Unlike the last few Pearl Jam albums, Dark Matter <\/i>came attached to some hype: bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Mike McCready in particular, enthused about the songwriting. Eddie Vedder worked with producer Andrew Watt on Vedder\u2019s 2022 solo album Earthling <\/i>and recruited him to work on Dark Matter<\/i>; Watt, for his part, encouraged the band members to consider collaborating on the songwriting, instead of the recent model of each member bringing in finished demos.<\/p>\n
This was an approach the band hadn\u2019t taken since Vitalogy <\/i>way back in 1994, and the joy of working together as a band again in the studio shines through in the music. Some media outlets have likened this to the band\u2019s first three records\u2014the ones that made their name, the ones that landed them in the Rock Hall of Fame\u2014but that\u2019s a lazy comparison that music writers make with every new PJ record. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll grant you that the inspiration for the harder numbers seems to come from Vs., <\/i>but every Jam record has hard, punchy numbers on it. To me, this follows the template of the underrated Binaural, <\/i>with a couple of searing rock songs to open the album (\u201cScared Of Fear\u201d and \u201cReact, Respond\u201d), a slower number (\u201cWreckage\u201d), a couple anthemic numbers and maybe an experimental track or two. In short, it\u2019s everything you want from a Jam album, which was kind of the point this time around.<\/p>\n
McCready, in particular, gets more guitar solos here than he has in a long while, and it\u2019s a joy to hear him rip on the title track and \u201cRunning,\u201d a two-minute rush of nervy energy with each band member trying to keep up with the other. Slower numbers like \u201cWon\u2019t Tell\u201d and \u201cUpper Hand\u201d sound similar to the slower numbers on Lightning Bolt <\/i>or Gigaton <\/i>and won\u2019t really stick with the listener.<\/p>\n
The best of these is \u201cSomething Special,\u201d a lovely ode from a father to his daughters: \u201cCause my heart, it aches and breaks \/ But I believe in you, it\u2019s the truth \/ Should this life knock you down \u2026 Bet on yourself, your number\u2019s oh so special \/ And when it gets fucked up, you need a helping hand \/ Do it yourself, you\u2019re not the type to need a man \/ But if you find one, he better know you\u2019re damn special.\u201d Vedder on the porch with a shotgun? That tracks. The dude turns 60 this year, after all.<\/p>\n
Also of note is \u201cWaiting For Stevie,\u201d the song that sound the most like a midtempo \u201990s alt-rock anthem; you don\u2019t think it will be special, but it ends up swelling and enveloping the listener, Vedder\u2019s wordless vocals and McCready\u2019s heroics closing the number like the best songs off Ten<\/i>. This, along with most everything else here, will sound great <\/i>in concert. <\/p>\n
Pretty much every Pearl Jam album has some sort of weird detours, and that facet is missing off Dark Matter; <\/i>only the spacey \u201cUpper Hand\u201d (Pink Floyd vibes here) and the end of \u201cStevie\u201d mark a departure, but experimentation is not the point. Rocking out as a band again is the point, and with continued listens the album grows on the listener. Prior albums all had some good songs, of course, but this is probably the group\u2019s best unified album\u2014and easily its most exciting\u2014since Backspacer, <\/i>and maybe even Binaural<\/i>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":35008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5726],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-46880","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-pearl-jam","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46880"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}