Dark Matter: Official Album Thread

[stip]

could you link or quote it?

[joostone]

First review is in..MOJO

[Farmer John]

"Refurbishing old school for the earbud generation" basically sums up the entire Dark Matter thread pretty nicely.

[Ms Harmless]

The Wipers seems like a nice analogue for "punk" Pearl Jam when they get it right

[Ms Harmless]

"Refurbishing old school for the earbud generation" basically sums up the entire Dark Matter thread pretty nicely.

that's the line that should put off anyone who's gonna be put off

[Jorge]

Damn, the Watt thing is kind of a big deal huh? Looks like every reviewer's gonna be mentioning that at the top of their blurb

[joostone]

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/sto ... terviewed/

“Stone [Gossard, guitarist] had a great riff,” bassist Jeff Ament says of opening track Scared Of Fear, a maelstrom caught on Pearl Jam’s first day with Watt in April 2021, in the basement studio of the producer’s Beverly Hills house. “It was just getting in a circle and throwing things out: ‘Let’s do this.’ Within five minutes of having the bones of the arrangement, Ed came up with the crux of the lyrics” – a feral summation of endangered joys and communion that could be about love, friendship or, in the chorus, the old Seattle (“We used to laugh/We used to sing/We used to dance/We used to believe”).

Dark Matter is Pearl Jam’s most effective resolution since 1996’s seriously eclectic No Code of their sometimes dissonant ambitions as songwriters: the commercially immediate hard rock classicism of Ten and 2006’s Pearl Jam; and that wilful experimental tilt in texture and reflection on records like 2000’s Binaural. But this is a famously idealistic band now in late-middle age, assessing unfinished business and not happy about it. “I’m feeling done in, it’s rather stunning,” Vedder snaps in Running, a two-minute Fugazi style blitz.

The singer, though, won’t give up on the rescue and renewal in music. Asked about the title character in Waiting For Stevie, a mighty wall of Ten guitars glazed with bright, harmony vocals, Vedder describes “a young girl not feeling appreciated by her peers, who finds relief and connection in music at a show,” noting his own teenage salvation when he first heard The Who’s 1973 Mod opera Quadrophenia. “I felt more understood by that record than by teachers, family or peers.”

[E.H. Ruddock]

Damn, the Watt thing is kind of a big deal huh? Looks like every reviewer's gonna be mentioning that at the top of their blurb

I like how they have to associate him with Justin Bieber in the review of another band's album

[E.H. Ruddock]

im really fucking exited about the album

im exited about the damn interview! so yeah, i want the album

so... you already moved on then, eh?

What

I've waited 10 years for this

[lecherouslittlestump]

Another review:

I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and to my memory I had never witnessed burning debris scratch across the night sky. Pearl Jam were hunched over their instruments. Eddie Vedder slowly beat on a grand piano, singing, eyes closed, into his microphone like he was trying to kiss around a big nose. Jeff Ament tapped patiently on a double bass, waiting for his cue. White pearls of arena light swam over their faces. A lazy disco light spilled artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage. The metal skeleton of the stage ate one end of Florence's Piazza Santa Croce, on the steps of the Santa Croce Cathedral. Michelangelo's bones and cobblestone laid beneath. I stared entranced, soaking in Pearl Jam's new material, chiseling each sound into the best functioning parts of my brain which would be the only sound system for the material for months.




The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap. The staccato piano chords ascended repeatedly. "I'm so scared of fear," Vedder sang like his dying words. "There was nothing to fear, nothing to hide." The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe.

The Italians surrounding me held their breath in communion (save for the drunken few shouting "Jeremy!"). Suddenly, a rise of whistles and orgasmic cries swept unfittingly through the crowd. The song, "Dark Matter," was certainly momentous, but wasn't the response more apt for, well, "Jeremy?" I looked up. I thought it was fireworks. A teardrop of fire shot from space and disappeared behind the church where the syrupy River Arno crawled. Pearl Jam had the heavens on their side.

For further testament, Chip Chanko and I both suffered auto-debilitating accidents in the same week, in different parts of the country, while blasting "Rearviewmirror" in our respective Japanese imports. For months, I feared playing the song about car crashes in my car, just as I'd feared passing 18- wheelers after nearly being crushed by one in 1990. With good reason, I suspect Pearl Jam to possess incomprehensible powers. The evidence is only compounded with Dark Matter-- the rubber match in the band's legacy-- an album which completely obliterates how albums, and Pearl Jam themselves, will be considered.



Even the heralded Ten has been nudged down one spot in Valhalla. Dark Matter makes rock and roll childish. Considerations on its merits as "rock" (i.e. its radio fodder potential, its guitar riffs, and its hooks) are pointless. Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper. And not because it's jazz or fusion or spritzy or electronic. Classifications don't come to mind once deep inside this expansive, hypnotic world. Ransom, the philologist hero of C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet who is kidnapped and taken to another planet, initially finds his scholarship useless in his new surroundings, and just tries to survive the beautiful new world.

