For Pearl Jam die-hards, Yield (Feb. 3) will likely feel a bit like coming home again. The Seattle rock quintet's fifth album is packed with heavy ebb-and-flow arena anthems, hard, fast punk-rockers and even a few mellow ballads.

It is a stunning work from a group clearly at the top of its game.

With Yield, Pearl Jam manage the difficult feat of delivering an album that both echoes the sound that made us fans in the first place (think Ten and Vs.), yet continues the group's musical evolution (think No Code).

Pearl Jam has always been a band that's made a big noise and had something to say. Here lyricist Eddie Vedder manages to mix the personal with the political. The album includes songs of social commentary ("Do the Evolution") and songs that are extremely personal ("Faithful"). At times Vedder manages to mix the two as in "Wish List" and "No Way," the latter of which finds him reflecting in a most personal way on his very commitment to activism.

Yield was recorded with long-time PJ producer Brendan O'Brien at guitarist Stone Gossard's Seattle-based Studio Litho, as well at Bad Animals studio (also in Seattle). It leads off with the galloping "Brain of J," which the band has been playing live for some time (it was most recently road-tested during their stint opening for the Rolling Stones in Oakland). The album opener immediately establishes that, as promised, this 13-track effort is a return to Pearl Jam's more hard-rock and punk roots. Over Jack Irons' pounding drums and a Zeppelin-like guitar riff, Vedder passionately wonders, "Who's got the brain of JFK?/ What's it mean to us now?" He delivers a brilliant vocal performance, his voice rising and falling between a grunt and a falsetto. Like several of the other tracks ("Faithful," "Given to Fly"), "Brain of J" makes repeated use of PJ's signature ebb-and-flow style, raving up to almost punk speeds one minute, only to break into a slow, melodic dirge the next.

Yes, this is a rock 'n' roll album. But that doesn't mean the band has abandoned the Beatlesque studio tricks they've learned along the way. "Faithful" opens with some mellow, lounge-style drums and features eerie-by-way-of-the-echo-chamber backing vocals, multi-layered guitars and radio interference; "No Way" is haunted by a low, buzzy guitar hum; "Low Light" includes an out-of-tune barroom piano riff and the untitled eighth track is a one-minute world-beat drum 'n' mantra special effects jam as abstract as anything PJ have released to date.

While the songs are filled with the elliptical, hard-to-unravel word play that Vedder is known for, they also appear to offer a glimpse into his psyche. "We're faithful/ We all believe/ We all believe it," he sings in the classic arena rock number, "Faithful."

But in the same song, Vedder also grinds his way through this couplet: "Believe in the game controls/ That keeps us in our box of fears/ We never listen to the voice inside/ So drowned out, so drowned/ You are, you are, you are a furry thing/ And everything is you me, you, me you/ It's all related/ What's a boy to do?"

The song ends with the dedication: "Faithful to you."

Then, apparently commenting on his reputation as a recluse, in the very next song -- the slow-burn, countryish "No Way" -- Vedder sings, "There's a token of my openness/ Of my need to not disappear... I just need someone to be there for me/ I just want someone to be there for me."

In what at first seems like a reversal of the band's righteous reputation, Vedder confesses, over a funky wah-wah guitar, "Cuz I've stopped trying to make a difference/ I'm not trying to make a difference."

But moments later he blows that lie to bits: "I've stopped trying to make a difference -- no way."

"No Way" is one of several songs that show just how important drummer Jack Irons is to this band. But don't misunderstand. Irons isn't the only one that has raised the stakes. He and bassist Jeff Ament have become one of rock's great rhythm sections. And guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready deliver numerous high points, including the groovy riff that kicks in during the chorus of "Pilate," and the delicate melody that opens "Given to Fly."

The band is at its most mellow on the wistful "Wish List," a mid-tempo song with a spare backing track and a surf-styled guitar solo. Vedder delivers the lyrics with such sincerity that what would seem wimpy or maudlin in the hands of a lesser singer, comes across as a powerful personal statement: "I wish I was a neutron bomb," he sings. "For once I could go off/ I wish I was a sacrifice, but somehow still lived on." In what sounds like a playful dig at his rock star lifestyle, the singer also wishes, "I was as fortunate/ As fortunate as me."

The album reaches its emotional and musical apex with the sixth and seventh songs, "Pilate" and the searing, hard punk "Do the Evolution." The aggressive, thrusting "Pilate" evokes an Everybody Knows This is Nowhere-era Neil Young track, with it's enigmatic, spiritual lyrics and the mix of electric and acoustic guitars.

"Evolution" gets going at a hyper pace, with furious guitars and the sound of Vedder wailing. Grunting and nearly shouting his vocals over punkabilly guitars and bashing drums, the singer sounds unhinged as he spits the lyrics "I can kill cuz in God I trust" and "I'm a thief/ I'm a liar/ There's my church/ I sing in the choir," as falsetto backing vocals mimic the sound of a boys choir.

The second half of the album coasts to a mellow denouement with the up-and-down, Neil Young-influenced arena rock of "MFC," and the instant classic lighter-flicking epic rock ballads "Low Light," and "In Hiding."

Eerily, in light of the recent trial of a teenager who claimed he was inspired to classroom violence by the video for "Jeremy," the chaotic, experimental track "Push Me, Pull Me" opens with the sound of a radio breaking down and a gunshot, with Vedder evoking the sexually-charged poetry of The Doors' Jim Morrison as he recites the spoken-word couplet: "I had a false belief/ I thought I came here to stay/ We're all just visiting/ All just breaking like waves/ The oceans made me/ But who came up with love?"

Yield closes with the low-key, Beatlesque "All Those Yesterdays," a steady-climb ballad that builds to a crescendo on the back of muted horns and call-and-response vocals. [Mon., Jan. 5, 1998, 9 a.m. PST]