Pearl Jam, the Seattle Four’s last standing grunge band, are still powering away. The outliers of their long-haired, plaid-shirt-donning peers, they were always different for two reasons. Firstly: they harnessed an ‘everyman’ classic rock appeal that the likes of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains couldn’t necessarily tap into. Secondly: they survived.
After more than 30 years, it’d still be reductive to compare them to their origins. But on Dark Matter, Pearl Jam’s 12th studio album, they’ve readily embraced their roots and revisited their 90s prime. A decade in which they defined alt-rock in the wake of grunge, they successfully rid the shackles of the scene that birthed the band, in turn securing their legacy as one of the era’s greats with celebrated albums in Vitalogy, Vs., and No Code.
Written and recorded within the space of a three-week stint in the studio together, Dark Matter sounds like an encyclopaedic account of the band’s journey, a natural result of their collective spirit and working relationship. But there’s still scope for the future, balancing retrospection with their own expectation.
“No love lost for lost loves”, Eddie Vedder wails on the brutalising title track, which takes cues from riff-heavy contemporaries like Royal Blood and Idles, a clear indication of moving forward despite the baggage and world-weary perspective of three decades of loss. “We used to laugh, we used to sing / we used to believe”, he laments on raucous opener ‘Scared Of Fear’, yet he affirms on the plaintive ‘Wreckage’, “I no longer give a fuck [about] who’s wrong and who’s right”. Punk rock ripper ‘Running’ harks back to their Vs. golden era, as does ‘Reach, Respond’.
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Make no mistake: Dark Matter was made with stadiums in mind. But their contemplative message of making peace with your history is one that’ll resonate universally.
“We’re still looking for ways to communicate,” Vedder insists in a statement to coincide with the album’s release. “We’re at this time in our lives when you could do it or you could not do it, but we still care about putting something out there that is meaningful.”
Producer Andrew Watt – who worked with Vedder on his 2022 solo album, Earthling, going on to produce both The Rolling Stones’ and Ozzy Osbourne’s recent records too – recognises the sum of Pearl Jam’s parts. Chest-beating choruses and liberated guitar riffs are abundant, with Stone Gossard and Mike McCready galvanised by each other’s urgency. Matt Cameron’s cavernous drum parts add the requisite heft to ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Waiting For Stevie’. Vedder’s vocals are as muscular and evocative as ever, growling like Roger Daltrey in his heyday on ‘Got To Give’.
In wrestling with history and hope for what comes next on Dark Matter, Pearl Jam have made their greatest work this century.
Photo credit: Danny Clinch
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