Dark Matter: Official Album Thread

[Ms Harmless]

"girls... pop music... ewww"

Ms Harmless, in the circle jerk that is RM at times, you keep me sane. Thank you.

[RockPusher]

Reviews like this use a TON of words to communicate very little. This guy needs to read Smart Brevity.

That was not a real review. Just lecherous being a stump.

[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.

What AI tool did you use to generate that masterful piece of poetry?

It's not AI it's a legit review

[lecherouslittlestump]

Reviews like this use a TON of words to communicate very little. This guy needs to read Smart Brevity.

That was not a real review. Just lecherous being a stump.

That is not true and I do not take kindly to bring called a liar.

Choose your next words wisely.

[Ms Harmless]

honestly the way Ed can't stop talking about his daughters' faves might be my favourite thing about him rn, it's adorable

[WaitingForBluey]

Lech, how long did you spend on writing that?
You're actually a pretty good (fiction) writer

[RockPusher]

Reviews like this use a TON of words to communicate very little. This guy needs to read Smart Brevity.

That was not a real review. Just lecherous being a stump.

That is not true and I do not take kindly to bring called a liar.

Choose your next words wisely.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6656-kid-a/

mashing some Pearl Jam keywords with Radiohead review does not equal "a real review"

[Monkey_Driven]

Waiting on those MOJo scans...

[Jaeti]

First review is in..MOJO

I think I hear Ed singing "I'll be the last one standing" in the last song on the metal door leak. I've been looking forward to this song the most. Got to Give, it is.

I know the part you're talking about, and now I'm gonna have to go listen and see if that's what I hear, too.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[stip]

the limited reports weve gotten on the album really highlight that closer. I like the idea of manic melancholy

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Monkey_Driven]

All this Swift/Bieber context is gross/hysterical. So much How Vedder Got His Groove Back energy around the very inception of this album.

Part of it is media creation. Another part is Ed just being into what his kids like.

The marketing around this is likely to be similar to the S/T rollout, I'd imagine. Pearl Jam is back to rocking again (and sounding like shit with bad production)!

[stip]

from the ashes of their youth…

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[RockPusher]

All this Swift/Bieber context is gross/hysterical. So much How Vedder Got His Groove Back energy around the very inception of this album.

I would perhaps be able to take any of your critical commentary seriously if you didn't latch on to every single angle that rips the band.

[Release_Me]

First review is in..MOJO

I think I hear Ed singing "I'll be the last one standing" in the last song on the metal door leak. I've been looking forward to this song the most. Got to Give, it is.

I know the part you're talking about, and now I'm gonna have to go listen and see if that's what I hear, too.

It's at 3:34. I can hear "last one standing" to begin that clip.

[tommy]

Did we ever find out what Andrew Watt did to Trag to turn him into such a maniac?

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now