since 2000's Binaural, while it reached number two in the U.S., selling 279,564 copies in its first week. It was held off the top spot by the Tool album, 10,000 Days. As of July 2009, the album has sold 750,000 copies in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan. Pearl Jam is considered a comeback hit, outselling 2002's Riot Act - by 2009, 750,000 copies as opposed to Riot Acts 508,000- and ranking 90th in Billboards list of the 200 best-selling albums of 2006. It has been certified gold by the RIAA. Critical response According to Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 74, based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." The album was named in Rolling Stones top 50 albums of the year at number 13. Rolling Stone staff writer David Fricke gave Pearl Jam four out of five stars, calling it the band's best album in ten years. He said it's "the most overtly partisan—and hopeful—record of their lives," adding that it's "as big and brash in fuzz and backbone as Led Zeppelin's Presence." Allmusic staff writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album four and a half out of five stars, saying that "Pearl Jam has embraced everything they do well, whether it's their classicist hard rock or heart-on-sleeve humanitarianism." Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+, saying that Vedder's "passionate howl seems more valuable now, pitted against the navel-gazing emo whine that's commandeered the landscape," and he went on to say that "in a world full of boys sent to do a man's job of rocking, Pearl Jam can still pull off gravitas." Jon Pareles of The New York Times said, "Now as ever, Pearl Jam takes itself seriously. But it delivers that seriousness not with the sodden self-importance of rock superstardom, but with the craft and hunger of a band still proving itself on the spot." PopMatters writer Michael Metivier gave the album a 9/10 rating and viewed it as a progression in "melody and songcraft" over the band's previous work, writing that it "more consistently achieves the grandeur, rage, and beauty they've always pursued, throughout its entirety". Brian D. Schiller of Slant Magazine gave the album three and a half out of five stars. He stated that "the album is at best another good step toward their