Pearl Jam began the new millennium keen to show that they were not the same band who had helped define the music of the previous decade. Binaural, the Seattle legends’ sixth record, was released in mid-May, 2000, and turns 25 this month. The idea was that it would signify some sort of fresh start for Eddie Vedder & co., more exploratory and experimental than their already-exploratory and experimental previous two albums (No Code and Yield).
They have never been a band who traded happily on past glories, mixing it up each time in the quest to introduce a little fresh magic dust into the equation, and on Binaural the reset was double-pronged. One major difference since Yield was that ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron was now behind the kit. Another key change was that after working with producer Brendan O’Brien on every album since the all-conquering Vs., they now had a new face manning the mixing desk. Tchad Blake, celebrated for bringing a dynamic sound to records from Tom Waits, Tracey Chapman and more, was on board. His approach to recording was the technique from which the album took its title: binaural recording was a method that used two microphones to create a 3D stereo sound. “Tchad has a very distinctive way of recording the sound of the room,” Eddie Vedder said in the band tome Pearl Jam Twenty. “We were interested in exploring that atmosphere. A lot of the time on Binaural, it’s almost like the listener is there in the room with us.”
