A direct album, written, played and recorded at once, but which must be listened to several times to understand what rock is in 2024. The “dark matter”, the fears of the time we live in in which “someone pays for the mistakes of others” as Eddie Vedder sings in the title song of the album, are the fuel of an album that accelerates them and routs them in its wake, until they transform them into hopes.
Among many highs and few lows this is Dark Matter of the Pearl Jam. There are pieces that will remain, above all “Scared of fear“, “Wreckage“and the splendid one”Setting sun“. There is the expressiveness of a band smoothed and at the same time flayed by thirty years on stage, there are inevitable references to their selves of yesterday but equally inevitably, living who they are today: “Wreckage” seems like a meeting between “Daughter ” and “7 o’clock”, “Won’t tell” refers to “Infallible” and the mid tempo of “No way”. The fury of the beginning certainly echoes in the guitars and drums, but this time above all in the lyrics. And yes he also feels the boiling of their primordial broth: “Upper hand” has a little bit of “Yellow Ledbetter” and the spleen of Binaural“Waiting for Stevie” directly evokes Soundgarden, then finds the Pearl Jam of the era Avocadoeven mixing “Army Reserve” with a bit of Bob Marley.
And inevitably the permanent center of gravity of Pearl Jam and the survivors in general – because this is what they are today, the last witnesses of a lost musical generation – one can only go and look for it in one’s own existence. And so Eddie Vedder sings that “We laughed, we sang, we danced and we believed”, in something that perhaps is not yet lost. And perhaps “we will be a new sun when the dawn comes” and not just a sunset, is the hope that he has never abandoned Pearl Jam’s lyrics even when darkness seems to envelop everything. The most important lyrics on the album are also the most immediate ones, which arrive like a wave to lift spirits. Even when they are short: “Got to give” has ten counted half lines of lyrics in the booklet because the concept is simple (then the song is longer). But it is a pure application of Springsteen’s poetics, with the realization that a disillusionment is always less bitter than an illusion. And here the quotation game is repeated a bit Gigatonwhere each piece was a clear homage to rock but above all to its divinities.
The album always maintains itself in a state of emotional tension which has been the hallmark of the band since their debut Lt in 1992, and certainly after thirty-odd years there is also a piece that could fall into the “daddy rock” category, “Something special“, a song with beautiful lyrics, amusing and light on a not simple theme, and a swinging gait. Vedder sings for his daughters and perhaps it could also have been a b-side, a “Dirty Frank” or a lost dog. But ultimately in the context of the “darkness” of the album it is an honest moment of releasing tension and opening up to the future, and this honesty matters more than the song itself Dark matter there’s much more grunge than cringe, and there’s a band that’s having fun again, with Matt Cameron (drums) and Mike McCready (guitar) passing the ball around as number one, they’re both absolutely in a state of grace, they play free and incendiary like two supernovas through dark matter.
There was some fear about the sound, the album is produced by the young (fan) and (very) good Andrew Watt, who worked a miracle with the Rolling Stones’ latest album and who here reinvigorates a combo of musicians and authors who from today’s mainstream they are inevitably distant: in Running Vedder evokes Victriola, a historic turntable manufacturer, the furthest thing from streaming, playlists and algorithms. But it is precisely Watt’s fresh approach that makes Pearl Jam reborn as fully rock, powerful but outside the “loudness war” of hyper-compressed records. The Pearl Jam of 2024 are not the same as those of 1992, but they are free to play as they want and fortunately more tormented than ever: the lyrics of “Scared of fear” are a manifesto of transgenerational pain. But aware that the high volume and clarity of the reaction to these times of very dark matter are the only possible answer.
