Happy Birthday, Stone Gossard!

Credit: Geoff Whitman

SOLAT

Stip, alongside Concertpants from Instagram, have joined the State of Love and Trust crew to talk about Matt Cameron's departure from Pearl Jam. Part retrospective, part tribute, part speculation, part group processing, the team blasts through the stages of grief and reflect on what Matt Cameron meant to Pearl Jam, and what Pearl Jam means without him. If you're still puzzling through what this means for us as fans, and for the future of the band, perhaps this episode helps. And if it doesn't, it's still a great way to kill 90 minutes!

Farewell to Matt Cameron, and Thank You!

Credit: Geoff Whitman

I panicked when Dave Abbruzzese left Pearl Jam, thanks to a deep and abiding fear that a band breakup was imminent. No one seemed to enjoy being in Pearl Jam, and I assumed he was a core part of both their sound and identity (it was a different time. We just knew what Rolling Stone and Spin told us). At the very least, for the duration of my fandom, he was the only Pearl Jam drummer I knew. I didn’t know what Pearl Jam was without him. Or what they would be for me.

I was relieved when Jack Irons joined since it meant Pearl Jam would continue. I knew next to nothing about him – only that he was in the liner notes of Vitalogy, and that playing drums on Stupid Mop was not exactly the calling card I was looking for. It wasn’t until much later that I learned about his history with Ed, and that Pearl Jam would not exist without him.

I saw Pearl Jam live for the first time with Jack. It was a transcendent experience (Randall’s Island, Night 1). Prior to that moment, Pearl Jam always felt fragile – something that could fall apart at any moment, their survival dependent on the will and whim of Eddie Vedder, a man equally likely to shatter or detonate at any moment. Something changed for me after that night. Seeing them live was almost a supernatural experience– like they were channeling something larger than themselves – something primal, elemental, raw, and true that was simultaneously not of this world and its beating heart. Something that real couldn’t help but exist. After that night, Pearl Jam finally felt immortal – something that would HAVE to endure, whether they wanted to or not.

And yet, when Jack left the band, I still felt fear, if not outright panic. By 1998 it seemed inevitable that the Seattle bands were destined to disintegrate, and I wasn’t confident Pearl Jam would be different. When I learned that Matt Cameron would join them for the Yield tour, it wasn’t just that I was relieved (though I was!). This pairing felt right and proper. The greatest drummer of the grunge moment should be a part of its greatest band. I don’t think I knew he played on the demos sent to Ed, but I knew Temple of The Dog, and when Matt became an official member, it felt like the closing of a loop, or the end of an extended prologue. Pearl Jam had found its forever lineup. The one it was always meant to have.

Twenty seven years is not forever. But in terms of band dynamics it may as well be. And while Jack Irons is often credited with saving Pearl Jam, Matt Cameron is undoubtedly the reason they endured. Matt Cameron did what probably felt impossible for most of the 90s. He made Eddie, Jeff, Mike, and Stone want to be in Pearl Jam.

Matt was a flashier drummer in Soundgarden. His parts more obvious. But that makes sense. Soundgarden was the musically showier band. Pearl Jam’s playing wasn’t technical in its orientation. It was emotional. Soundgarden, for me, often felt like an exercise in craft. Whereas Pearl Jam was a study in experential truth. And I think we often forget (or take for granted) something fundamental about Matt: that he is arguably the most adaptable and selfless drummer of his era. In the innumerable albums he has guested on, the bands and projects he has been a part of, one of his singular gifts is his capacity to be whatever the music needed him to be. There is no overlap between talent and ego on Matt’s Venn diagram. He drummed in service of the song, not himself. I don’t think there is a member of the band as musically giving as Matt. There is a reason Eddie spent twenty seven years gushing about the opportunity to play with Matt. Matt enabled all of them to be their best selves, in ways that were maybe hard to see from the outside, but were so blindingly apparent to the band. And while this stage banter sometimes made it seem like Matt was in an extended guest spot, in reality it was recognition that his singular talents were not taken for granted – the ones the audience could see and hear, and the ones that could only be felt and understood by the band itself.

Credit: Geoff Whitman

It's not that Matt was a chameleon. It’s just that he was monstrously talented, endlessly adaptable, and somehow always true to himself. Matt ensured whatever Pearl Jam did, the music would always maintain its integrity, and that whatever direction their individual muses took them (including his own), he would be there to hold it all together, and ensure that whatever came out of that alchemy was unmistakably Pearl Jam. In the studio for sure, and especially in the increasingly emotional and improvisational live experience.

