straightaway. "No Code" doesn't quite have the concentrated, brawling force of "Vs." or the focused sweep of "Vitalogy." The album is certainly a big awkward leap from the burnished, arena-ripe sheen of "Ten." But in it's own brash, off-center way, No Code is a real gas -- charged with pungent declaration and heaving guitars; warm and even a little wry in low throttle ; and elastic in it's attack and intimate in it's tension. It is the kind of impulsive, quixotic, provocative ruckus that has become rare in a moderen-rock mainstream largely distinguished by weary fatalism and anxiety over quick career burnout. As a record, as a declaration of honor, "No Code" basically means no rule books, no limits and, above all, no fear. That doesn't mean no fun - "Smile" sounds so much like Neil Young With Crazy Horse outtake that you'll initially think someone goofed at the processing plant - or no questions. "Is there room for both of us/ Both of us apart?" Vedder queries with rubbed-raw enunciation in "Hail, Hail," measuring the strength and resilience of good, honest affection against the staccato punch of Gossard's and Mike McCready's guitars and Irons' urgent, emphatic drumming. Originally, in the "Ten" days, I thought Vedder rendered too much of his disquiet in mumbled, indistinct angst, more implied than indicating argument. I was wrong. He may sound like he's just had his tonsils torn out in "Habit," but it suits the dirty, breathless crush of the music and the schizo vigor - part outraged disbelief, part acidic wit - of Vedder's crusted pleading: "Another Habit like an unwanted friend/ I'm so happy with my righteous self."

Contrary to his reputation, Vedder isn't a complainer, certainly not on record. When he declares, "All hail the lucky ones/ I refer to those in love," in "Hail, Hail," he's not being a wretched smartass - he means it. If Vedder can't help but strive for things that seem to be just out of his reach, well, that's hardly a character flaw. It's a sign of life. So is pain. At first, "Off He Goes" sounds like another page torn from the Neil Young Hymnal. It's elegant, acoustic simplicity is deceiving, though. With a humor and confidence that he rarely get's credit for, Vedder describes a man not unlike himself -- at least, his public image - but from the point of view of an old puzzled friend: "Know a man/ His face seems pulled and Tense....So I approach with tact/ Suggest that he should relax." In the guy's "perfectly unkept clothes...his perfectly unkempt hope," Vedder tartly nails the narcissism that is defiantly part of making theater out of hurt. He also points out with quiet insistence of his misery, as in much of life, context is everything: "For he still smiles/ and he still strong/ Nothings changed but the surrounding bullshit/ That has grown." "No Code" Sticks out of the surrounding bullshit - major-label rock albums that are two years in the marketing exercises in disguise; the ideology bickering in the indie sector that makes a day in the Russian Parliament seem like a love feast -- with roughhouse aplomb. It may or may not end up on Top 100 lists' in 20 years time, but it sounds right for now, a midterm report from a band in fine, reckless fettle. "are we getting something out of this/ All encompassing trip?" Vedder wonder's in "Present Tense" as the band summons up the grace and force of Jimi Hendrix's freak flag anthem "If 6 was 9." That depends on what your willing to put in to it.