Pearl Jam – Dark Matter  – Album Review
by Killian Laher

Pearl Jam are the great survivors of the 90’s Seattle grunge scene.  Never the coolest,  Eddie Vedder was always just a little too earnest, and the band were definitely more classic rock than punk.  But they figured out how to have success on their own terms, stopping ‘playing the game’ when it all got too much.  After the reflective, pleasingly plodding Gigaton, they have done something of an about-turn for their 12th album.

Scared of Fear is the opener, an old-fashioned rabble-rouser that will no doubt play well in concert with a very singable chorus: “We used to laugh, we used to sing, we used to dance, we used to believe”.  The following track React, Respond has one of those classic Vedder choruses.  The jangly Wreckage has echoes of the Tom Petty-isms Vedder channelled on his last solo album. While not particularly sounding like actual Pearl Jam, the playing is excellent.

The title track has already been doing the rounds, a Led Zeppelin-type stomper.  It’s a little self-consciously heavy, though it does feature a fine Mike McCready guitar solo.  Won’t Tell is a mid-paced rouser that has touches of U2 about it, particularly the Edge like guitar in the coda.  The relaxed pace here, and elsewhere really suits them.

An almost goth riff introduces Waiting for Stevie, but it’s a riff that does exactly what you want it to do and it’s a candidate for the strongest song here.  Less convincing is Running, a breakneck speed effort to show how they can still do punk, complete with f-bombs.  A change of tack for Something Special, a swinging, heartfelt ode to his daughters. Something sappy, maybe?  Eddie Vedder gets away with it where others wouldn’t.   Got To Give sees them paying homage to The Who as Vedder proclaims “I’ll be the last one standing… we can believe” over Townshend- style guitar riffs.  The redemptive final track Setting Sun is possibly about the late Chris Cornell as Eddie Vedder asks “I had a dream you would stay with me till kingdom come, am I the only one hanging on”.  It’s perfectly paced building to a powerful, Verve-style climax.

So they can still do ‘up and at ’em’ type music.  As good an album as you could possibly expect from them at this stage in their career, 30 years in.

Wreckage