It’s impossible to approach a new Pearl Jam album without pausing to think of the entire scene that they came from. Since their last release, 2020’s Gigaton, we’ve lost Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, following the tragic demise of Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Chris Cornell and Scott Weiland, making Eddie Vedder the last of the big-name male grunge singers standing. He always seemed the most outside of the Seattle insiders group, though, less cursed with the lure of addiction or having skin just a layer too thin to cope with the pressures of fame and the world at large. There were always punk ethics in their dealings with the rock machine, yes, but Pearl Jam were unashamedly stadium-ready from day one, which could well be the secret to their longevity.
More than three decades in, Dark Matter finds them retracing their footsteps, with producer Andrew Watt (who recently worked with the Rolling Stones – a band with even more history – on their comeback album Hackney Diamonds) encouraging them to revisit and reevaluate the fiery, histrionic, dramatic works from their earliest and most loved albums: Ten, Vs and Vitalogy.