This is an emotional, psychological experience. Dark Matter sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction. It's the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Pearl Jam hated being Pearl Jam, but ended up with the most ideal, natural Pearl Jam record yet.

"Running" opens like Close Encounters spaceships communicating with pipe organs. As your ears decide whether the tones are coming or going, Eddie Verrer's Cuisinarted voice struggles for its tongue. "Running!," Yorke belts in uplifting sighs. The first-person mantra of "There are two colors in my head" is repeated until the line between Vedder'smind and the listener's mind is erased.

Skittering toy boxes open the album's title song, which, like the track "React/Respond," shows a heavy Royal Blood influence. The vocoder lullaby lulls you deceivingly before the riotous "Wreckage." Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving theremin choirs limn. Brash brass bursts from above like Terry Gilliam's animated foot. The horns swarm as Vedder screams, begs, "Turn it off!" It's the album's shrill peak, but just one of the incessant goosebumps raisers.

After the rockets exhaust, Pearl Jam float in their lone orbit. "Waiting For Stevie" boils down "Breath" and "Porch" to their spectral essence. The string-laden ballad comes closest to bridging Vedder's lyrical sentiment to the instrumental effect. "I float down the Liffey/ I'm not here/ This isn't happening," he sings in his trademark baritone. The strings melt and weep as the album shifts into its underwater mode. "Got To Give," an ambient soundscape similar in sound and intent to Side B of Bowie and Eno's Low, calms after the record's emotionally strenuous first half.

The primal, brooding guitar attack of "Won't Tell" stomps like mating Tyrannosaurs. The lyrics seemingly taunt, "Try the best you can/ Try the best you can," before revealing the more resigned sentiment, "The best you can is good enough." For an album reportedly "lacking" in traditional Pearl Jam moments, this is the best summation of their former strengths. The track erodes into a light jam before morphing into "Upper Hand." "I'm lost at sea," Vedder cries over clean, uneasy arpeggios. The ending flares with tractor beams as Vedder is vacuumed into nothingness. The aforementioned "Won't Tell" clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's Homogenic, revealing brilliant new frontiers for the "band." For all the noise to this point, it's uncertain entirely who or what has created the music. There are rarely traditional arrangements in the ambiguous origin. This is part of the unique thrill of experiencing Dark Matter.

Pulsing organs and a stuttering snare delicately propel "Something Special." Vedder's breath can be heard frosting over the rainy, gray jam. Words accumulate and stick in his mouth like eye crust. "Walking walking walking walking," he mumbles while Mike McCready squirts whale-chant feedback from his guitar. The closing "Something Special" brings to mind The White Album, as it somehow combines the sentiment of Lennon's LP1 closer-- the ode to his dead mother, "Julia"-- with Ringo and Paul’s maudlin, yet sincere LP2 finale, "Goodnight." Pump organ and harp flutter as Vedder condones with affection, "I think you're crazy." To further emphasize your feeling at that moment and the album's overall theme, Vedder bows out with "I will see you in the next life." If you're not already there with him.

The experience and emotions tied to listening to Dark Matter are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax. It's an album of sparking paradox. It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. It will cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging inside the fold of your gray matter. The harrowing sounds hit from unseen angles and emanate with inhuman genesis. When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six men (Andrew Watt included) created this, it's clear that Pearl Jam must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over.

[Farmer John]

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/sto ... terviewed/

“Stone [Gossard, guitarist] had a great riff,” bassist Jeff Ament says of opening track Scared Of Fear, a maelstrom caught on Pearl Jam’s first day with Watt in April 2021, in the basement studio of the producer’s Beverly Hills house. “It was just getting in a circle and throwing things out: ‘Let’s do this.’ Within five minutes of having the bones of the arrangement, Ed came up with the crux of the lyrics” – a feral summation of endangered joys and communion that could be about love, friendship or, in the chorus, the old Seattle (“We used to laugh/We used to sing/We used to dance/We used to believe”).

Dark Matter is Pearl Jam’s most effective resolution since 1996’s seriously eclectic No Code of their sometimes dissonant ambitions as songwriters: the commercially immediate hard rock classicism of Ten and 2006’s Pearl Jam; and that wilful experimental tilt in texture and reflection on records like 2000’s Binaural. But this is a famously idealistic band now in late-middle age, assessing unfinished business and not happy about it. “I’m feeling done in, it’s rather stunning,” Vedder snaps in Running, a two-minute Fugazi style blitz.

The singer, though, won’t give up on the rescue and renewal in music. Asked about the title character in Waiting For Stevie, a mighty wall of Ten guitars glazed with bright, harmony vocals, Vedder describes “a young girl not feeling appreciated by her peers, who finds relief and connection in music at a show,” noting his own teenage salvation when he first heard The Who’s 1973 Mod opera Quadrophenia. “I felt more understood by that record than by teachers, family or peers.”

Plenty to get excited about here, if one were so inclined.

