DARK MATTER
It’s been almost four years since we’ve gotten new music from Pearl Jam. We’ve had an election, a pandemic, existential threats to democracy and the planet, a few small tours, and an avalanche of side projects. And now, finally, Dark Matter’s eponymous first single has arrived.
The choice of lead single is always revealing, though exactly what’s revealed can’t be known until we have the full record. There are times Pearl Jam will showcase something out of left field – a Who You Are, Nothing As It Seems, or Dance of the Clairvoyants. Sometimes these songs are essential for unpacking the DNA of the album (Who You Are or Nothing As It Seems). Sometimes they are just a chance to showcase something they’re proud of (Dance… is a full stop masterpiece but something of an outlier on Gigaton). But usually the single is a guarantor for the album - a declaration of purpose (every single since Given To Fly, with the exception of Dance) and an approximation of the feel and sound of the record.
Pearl Jam is also an older band with a rich legacy. They defined an era, have been memorialized in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (in fact, a quote from Light Years is up on the walls in the museum), and still immediately sell out shows anywhere in the world. But that Pearl Jam has endured and thrived creates challenges of its own. Each new piece of music is forced to grapple with the legacy of what came before. It forces us to ask why, for all their success, doesn’t Pearl Jam feel like it did when we were younger?
Sometimes it’s music. The criminally underrated Lightning Bolt explored aging and mortality and legacy, wearing its heart proudly on its sleeve, and is generally considered to be one of Pearl Jam’s lesser works. But it wasn’t the themes. Gigaton explored the same ideas, albeit with less overt sentimentality. However, the production felt more intimate, the performances looser, the experience more organic. And Gigaton remains well regarded within the fan community.
But sometimes it is the expectations we have for music. Most of us, as we age, don’t consume new music with the imperial ferocity we once did. And even if we do, new bands will rarely hit quite as hard as the ones who were the touchstones of our youth – the songs and artists that soundtracked our transformation from who we were into who we are and might still be. Over time those artists we depended on break up, or worse. Their music ends. And so what music remains shoulders a heavy weight. We ask it to not only recapture the feeling of our youth, but, in a way we are rarely conscious of, to also validate our journey from then to now. When an older artist finds a way to speak to us, in language simultaneously familiar and new, we feel confident that our past experiences were all necessary steps on the road that led us here. It's not that the music makes us feel young again as much as it connects past and present in a way that makes us feel richer, fuller, timeless, and alive.
All of this ran through my head, even if I didn’t realize it, as I stayed up until midnight for the release (like I did when I was younger and will ONLY do for Pearl Jam). I’m not just eager to hear new music, and to get a sense of what the album will sound and feel like. I’m anxious to discover what Pearl Jam means to me now– to see if they are still capable of embracing my past and present, and can keep building the bridge between them.
Seems like they are.
Pearl Jam writes albums, and it’s hard to get a full sense of what a song means without placing it in conversation with the songs that surround it. But this also gives the lead single a temporary purity. It gets to stand on its own, for a little while, as a complete thought. And with the caveat that the experience of Dark Matter may change in the context of the album, lets dive in.
Dark Matter is a three-and-a-half-minute song that feels longer and yet not quite long enough. It is simultaneously new and recognizable, and weirdly fresh. A song that could have only come from Pearl Jam while lacking a direct 1-1 analog with anything that’s come before. Producer Andrew Watt is a huge Pearl Jam fan and the deep knowledge of their music he brought to the recording process is fully on display. The vocals feel like the 2000s era rerecording’s of Brother and Alone – applying Eddie’s more weathered and grounded range to older songs he would have once belted into space. There are vaguely electronic flourishes to the guitars reminiscent of You Are, and some of Riot Act’s road weariness is present. The deep, thunderous groove is reminiscent of Temple of the Dog. It has some of the fragile precision of Dance of the Clairvoyants and at the same time feels like it could fall apart at any moment in a way reminiscent of No Code. And yet the swing for the fences bombast of Ten and Vs is all over the song. Underneath it all, hints of Binaural’ s atmosphere. All coming together in a way that feels familiar and comforting without being repetitive or safe.
In some ways, this is the song Can’t Deny Me very much wanted to be, but never was. It’s angry, but the anger doesn’t feel performative. It’s running through some of the same critiques embedded in Gigaton, but while Gigaton was noteworthy for its inward, reflective focus and surprisingly non-judgmental tone, there is a fierce urgency to the performances in Dark Matter, even when its playful. It embraces a clarity of purpose while letting go of the guilt haunting Gigaton. If Gigaton quietly recommits you to a cause, Dark Matter feels like a rally. It looks outward, fosters solidarity (that chorus feels organically huge and enveloping and should elicit a natural, rather than engineered, reaction live), and howls at the structural but still contestable unfairness in the world – a stance that has been at the heart of their best music since Pearl Jam began.
Dark Matter is not the most innovative song they’ve ever written, but it is elevated by some ferocious performances. Matt is given the space to drive the proceedings and gives the song an immensity to help it meet the moment. Mike and Stone play sharp and angry with an angular ferocity, and Mike’s solo rises from that space to wrap its claws around Dark Matter’s throat. Jeff is a little buried in the mix, but there are moments where his chunky playing pushes through in a way that calls to mind classic performances like Why Go. The deceptively simple structure hides many exciting flourishes – something new revealed with each listen.
Eddie sounds great, but his voice is pushed back into the mix. The music drives the song, and Eddie is contributing his instrument in critical ways, rather than the band serving as his background players. The end result feels collaborative – a band playing together, feeding off each other’s energy. Eddie sounds weathered and wounded, but he has wrapped himself around his voice, keeping it in a controlled and protective space, and when he lets it off the leash we get intense punctuation that avoids drifting into the screechy territory that defined his work on S/T or Backspacer. He sounds vulnerable, but not like a victim, and sings like someone who has uncovered the wisdom and power and confidence at the heart of vulnerability.
The longer Dark Matter goes on the less measured and more unhinged it becomes. There is a rising intensity that gets angrier the longer it goes on. The music and lyrics feel almost extractive. A blunt drill powered by brute, wrenching force. Painful, destructive, outrageous. The performance captures the experience of living in a world not designed for living well. This is not presented as a revelation. It plays instead like a confirmation of known grievances that must nevertheless be named. The central ‘dark matter’ image makes sense in this context – the hidden substance that makes up our world is injustice. The source of our profound alienation from each other. Oppositional and totalizing, but only so long as it remains invisible.
Dark Matter is not a youthful song. It’s not trying to recapture that energy. That’s why it’s successful. As we get older we learn that context and compromise define what it means to live in the world. Gray mutes the bright, sharp colors we saw with younger eyes, and life inevitably forces us into choices that are no choice at all. This is both true and terrible, and to pretend the world is otherwise would be dishonest. It’s why mid and late life attempts to capture the energy and worldview of our younger selves so often rings inauthentic and insincere.
Instead, Dark Matter redefines what it means to age, and understands that, fire is not the sole possession of youth. We never stop needing light, heat, and potential. We just burn a different fuel to get it. Dark Matter owns what we’ve learned, and refuses to surrender to the dark, not in spite of the gray but because of it.
