Review: Pearl Jam, at the top of its game, in Camden

"I change by not changing at all," Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder sang at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden on Thursday night.

Written more than 15 years ago, the words (part of "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town") have emerged as a credo in retrospect. By simply sticking to what they do best over the long haul, Pearl Jam has managed to surf the waves of a shifting culture and emerge as that rarest of entities: a long-running rock band still performing at the top of their game.

The band's stage set offers no pyrotechnics or set pieces, nor even the large-scale video monitors that have become ubiquitous at live events, just five musicians (plus an occasional sixth), a painted backdrop and a forest of amplifiers. To judge from the cheers of recognition that arose a few seconds into almost every song in a two-and-a-half hour set, they needed nothing else.

Fireworks were supplied by Vedder, who leaned into his microphone like a sailor bucking a headwind, and guitarist Mike McCready, who combined fluid, blues-tinged solos (including one played with his instrument behind his head) with a repertoire of leaps, bounds and kicks. Along with Vedder's magnetic wail, the interplay between McCready and Stone Gossard's guitars helped put Pearl Jam on the map, and in recent years they've honed it to a point. On "Severed Hand," from the band's self-titled 2006 album, the chugging riffs that propel the song break off abruptly and start up again, gathering force with each new attack.

Vedder's voice was made to fill arenas, but between songs he reminisced about squeezing onto the tiny stage at the old J.C. Dobbs', and celebrated its recent re-christening (although someone should tell him that the Pontiac was never "a coffee shop for people who wear J. Crew.") For a few years in the mid-'90s, the band willingly deflated its initial success, shunning traditional promotional channels and spending years in a futile but noble crusade against Ticketmaster. But any reluctance to seize the rock-god mantle has long since vanished. The way the band tore into the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me," there was little doubt they saw themselves as fit to carry the torch.

Openers Ted Leo and the Pharmacists raced through a set of rapid-fire songs that ranged from Celtic punk rock to terse new wave anthems. Muddy sound blunted the racing guitars of "Sons of Cain," but after a few songs the mix was adjusted, allowing Leo's impassioned tenor to rise above the fray. Venturing frequently into an anxious falsetto, Leo channeled romantic and political disillusion into catchy, frenzied songs that make it sound like losing your innocence isn't so bad after all.