Pearl Jam

[MrGordon]

a 15 city/town tour of Canada is sweetness. i mean, theyre coming to Halifax! its kind of surreal. i always joked around on the old RS boards sarcastically asking if they are any Halifax dates for big bands. and there you go, Pearl Jam decide to hit the Maritimes!

somehow im going to convince tenclub to let me get advance tickets even though im renewing an old membership...

[Meursault]

That guy in your avatar looks like my gay columbian stalker.

[Thorngrub]

Thas Bill Hicks -- have some respect!

[pissin2]

Sucker of Satan's cock!

[Thorngrub]

Of course you know Satan was the world's first Freedom Fighter, right?

[Paul]

thorny said:

...And perhaps you'll be able to see where I'm headed with this: I think Pearl Jam should pull out all the stops and release their HARDEST, most ROCKIN', searing, wailin', lead-guitarist-about-to-spontaneously-combust, scorchin, FAST hot & heavy album to date! If I were Eddie, I'd be huddlin' with the boyz & sayin' "Look, you know how we used to put in a few balls-to-the-wall rockers, like BLOOD in our albums? What say we release an entire album of hard rockin' shit?" And what do you think the rest of em would say? They'd all High-5 each other and say "Fuck Yeah!"
I Wish . . .

Hey, someone over at Red Mosquito put a bunch of the rumors for the new album in one nice thread. Anyway, these are quotes about the new album from the band....

It's been a difficult record and it's like sometimes the harder something is, then the more valuable it becomes," frontman Eddie Vedder said during a Brazilian radio interview earlier this week.

"It's easily the best stuff we've done but also some of the hardest stuff. It's very aggressive, because again, it's kind of a product of what it's like to be an American these days. It's pretty aggressive, especially when you turn it loud."

"It's not quite done. I'm hoping to finish the last of the songs while I'm down (in South America). I'm bringing my tape machines and all that down. If I can come back and finish the last few songs in January, then it will be out in April or something."

"We want them to be heard for the first time when the record comes out," Vedder said.

But he added he had been mulling an album title that was a play on Soundgarden's "Superunknown": "I was thinking of the word 'un-owned' -- not owned by anybody," he said. "The sky is un-owned. The moon is un-owned. We're un-owned. We want to remain un-owned. The title was 'Superun-owned.' "

Pearl Jam are almost finished with their follow-up to 2002's Riot Act. The band plans to spend the next three weeks in the studio recording vocals and mixing. If all goes according to plan, the yet-to-be-titled disc could be released as early as May.

"There's a lot more up-tempo stuff," says drummer Matt Cameron. "It's a lot more rockin' than our last one." Song titles like "Severed Hand," "Worldwide Suicide" and "2x4" seem to reflect that harder edge. Though the track listing has not been finalized, other candidates include "Marker" and "Cold Concession."

Cameron, who teamed with guitarist Mike McCready on the track "Unemployable," characterizes the sessions as more collaborative. "We reworked everything together in the studio," he says. "It's a really healthy environment -- everyone really just wants to dig in and make the songs as good as they can be."

Pearl Jam hope to support the new record with a summer tour.
As for the band's upcoming studio album, it will be released next year "on the BMG label," according to Pearl Jam's site. At deadline, it was unclear if the set will be issued on one of BMG's label imprints such as J or RCA, or via the Ten Club's in-house label and distributed by BMG.


"There's a sense that we've done something special," says guitarist Stone Gossard of the sessions. "Everyone's been writing and participating in it . . . Asking a guy in the band how good the record is problematic, but to me it's freaking brilliant."

Pearl Jam -- Gossard, singer Eddie Vedder, guitarist Mike McCready, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron -- have twenty-five songs that they plan to cut down to about twelve. Potential tracks include "Severed Hand," "Worldwide Suicide," "2x4," "Marker" and "Cold Concession."

(97.9 The Loop Chicago):
*new record in April - going in and out of studio between tour legs - eddie said the writing just keeps getting better - his words - "a masterpiece"

Record is in later stages, has a shape. Too early to say what it is yet, "It's bad voodoo" to talk about it yet.

And while his bandmates have been ordering in from El Gaucho or Kidd Valley while recording Pearl Jam's next album, McCready packs his lunch. Chili. Sturgeon. Yogurt he has made himself, fermenting it for 24 hours to kill the enzymes, and touching it with honey.

"I am really Excited about the new record so far...The early mixes sound incredible. Ed is singing like I have never heard him before. With every ounce of his being and soul he is propelling the songs to a classic status. The band is firing on all cylinders making this record, we are right in the middle of recording and feel that this is the best record we have ever done."

Guitarist McCready calls new songs "hard-rocking," with nods to punk and the Who.

"It's a classic Pearl Jam record -- it's got the excitement of Vs. to it," guitarist Mike McCready says of the new CD his band has spent the past eight months recording in Seattle. "There's some powerful singing, and the music is pretty hard-rocking."

Produced by Adam Casper (Soundgarden), the follow-up to 2002's Riot Act will be the band's first for J Records. "It's really freeing to be on a new label," McCready says. "It feels like a brand new relationship and their excitement makes us feel confident about it."

Pearl Jam -- McCready, singer Eddie Vedder, guitarist Stone Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron -- have eight songs in the can so far. McCready is especially psyched about "Severed Hand," a "heavy rocker" written by Gossard and "Worldwide Suicide," penned by Vedder. "['Worldwide'] is very punky and Who-ish," Gossard says. "It'll catch your attention." Other tentative songs include "Marker," "Cold Concession" and "2x4."

