Dark Matter

Pearl Jam

explicit

Released on 19/04/2024 by Pearl Jam - Monkeywrench
Main artists: Pearl Jam
Genre: Rock

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To record Pearl Jam's twelfth album, the band and producer Andrew Watt settled into Shangri-La, the Malibu studio that was the setting for Martin Scorsese's interviews with The Band for The Last Waltz and is now owned by Rick Rubin. "I can't tell you how much it meant to be in that spot," Eddie Vedder—who calls the documentary "my introduction to so much music"—told Mojo. "It was like mining energy in a safe place." The mine was, apparently, deep.

Pearl Jam, and Vedder in particular, sounds reinvigorated. "React, Respond" is one of the heaviest songs the band has put out in years, with a menacing melody, punk harmonies and Vedder’s ratatat vocals that lead to an all-mighty shout. The title track is proto-grunge stomp á la vintage Mudhoney, and 59-year-old Vedder sounds three decades younger as he wails, "It's strange these days/ When everybody else pays/ For someone else's mistake." You can feel the five members taking joy in riding the groove of "Waiting for Stevie," a stand-out that sounds beamed from Lollapalooza 1992. A blistering two-minute slap in the face, "Running" taps into a punk-shout chorus and finds Vedder in fight-or-flight mode—"Got me running, got me running/ But the race, it never ends/ Got me running, or else I'm done in," he sings before arriving at breathless triumph: "Now watch me walk off, so see you fuck off."

It's not all flash and fury, though. With its stuttering rhythm and snaking melody, "Won't Tell" has a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers feel (Vedder has covered their work many times and even performed with the band before Petty's 2017 death). "Wreckage" evokes '90s college-rock jangle. "Something Special," an ear-worm that shuffles and swings, is ready for cool-dad wedding dances (longtime fans will either love it or hate it). Vedder goes all in on the positivity and love, singing to his daughters, "I'm looking up so proud/ The one I used to hold is oh-so special … And someday you may find yourself in the place that I now do/ And someway you're going to have to let it go." And, yes, the spirit of The Band seeped in on "Upper Hand"; it's in no way a tribute-band song, but the vibe is there—moody and brooding like the ghost of Robbie Robertson was in the room, before it takes off for the races in a show of epic Mike McCready guitar bluster and crashing drums. Like The Band, the sum of Pearl Jam's parts is great, and "Scared of Fear" shows how vital everyone is to the alchemy. Built around a killer riff from rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard, the song highlights bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron's stop-start rhythm, McCready's searing lead guitar and a particular urgency from Vedder, singing about the old days: "We used to laugh, we used to sing, we used to crash, we used to believe." There's still plenty of life left here. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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Dark Matter

Pearl Jam

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Scared Of Fear