Dark Matter: Official Album Thread

[VinylGuy]

Jeff is a very cool guy really, he is doing different stuff all the time, music, painting, skating, making skate parks, he is fucking awesome.

[stip]

Would be hilarious if Pearl Jam made a middle ages themed album.

That’s what Lightning Bolt is

[Mike]

Would be hilarious if Pearl Jam made a middle ages themed album.

That’s what Lightning Bolt is

Heaaar the Siiireeeens

[Mike]

I am my fatheers sooon

[Mike]

to and fro the pendulum throws

[Mike]

swallowed whole

[Mike]

i'll be sleeping by myseeeelf tonight

[Mike]

yellooow moon on the riise

[coptheriotact]

These would have worked as the album theme

Possibly more than red and black allumiati clip art

[Ms Harmless]

yeah I think this art direction would have increased my appreciation of the album by 70%

[Mike]

[Mike]

[Bi_3]

This thread just became iconic

[oneway23]

Mike, you're doing tremendous work here. Just wanted to acknowledge that.

[Ms Harmless]

I always felt that if PJ wanted to go more "poppy" in sound, they should make their aesthetic / art direction more weird to offset it; as long as an album is a whole package of artistic expression, that would have been cool; I think S/T and Backspacer sort of did that

[thesound]

30 days to go!

[stip]

Would be hilarious if Pearl Jam made a middle ages themed album.

That’s what Lightning Bolt is

Heaaar the Siiireeeens

Excellent work across the board

[joostone]

https://www.spin.com/2024/03/spin-inter ... e-gossard/

The result is an album with something to love for every iteration of Pearl Jam fan, from kick-ass rockers such as the opening one-two punch of “Scared of Fear” and “React, Respond” to the open-hearted, acoustic-flecked ballad “Wreckage” and the swaggering grooves of “Waiting for Stevie,” a “Breath”/”State of Love and Trust”-style throwback Vedder and Watt started writing while waiting hours for Stevie Wonder to show up and record a guest turn on Earthling. There are songs about the challenges of parenting (“Something Special”), being visited by Laurel Canyon legends in a dream (“Won’t Tell”) and trying to make genuine human connections at a time when such a thing seems more difficult than ever (“Setting Sun”). You’ll hear a beguiling synth intro one moment and McCready playing some serious “Yellow Ledbetter”-ish blues guitar the next — a sonic kaleidoscope of Pearl Jam past, present and future over the course of 48 minutes.

‘Dark Matter’ showcases Matt Cameron and has some tasty riffs in the vein of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. How did this song come to life?

Matt comes into the studio and tunes up his drums every morning. 90% of the time, he’ll start playing a beat just to warm up. When we heard him play what became ‘Dark Matter,’ we were like, oh my god, that’s fucking classic. We asked him to let us record it and we made a little loop. Jeff and I took that home and both of us were writing to it. We both came in the next day and played our parts. We needed a bridge, and then Mike had a bridge. We had that song in literally 24 hours, and I look at it as the lighthouse of what’s possible for the band in terms of changing our writing style and really honoring the rhythm first and foremost. I look at that as a Matt Cameron song, because I don’t know that I’ve heard a drum beat start a song like that. It feels unique. Ed’s lyric is very timely, even though I don’t know exactly what it means. It just feels good to hear somebody say that. I love that it’s really hard rock but it doesn’t feel gratuitous or fake. It feels real to me. I wrote the little [hums the descending riff in the song’s pre-chorus], and everybody’s got something in that song that’s special.

‘Upper Hand’ starts off somewhat resigned, a la ‘All Those Yesterdays or ‘Parachutes,’ but has quite a build at the end.

I had those two parts as a starting point, but that song definitely evolved too. Ed helped with the verses and they really changed a lot. The verses remind me of Bob Dylan or something like that, where it’s not so much about the melody but the delivery. I love how Ed can be so many different people and you can hear his influences, and yet it’s still him. He takes and picks from so many different places.

Even though it didn’t start with the other band members in the room, ‘Waiting for Stevie’ sounds more like early or Singles-era Pearl Jam than just about anything I’ve heard from the band in a long time.

Yes, and I think Andrew had more to do with that song than any song on the record because in a sense, it’s almost a tribute to Soundgarden. It has a riff that gives Matt Cameron the opportunity to be as great as we know him to be. I think that drum fill coming out of the bridge is probably one of the greatest drum fills of all time. There’s just no way you can’t make the Mötley Crüe sign. I love that song. It’s the way the bass line and the guitar line play against each other melodically. To me, it feels kind of like a hit, you know what I mean? I’ll be curious if it where it ends up sitting in the pantheon of favorites among Pearl Jam fans.

