Vedder's 'Wild' barely gets going

Eddie Vedder's solo debut starts out strongly with the appropriately titled "Setting Forth," a jangly, rootsy spin on the music on which the Pearl Jam singer has built his career . . . and then suddenly it's over, barely a minute and a half after it began.

That's the problem with "Into the Wild." Even though the album's role as the soundtrack to Sean Penn's lost-in-the-wilderness film explains the songs' briefness - their job, first and foremost, is to complement the action on the screen - it's still frustrating to hear Vedder jettison interesting ideas almost as quickly as they come. Some tracks - including the "Dust in the Wind"-biting instrumental "Tuolumne" and "The Wolf" - aren't much more than ideas to begin with.

Better are the few fuller songs like the folky "Long Nights," where his baritone takes on an almost Bill Medley deepness atop evocative, minor-key arpeggios, and the lightly atmospheric "End of the Road," which splits the difference between song and sound painting. And in covering Indio's epically booming "Hard Sun," Vedder rescues a long-overlooked gem from oblivion, an act noble enough to nearly redeem the entire project in one flash.

MARC HIRSH