Dark Matter MONKEYWRENCH/REPUBLIC
8/10 Commendably restless 12th from Seattle survivors.
WHERE Pearl
Jam albums are concerned, there is very o en a clue in the name. Pearl Jam’s second, 1993’s Vs, was the sound of a suddenly immensely successful yet bewildered and furious young band demanding of the world what it thought it was staring at. 1996’s No Code was a rejection and subversion of most of what might be expected of a heavy rock group, a tful meander through previously unexplored musical realms. 1998’s Yield could be heard as a resignation to the idea that Pearl Jam were actually, on mature reection, a pretty good heavy rock group, and there might not be anything much wrong with that. 2020’s Gigaton was more or less self-explanatory.
The title of Dark Matter is a partial guide to its contents. This is a fretful and ferocious record, lyrically much preoccupied with things having ended or appearing about to end, but musically much more blaze of glory than any kind of funeral pyre. The title track, by way of representative sample, nds Eddie Vedder assuming the form of an older but angrier version of the precocious young demon-tamer who announced himself on Ten, 33 years ago. He steams straight in with “steal the light from your eyes/drain the blood from our hearts”, before urging the band through a thunderous, Sabbath-ish protest song against nothing in particular but everything in general, during which Vedder manages to nd some solicitous words for the Fourth Estate (“Once heard it said/and it stuck in my head/arrested the press/no-one knows what happened next”).
If there is a dominant tenor of Dark Matter,
this is broadly it: Vedder declaiming like a man barking orders under re while Pearl Jam’s formidable sonic artillery roars behind him. The opening two tracks are very much of this ilk. “Scared Of Fear” lurches in on a clattering, Who-like staccato ri, escalates into one of those ecstatic, soaring choruses in which Hüsker Dü once specialised, crests on a pleasingly unreconstructed foot-on-thefoldback guitar solo, and breaks down for a contemplative breath before gathering itself for a climactic bolt to the nish. The lyric seems not the oblique homage to Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous exhortation about fear itself that it may appear: Vedder is preoccupied on this occasion with the personal rather than the political (“I think you’re hurting yourself/just to hurt me”).
“React, Respond” is a frenetic, urgent call to action set to a herky-jerky post-punk ri, haunted by portentous, ghostly backing vocals and sounds, as a whole, splendidly like Led Zeppelin’s unlikely comeback as a Public Image Ltd covers band.
The bombardment is maintained by the likes of “Running”, a punchy thrash with a shout-along yob-rock chorus and the kind of police-siren solo you teach yourself on your rst guitar in some echoing parental garage; “Upper Hand”, which announces itself with a solemn organ fanfare and languid, lulling introductory verses before shi ing subtly, gradually up through the gears and just about daring itself to go full “Free Bird” towards the end; and “Won’t Tell”, a de ly judged balance of Pearl Jam’s occasional inclinations towards the U2-ish epic with their grunge origins.
For all that Dark Matter sounds like the kind of proper rock album with which a proper rock band might equip themselves before embarking on a long tour of large venues – and Pearl Jam will be spending much of 2024 doing exactly that – its highlights are arguably those which least resemble the Pearl Jam of circa three decades ago. “Wreckage” is one of the outright prettiest things they’ve ever recorded, a gentle indie-rock jangle against which Vedder is oering a fatalistic goodbye to someone or something (“I’ve only ever wanted/for it not to be this way”):
even the guitar solos are su£ciently abashed that this could almost be mistaken for a Go-betweens tune. “Something Special” verges on downright Crosby, Stills & Nash, all jaunty swing, sweet harmonies and vaguely hippyish positivity; it reads as a boldly guileless memo to Vedder’s daughters (“I work for free/because you are both special”).
The closing, appropriately elegiac “Setting Sun” cracks out an acoustic guitar, and sounds in its early stages like it might have been sung from a rocking chair on a rickety porch. It kicks up several notches before closing the album on both a plea and a pledge: “Let us not fade”. On the considerable strength of Dark Matter,
there’s little danger of that.