[Anders]

That is wonderful. RMs existence is validated for another year.

[Anders]

https://www.spin.com/2024/03/spin-inter ... e-gossard/

The result is an album with something to love for every iteration of Pearl Jam fan, from kick-ass rockers such as the opening one-two punch of “Scared of Fear” and “React, Respond” to the open-hearted, acoustic-flecked ballad “Wreckage” and the swaggering grooves of “Waiting for Stevie,” a “Breath”/”State of Love and Trust”-style throwback Vedder and Watt started writing while waiting hours for Stevie Wonder to show up and record a guest turn on Earthling. There are songs about the challenges of parenting (“Something Special”), being visited by Laurel Canyon legends in a dream (“Won’t Tell”) and trying to make genuine human connections at a time when such a thing seems more difficult than ever (“Setting Sun”). You’ll hear a beguiling synth intro one moment and McCready playing some serious “Yellow Ledbetter”-ish blues guitar the next — a sonic kaleidoscope of Pearl Jam past, present and future over the course of 48 minutes.

‘Dark Matter’ showcases Matt Cameron and has some tasty riffs in the vein of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. How did this song come to life?

Matt comes into the studio and tunes up his drums every morning. 90% of the time, he’ll start playing a beat just to warm up. When we heard him play what became ‘Dark Matter,’ we were like, oh my god, that’s fucking classic. We asked him to let us record it and we made a little loop. Jeff and I took that home and both of us were writing to it. We both came in the next day and played our parts. We needed a bridge, and then Mike had a bridge. We had that song in literally 24 hours, and I look at it as the lighthouse of what’s possible for the band in terms of changing our writing style and really honoring the rhythm first and foremost. I look at that as a Matt Cameron song, because I don’t know that I’ve heard a drum beat start a song like that. It feels unique. Ed’s lyric is very timely, even though I don’t know exactly what it means. It just feels good to hear somebody say that. I love that it’s really hard rock but it doesn’t feel gratuitous or fake. It feels real to me. I wrote the little [hums the descending riff in the song’s pre-chorus], and everybody’s got something in that song that’s special.

‘Upper Hand’ starts off somewhat resigned, a la ‘All Those Yesterdays or ‘Parachutes,’ but has quite a build at the end.

I had those two parts as a starting point, but that song definitely evolved too. Ed helped with the verses and they really changed a lot. The verses remind me of Bob Dylan or something like that, where it’s not so much about the melody but the delivery. I love how Ed can be so many different people and you can hear his influences, and yet it’s still him. He takes and picks from so many different places.

Even though it didn’t start with the other band members in the room, ‘Waiting for Stevie’ sounds more like early or Singles-era Pearl Jam than just about anything I’ve heard from the band in a long time.

Yes, and I think Andrew had more to do with that song than any song on the record because in a sense, it’s almost a tribute to Soundgarden. It has a riff that gives Matt Cameron the opportunity to be as great as we know him to be. I think that drum fill coming out of the bridge is probably one of the greatest drum fills of all time. There’s just no way you can’t make the Mötley Crüe sign. I love that song. It’s the way the bass line and the guitar line play against each other melodically. To me, it feels kind of like a hit, you know what I mean? I’ll be curious if it where it ends up sitting in the pantheon of favorites among Pearl Jam fans.

"Gigaton was made over a long period of time. It was done from individual demos, using the parts that were raw and rough from them that we loved, but also adding onto them. It was a cool process, but this was the anti-that. This was, you barely bring in a riff, but in 30 minutes, here’s two or three chords you might not have even known how to play but they sound cool in the bridge. We encouraged Matt Cameron to be more and more aggressive. Let’s make these feel like they’re being enacted right in the moment. That was what was exciting about the process with Andrew.

At first, we were there for probably 10 days. We knocked those first two songs out and I think we recorded the basics for ‘Waiting for Stevie’ on day two or three. We recorded three or four more quickly like that. As we got home and listened, some of those started to fall back into being not as urgent and more cerebral … maybe more arranged. They didn’t have the excitement we got from that first batch, where it was like everybody jumping off the cliff together. We got what we felt like was maybe half a record done or close to it, and then we hung. Lots of things went on. Ed went on tour. I don’t know whether Andrew finished with Ozzy first and then made the Rolling Stones record, but he’s constantly working. There was a scheduling thing where we just didn’t get back together again right away. The next round was a year later and we said, okay, we’re gonna finish the record. We’ve got two weeks at Shangri-La."

This was really interesting.