Red Mosquito

Strat wrote:I'll retract the guitars for you trag. I've got this

mikejasond wrote:I still think this album would be even better if they removed the Dark Matter song and changed nothing else. It just doesn't seem to suit the flow of the album which is working well up to that point, it's the worst song on the album IMO, it doesn't sound like any of the other ones to me.... and I think Wreckage into Won't Tell would be a more natural transition

Ms Harmless wrote:Dark Matter is to Dark Matter, as Jeremy is to Ten; a wild card that couldn't be removed

Ms Harmless wrote:Dark Matter is to Dark Matter, as Jeremy is to Ten; a wild card that couldn't be removed

Matters wrote:WFS

Setting Sun
React Respond
Won’t Tell
SoF
Got to Give
Something Special
Running
Dark Matters
Wreckage
Upper Hand

daft twat wrote:

Matters wrote:WFS

Setting Sun
React Respond
Won’t Tell
SoF
Got to Give
Something Special
Running
Dark Matters
Wreckage
Upper Hand

Insane take

Matters wrote:WFS

Setting Sun
React Respond
Won’t Tell
SoF
Got to Give
Something Special
Running
Dark Matters
Wreckage
Upper Hand

So Stone, you’re now a couple of months into touring Dark Matter – and two dates down specifically on the European/UK run. How is life in Pearl Jam right now?
“The band’s in a great place. From my perspective, you can hear the vitality in Dark Matter and the energy of it – we’re clearly excited about the music. The new songs are sounding good next to the old songs so we’re all generally in a place of, ‘Wow, this is everything we could have ever hoped for!’ Ed and Jeff have also designed new lighting and staging which is so cool. Dublin was a great first show, we hadn’t played together in three weeks… You know, you can walk out onstage after [that break] and go, ‘I don’t know how to play’ (laughs)!”

Does that really ever happen to you?
“You can start and not really be together for a second and you go, ‘Wow, this is how close it is to not working!’ In Dublin, the crowd were gorgeous and the Manchester crowd were so good to us – they were just like, ‘We’re not going to go home without having a good time’ and that was their decision to make that happen. Obviously, Ed had some frog in this throat, he was sick from something. It was hard for him, but it felt a little bit like one of those old, wild drunken club gigs, where it’s like, ‘The wheels are falling off, but it’s still fun!’ And for a guy with a cold, Eddie still sang great! I also loved when Mike McCready was unhinged [in Manchester]. He was speaking in tongues, basically – he gets so wound up and all of a sudden he really loses himself. And then it’s something more than just guitar playing. He’s communing.”

Getting people to enjoy a new song on record is one thing, but bringing it into step with a beloved back catalogue is another. Do you have any sense of which Dark Matter songs are going down best live?
“Literally, the whole record is fun – and that’s different for me. Normally, we try to play everything off a new record and there are some songs that we haven’t learned to play live – something doesn’t quite feel right. But all of the songs from Dark Matter are working. That’s all about the work that we put in writing them and arranging them. Wreckage feels great to play.”

Out of curiosity, you’ve played every song on Dark Matter live multiple times except Got To Give, which has only been aired once. That track, co-incidentally, only has a partial portion of its full lyrics reproduced in the album sleeve, with a big chunk of them omitted. It all makes it seem like there’s a special aura about it…
“A mystery! I love that. Let’s go with that! There’s something special about that song, whenever we play it, the universe is gonna crack open and then light will come streaming in…”

So no special reason for it being less frequent?
“We’ve rehearsed it a lot and played it once. Ed is putting the setlists together and I think that one, for whatever reason, he’s just not ready to tackle.”

You told Zane Lowe that the Pearl Jam song you wished you guys would play more often is Can’t Keep, but you didn’t dwell on why. What is it about that track that speaks to you?
“That’s a special song. Eddie wrote it on the ukulele and then we did a [band] version of it. I think maybe for Ed he’s still struggling with it, like, ‘Which version do I like?’ But to me, I love the chord changes, and the dancehall beat – it has this pulse to it that that feels a good place for us to be. It has energy, it has momentum, yet the chords are simple in the way they’re coming at you. The lyrics are gorgeous.”

Matters wrote:WFS

Setting Sun
React Respond
Won’t Tell
SoF
Got to Give
Something Special
Running
Dark Matters
Wreckage
Upper Hand