"We all came up with different songs for ourselves," McCready says. "We came in, edited and kicked out ideas. Ed's been a hardcore workhorse, experimenting with intense, layered vocals. It's hard-edge with some pop feel."

Bassist Jeff Ament says the band's eighth studio album, which frontman Eddie Vedder hasn't gotten around to naming yet, is about halfway finished and could see release this fall "if we can finish [it] in June." Ament says they've been working on the material — the first new batch of Pearl Jam songs since 2002's Riot Act — in "three separate three-week chunks" since February with producer Adam Kasper (Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters).

The long recording lull hasn't hurt Pearl Jam, Ament said, because playing with the band is "kind of like riding a bike at this point." In fact, for the first time since the sessions for 1993's Vs., the always-behatted bassist said Pearl Jam have been collaborating on the material, rather than coming into the process with the songs already written.

"We came together kind of with the idea of not bringing any complete songs initially, and just coming in with riffs and trying to write a bunch of stuff together," Ament explained. "We probably ended up writing 10 things as a band, like full-on collaborations with everybody in the room. It feels great. The collaborated songs somehow, to me, feel better — I think just because everybody had a little say, and everybody kind of got a little piece of their personality in it. It makes us feel like a band."

So far, the band's written a total of 25 songs, but the final track listing will have around a dozen songs — and the decision about which tracks make the final cut largely rests with "Ed, because he's writing 95 percent of the lyrics," Ament said. But the bassist did reveal some potential song names: "Marker," "Crapshoot Rapture," "Worldwide Suicide," "Cold Concession," "2X4" and "Severed Hand."

Ament singled out two other tracks as his current favorites. "One is called 'Of the Earth,' that's a song Ed wrote that is kind of a cross between early Peter Gabriel/ Genesis and Sleater-Kinney with, like, the Who's Live at Leeds or something. There's also a song that Stone brought in that Ed wrote some great lyrics to called 'Parachutes.' That's probably one of my favorite pieces of music that Stone has written in a long time. It's got a beautiful melody."

As for the focus of Vedder's lyrical direction, or whether the album would convey any specific themes, Ament wasn't so sure.

"There's some imagery that makes me think that he's talking about the state of the union, but he's so good with words that sometimes I think it could actually end up being about a friend of his or a relationship that he's witnessed," he said. "He's so sensitive to so many different things that he can pull things out of some pretty interesting places and combine them with politics or religion or whatever. I think there's a lot of nature involved in the stuff — that's the thing that I relate to the most, the imagery around nature and wanting to keep it intact."

"Hey Folks, Ed here, love to chat but I've got songs to finish"

[luke]

Goddamn, 2002 since Riot Act!? I can't believe it's been that long.

[Thorngrub]

shiiiit, me neitha .. . . *damn* . . . .seems like only yesterday . . .

pcook: thanks for that info, man! sounds freakin awesome ! Maybe this next one is THE one...

[Paul]

No prob Thorny...from your earlier post I thought you'd like it, especially this part...

"It's easily the best stuff we've done but also some of the hardest stuff. It's very aggressive, because again, it's kind of a product of what it's like to be an American these days. It's pretty aggressive, especially when you turn it loud."

[rockysigman]

Wasn't it not that long ago that they said they were going to do a new album every 9 months? What the hell happened with that?

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Maybe they realized they're irrelevant?

[Thorngrub]

whatev, skvor

pj is the last thing from "irrelevant" . . . unless your priorities include falling asleep to the latest post-rock spinoff lullabies j/messin w/ya *poke/prod*

[skvorisdeadsorta]

No, No, their one of those bands that I always keep up with, but over the past couple of releases I have been just disappointed. I think they've lost the plot over the last few years. Believe me, the positive things that I can say about the band don't have much to do with their music. They fight for good causes, stopped making videos, fought Ticketmaster (which is amazing and should be done again) and left Sony. Personally, I will always be waiting for Ed to go solo.

[Paul]

skvorisdeadsorta said:

No, No, their one of those bands that I always keep up with, but over the past couple of releases I have been just disappointed. I think they've lost the plot over the last few years. Believe me, the positive things that I can say about the band don't have much to do with their music. They fight for good causes, stopped making videos, fought Ticketmaster (which is amazing and should be done again) and left Sony. Personally, I will always be waiting for Ed to go solo.

Try giving Binaural another listen.... I used to hate that album, but a few years ago I listened to it w/ headphones, and it's actually a really good album. "Insignificance" is the perfect example how the band has changed and grown as a result of Matt Cameron behind the kit. It's a very technical song, and it may be Pearl Jam's most complicated (timing and stuff like that) song to date.

FYI my favorite PJ albums in order:
1. No Code
2. Vitalogy
3. Yield
4. Binaural
5. Vs.
6. Ten
7. Riot Act

[Thorngrub]

skvorisdeadsorta said:

No, No, their one of those bands that I always keep up with, but over the past couple of releases I have been just disappointed. I think they've lost the plot over the last few years. Believe me, the positive things that I can say about the band don't have much to do with their music. They fight for good causes, stopped making videos, fought Ticketmaster (which is amazing and should be done again) and left Sony. Personally, I will always be waiting for Ed to go solo.

You'll be waitin a looong time man. Hopefully . ..

PJ has just become one of those "American Staples", to me. & I hain't even caught one of their live shows yet *a source of endless personal torment for me, you can imagine*

One of these days however, I'm a gunna see my boys in PJ do their thing, straight up. Just waitin on the right opportunity .. . *fingers crossed*

Lucky thing for me their sense of integrity as a band is shatterproof; they'll be around for long enough that I should be able to catch em live, I'd imagine.