Dark Matter: Official Album Thread

[Anders]

[Anders]

[Mike]

I put something special in the plumbing (dark matter)

[Anders]

I put something special in the plumming (dark matter)

You are running away with it, in this thread.

[Mike]

I put something special in the plumming (dark matter)

You are running away with it, in this thread.

Complaining about production and talking nonsense are my forte

[coptheriotact]

I feel no human touch in this. Even at their angriest Pearl Jam always had a very warm sound. This sounds like angry robots playing angry robot instruments.

[Anders]

Which song was he talking about?

[Mike]

Running - I was pretty annoyed with the production at the moment of posting so don't take it too seriously lol

[Anders]

I think it sounds like a cool song.

[Mike]

Me too! The original post began with something like "The song sounds pretty cool but..."

[Ms Harmless]

really happy with the songs we're getting so far; today I'm a bit annoyed that the darkness / heaviness we were promised has to have this poppy sheen on it, even though I don't hate the approach in itself (did it HAVE to be on Pearl Jam's "heaviest" album in a while? maybe Watt should've done LB)

[Ms Harmless]

oh well, we still haven't heard the album's best

[coptheriotact]

(did it HAVE to be on Pearl Jam's "heaviest" album in a while? maybe Watt should've done LB)

this would have been a good match.

i liked the stone interview. stone is cool.

[Anders]

Me too! The original post began with something like "The song sounds pretty cool but..."

Good to hear that. Look forward to hearing the full song.

[Val]

I'm sitting here CROSSING MY FINGEYOARRRS that these snippets are a promise instead of a deception like with Backspacer

[Ms Harmless]

do we think we'll get another one today? or is it too soon?

[VinylGuy]

The clips for “Something Special” and “Running” are not encouraging (to me) at this moment.

Crazy to believe we may long for the days of Lightning Bolt

Pff what a troll

[Anders]

Dark Matter track listing
No. Title Length
1. "Scared of Fear" 4:24
2. "React, Respond" 3:31
3. "Wreckage" 5:00
4. "Dark Matter" 3:31
5. "Won't Tell" 3:28
6. "Upper Hand" 5:57
7. "Waiting for Stevie" 5:41
8. "Running" 2:19
9. "Something Special" 4:07
10. "Got to Give" 4:37
11. "Setting Sun" 5:44

From Stone's interview, it appears that Scared Of Fear, React, Respond and Waiting For Stevie were done at the very start of their recording sessions, and were songs they were especially excited about.


"Scared of Fear’ and ‘React, Respond’ were done on the first day. We just did those one, two."

and

"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" ‘

Spoiler: show

Do you recall some of the things that came out of the first round of plugging in and messing around?

‘Scared of Fear’ and ‘React, Respond’ were done on the first day. We just did those one, two.

Let’s go through all the songs. ‘Scared of Fear’ sounds like a Stone riff. Is that yours?

Yeah, it was. It was a Stone two-parter, you know? It evolved. Ed was like, maybe this one part goes two times or three times. We just sat down and hammered it out and it was recorded during the first day.

‘React, Respond’ has some heavy Police and Devo vibes.

Yeah, it’s the best. I love it because my part is so caveman on it. I’m just hitting those big open E’s throughout the verses. It’s so fun.

‘Wreckage’ dials down the aggressiveness temporarily, with shades of Tom Petty.

Andrew and Ed worked that out together. One morning, we came in and they had something going on. That was definitely a Shangri-La track. That one probably has the biggest build for me personally, in terms of hearing it at first and thinking, it’s kind of an Ed song. I wasn’t quite aware of its potency until later. Andrew encouraged me to play this little harmonic, acoustic part almost like a Cure melody. I’ve been playing along with the song to relearn it and I’m really looking forward to playing it live. It’s a really powerful lyric and I think we did a really great job of taking something and really pushing it to its limit.

‘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.

There’s a guitar effect similar to what was used on [the 2002 Pearl Jam song] ‘You Are.’

Yeah, it’s got that Eventide tremolo guitar effect on my part throughout it. It’s bouncing around in the rhythm and creating a backbeat.

‘Won’t Tell’ is like Pearl Jam refracted through the Cure or U2.

It’s really special. Jeff wrote that song. He told me he had a dream about Joni Mitchell, and maybe even Neil Young was there. She said something about the lyric ‘waiting for your message to come. Can you heal? Can you feel the chains in my heart?’ Then Ed took all of that and we reinterpreted the whole thing. It evolved quite a bit from where Jeff had it, but we knew that lyric and we knew the spirit of it. We started going down the path of those 16th notes, with Matt playing that hi-hat groove that’s reminiscent of the Cure or U2 where you groove into a beat and the drums become a little bit more of a backbeat. Ed’s vocal is just soaring. It’s gorgeous. It’s one of those songs that’s easy to play. It kind of plays itself. It really does have a different quality to it. It’s a real amalgamation of, being inspired by a dream, starting with a rudimentary arrangement and then us taking it and completing it. It was really fun to do.

‘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.

There’s a little snippet of something after ‘Stevie’ and before the next song, ‘Running.’ What is that?

It’s a little segue now, but we worked on it as a song that was never finished from that first session. We all loved one particular part of it, which Jeff, Andrew and I tweaked a little bit. In the end, we just decided it should become a transition.

On ‘Running,’ it’s rare to hear a Pearl Jam song with this chant-y, gang vocal chorus. It just sounds like fun.

Jeff had the main parts for that one, and we worked it over as a band. I love the bridge. I don’t know what the hell those chords are that Mike’s playing, but it sounds original. It’s one of the last ones we recorded at Shangri-La, and it was fun to come up with one more uptempo song. Ed’s vocal dexterity here and on a few other spots on the album is just stunning. Same thing goes with that second verse of ‘React, Respond’ where he’s almost frickin’ rapping.

Ed previously said that [touring member] Josh Klinghoffer had a big hand in ‘Something Special.’

‘Something Special’ was recorded in that first session at Andrew’s house and those are Josh’s initial chords. We moved things around a little bit, but the song really came from him. I love that it’s a song about parenting and kids, but I also love that Josh Klinghoffer joins the band live on tour and also writes a song for the album. I just think that’s fuckin’ cool.

We’re in the home stretch. What can you tell us about ‘Got To Give?’

That’s an Ed song. It definitely has kind of a Who vibe, and it rocks. I have a little guitar lead in there that I really like a lot — a fun, melodic thing that happens at the end of the bridge. I’m looking forward to playing this song live.

‘Setting Sun’ is an epic closer. Did it naturally feel like the perfect way to end the album?

We were looking for a vibe that felt percussive and cool and a little bit hypnotic without trying to get to any huge destination, although I think we got there anyway. The mood is supposed to be this in-between state. This is another song that’s opening doors for us and I think we can do more of, without feeling like we have to get crazy.

The album has a vaguely unsettling ambient intro, which evokes the ‘Master/Slave’ intro and outros on Ten.

Jeff and Andrew came up with that. We wanted to open the album with ‘Scared of Fear,’ but that would have been a dead start to set the table. So, we built this little intro, and I’m sure Andrew was excited about having something that harkened back to Ten a little bit.

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

[Ms Harmless]

so they threw out the "more cerebral" ones? I like cerebral; sad!

[Birds in Hell]

Production aside, the quality of these rips is totally unlistenable.