Songfacts®:

• Pearl Jam released "Angel" as part of their 1993 holiday single sent to fan club members. It's a rarity - they played the song live a few times from 1992-1994 and revived it for two more shows in 2016.
• Dave Abbruzzese, who was Pearl Jam's drummer from 1991-1994, wrote this song with lead singer Eddie Vedder soon after Abbruzzese moved to Seatle to join the band.
  
  "I came up with this little thing on guitar," he explained in a Songfacts interview. :I had a cassette recorder and I recorded the guitar part onto that. And then I played that cassette through another jam box, played to it, and recorded it to another jam box, so it was two guitar parts. And then at the next rehearsal I said, 'Hey Ed, I have this idea,' and I handed him the tape. The next morning, he handed me a cassette back and it had his vocal lines on it. It was incredible.
  
  Then when we were in London Bridge recording the re-recorded version of 'Even Flow' and we ran through the songs from Ten so we could hear how they were sitting, we recorded 'Breath' and 'Alone' and a couple of other things. There was some time and someone's guitar was sitting there, so I recorded the guitar part and Eddie recorded the vocals. The song blew everybody away."
• The B-side is a song called "Ramblings," also known as "F--k Me In My Brain," a noisy, discordant rant recorded live at a show in November 1993.