Almost 20 years after Pearl Jam first released their debut album, Ten, the band has rereleased the genre-defining album with both a pre-mastering of the original album, a directors-cut like remix and a full video of their previously unleashed performance on MTV’s “Unplugged.”

Upon its release, Ten thrust the grunge scene into the mainstream. Four songs charted as singles and the album itself sold 12 million copies.

While Ten was the first major release for grunge music, it did not earn the popularity till almost a year after its release. In the meantime, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released and went on to top charts and define a generations of those listening to and playing popular music.

While both Pearl Jam and Nirvana are both easily categorized as grunge, a genre that rejected the excesses and synthesizers of ’80s pop, the bands share few similarities.

A hybrid attitude of bare-bones punk and do-it-yourself alternative was a similar starting point for two different approaches. Pearl Jam’s focus on guitars musicianship, with its accompanying riffs, solos and jam-band like conclusions bear little resemblances to Nirvana’s Ramones-reminiscent, short and structured pop-sensibilities.

Pearl jam guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike Cready operate like a pair of ’70s classic rockers with a bit of The Cure’s melancholy. The epic solos, found on numerous tracks in Ten, most notably “Alive” are simultaneously full of exploding energy and introspection.

It takes a supreme talent like vocalist Eddie Vedder to even register over such accomplished musicianship. However, Vedder, whose imitators still fill the airwaves, almost overpowers his band. A modern Hamlet with a microphone, Vedder delivers powerful performances of his surprisingly dark thoughts of alienation and abuse. Yet, much like Ian Anderson’s work on the monumental Aqualung, it is easy to be captivated and sing-along without grasping the content of the somber lyrics.

The remixed version of Ten is only a slight modification of the original. Since the album’s release, the band has come to think of it as being overproduced, with too many overdubs and effects. The new versions of Ten contains all the same tracks-there was no rerecording, but removes much of the gloss to make Pearl Jam’s debut album more low-fi and personal. While it is an improvement over the original, the changes mostly would go unnoticed by someone not familiar with the original.

The third disc is a DVD containing the bands performance, made up mostly of songs from Ten, on MTV’s “Unplugged” series. The show featured popular bands that came in and played near-entirely acoustic sets of their hits. Vedder’s emotional vocal’s are the perfectly compliment to the stripped down band. The rest of the band could have let itself take the backseat to Vedder, but all the members shine here. The excellently produced video captures the delicate energy of the bands performance. Gossard and McCready play their guitars seated and with a quiet intensity. Dave Krusen gracefully draws sound from his cymbals and drums with an aesthetic precision.

This package is a worthy addition to the library of any Pearl Jam or alt-rock fan.