[Clem Halibut]

I hate reviews. They're so useless.
Just dumb filler & a random stew of words that manage to say absolutely nothing at all
I've read this blurb 3 x now and have absolutely ZERO understanding of what this album even sounds like
To say that a song could sound like both The Wipers and Big Star is absurd.
I can fucking guarantee you that Scared of Fear will sound like neither The Wipers or Big Star.
The song probably sounds more like Guy Lombardo & Black Sabbath fucked & had a love child that resembles Nick Cave.

[Ms Harmless]

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/sto ... terviewed/

“Stone [Gossard, guitarist] had a great riff,” bassist Jeff Ament says of opening track Scared Of Fear, a maelstrom caught on Pearl Jam’s first day with Watt in April 2021, in the basement studio of the producer’s Beverly Hills house. “It was just getting in a circle and throwing things out: ‘Let’s do this.’ Within five minutes of having the bones of the arrangement, Ed came up with the crux of the lyrics” – a feral summation of endangered joys and communion that could be about love, friendship or, in the chorus, the old Seattle (“We used to laugh/We used to sing/We used to dance/We used to believe”).

Dark Matter is Pearl Jam’s most effective resolution since 1996’s seriously eclectic No Code of their sometimes dissonant ambitions as songwriters: the commercially immediate hard rock classicism of Ten and 2006’s Pearl Jam; and that wilful experimental tilt in texture and reflection on records like 2000’s Binaural. But this is a famously idealistic band now in late-middle age, assessing unfinished business and not happy about it. “I’m feeling done in, it’s rather stunning,” Vedder snaps in Running, a two-minute Fugazi style blitz.

The singer, though, won’t give up on the rescue and renewal in music. Asked about the title character in Waiting For Stevie, a mighty wall of Ten guitars glazed with bright, harmony vocals, Vedder describes “a young girl not feeling appreciated by her peers, who finds relief and connection in music at a show,” noting his own teenage salvation when he first heard The Who’s 1973 Mod opera Quadrophenia. “I felt more understood by that record than by teachers, family or peers.”

Plenty to get excited about here, if one were so inclined.

yeah this sounds interesting to me

[Jorge]

im really fucking exited about the album

im exited about the damn interview! so yeah, i want the album

so... you already moved on then, eh?

What

I've waited 10 years for this

It didn't happen

[Ms Harmless]

I hate reviews. They're so useless.
Just dumb filler & a random stew of words that manage to say absolutely nothing at all
I've read this blurb 3 x now and have absolutely ZERO understanding of what this album even sounds like
To say that a song could sound like both The Wipers and Big Star is absurd.
I can fucking guarantee you that Scared of Fear will sound like neither The Wipers or Big Star.
The song probably sounds more like Guy Lombardo & Black Sabbath fucked & had a love child that resembles Nick Cave.

what I did was, listen to a song by The Wipers, then a song by Big Star, and thought "hmm yes there are PJ elements here, I can see how they might blend awkwardly together"

is this really something you can't do?

[Clem Halibut]

I hate reviews. They're so useless.
Just dumb filler & a random stew of words that manage to say absolutely nothing at all
I've read this blurb 3 x now and have absolutely ZERO understanding of what this album even sounds like
To say that a song could sound like both The Wipers and Big Star is absurd.
I can fucking guarantee you that Scared of Fear will sound like neither The Wipers or Big Star.
The song probably sounds more like Guy Lombardo & Black Sabbath fucked & had a love child that resembles Nick Cave.

what I did was, listen to a song by The Wipers, then a song by Big Star, and thought "hmm yes there are PJ elements here, I can see how they might blend awkwardly together"

is this really something you can't do?

I think it's definitely possible for Pearl Jam to sound like The Wipers or Big Star.
But to sound like both bands in one single song sounds like it would be the worst song ever.

[Ms Harmless]

I hate reviews. They're so useless.
Just dumb filler & a random stew of words that manage to say absolutely nothing at all
I've read this blurb 3 x now and have absolutely ZERO understanding of what this album even sounds like
To say that a song could sound like both The Wipers and Big Star is absurd.
I can fucking guarantee you that Scared of Fear will sound like neither The Wipers or Big Star.
The song probably sounds more like Guy Lombardo & Black Sabbath fucked & had a love child that resembles Nick Cave.

what I did was, listen to a song by The Wipers, then a song by Big Star, and thought "hmm yes there are PJ elements here, I can see how they might blend awkwardly together"

is this really something you can't do?

I think it's definitely possible for Pearl Jam to sound like The Wipers or Big Star.
But to sound like both bands in one single song sounds like it would be the worst song ever.

well apparently we have Soundgarden and Tom Petty, too, so we'll have to hold onto our butts

[Strat]

God, id love it if PJ went for a big star sound on something.

[Monkey_Driven]

I feel like reviews are often just an excuse for reviewers to show off how many bands they can name.

[vedder316]

“Stone [Gossard, guitarist] had a great riff.”

Hold me