Although Matt was the drummer on 60% of their albums and for 80% of their life as a band (I double checked the math. 80%!), he missed their imperial moment in the early 90s. He was not the studio drummer on the songs that made them famous, the songs that endured in the public consciousness. It is true that Matt will always stand outside the Ten, Vs, Vitalogy arc (he was having his own with Soundgarden) when Pearl Jam was the most important band in the world.

But there is another Pearl Jam. The Pearl Jam I have seen for twenty nine of my thirty shows. The band that could release 72 bootlegs and set two records for most albums to debut in the Billboard 200. The band that built a reputation as one of the best live rock acts of all time. Their incomprehensible performance chemistry is a product of the Matt Cameron era. The Pearl Jam that made Pearl Jam Radio possible, that made it so that you could be a fan solely of their live material and never run out of things to listen to – we owe this to Matt. His legacy is that Pearl Jam never became a legacy act. He was not of the Pearl Jam I saw on TV growing up. But he was the backbone of the Pearl Jam I was privileged to grow alongside of.

Rock bands have short life spans. Group dynamics are complicated under the best of circumstances, and having to maintain them under the glare and scrutiny of a sometimes obnoxious and entitled fan base (which is, to be fair, all fan bases) is hard to do. Bring in egos, money, the pressure and need of the machinery that depends on you, and it’s a miracle any of them survive. Most don’t. And most of us, therefore, find that our favorite music gets trapped in a particular moment in time – those brief windows when a band existed. And the music becomes a frozen, reified thing. Something we can go return to, or a piece of the past we can carry with us. But that relationship is always looking backwards, always recapturing something we had to leave behind.

But not for us. We have been blessed to grow old with our band. That the soundtrack of our lives is forever expanding, bridging our past, present and future is a gift we were given. Pearl Jam has been a constant in my life for almost 34 years – as a living, changing thing. The music did not just help me find and retain my youthful passion and outrage, but grapple with my adult responsibilities and obligations. It has been there to bridge the space between my dreams and my reality, to help me understand the world I grew up in, the world I made, and the one I will be passing on.

It is easy to take this for granted, and Matt’s departure is shocking because, whether we are conscious of it or not, it reminds us none of this is inevitable. None of it will last forever. It takes luck. It takes work. It takes love. It is a relationship, and now that will relationship will have to change. It is only appropriate that we grieve what is lost. It shaped our fandom. In countless ways, big and small, it helped shape who we are. It mattered. What follows will still be real. But it will be different.

I love Matt’s output with the band. He has anchored some stellar albums. He has been the drummer on some of my very favorite Pearl Jam songs. And he has even written a handful of my favorites. But his biggest contribution, I think, is the fact that Pearl Jam is still here. I don’t think it would be without him.

When Matt announced his retirement it was bittersweet. Matt has earned his the right to walk away on his own terms, while he can. Our heroes deserve the right to control their destiny. I wish him all the best in whatever happens next. I am sure he will be back on stage at one point. But I will miss him. What he accomplished, what he represented, and what he made possible.

This marks the end of an era, but not the end. This time I didn’t feel panic. Because Matt carried the rest of the band to a place where I no longer fear for Pearl Jam’s future. He made them comfortable in their skins. He made them enjoy being in a band together. He built the symbiotic and generative relationship they have with their fans. He helped turn concerts into revivals, and I just can’t imagine the band ever wanting to give that up. Pearl Jam will be different without him. But it will endure. Thanks to him.

Thank you Matt, for the music.
Thank you, Matt, for the memories.
Thank you, Matt, for putting in the work.
And thank you, Matt, for ensuring that this is not the end.

Credit: Geoff Whitman

Revival by Coffin Break

The Ten Club has announced, that after a 33-year hiatus, the band Coffin Break, featuring your favorite Pearl Jam merch slinger, santos l. halper, on bass, will release their second album, Revival.  The album, mixed and mastered by Jack Endino and featuring artwork by Brad Klausen, will be released on July 25th.  You can pre-order a copy here, and catch a live show at the Easy Street Records release party on that same day or at shows this summer at Clockout Lounge and Bumpershoot Arts & Music Festival, both in Seattle.  

Rob Skinner, Bass & Vocals

Matt Cameron Steps Down From Pearl Jam

Absolutely blowing our mind this morning, Matt Cameron has announced that he is stepping down from Pearl Jam.  It's not been a secret that he has been struggling with tendanitis, and that is part of the reason Josh Klinghoffer has joined the band for live performances.

But Matt has been a member of Pearl Jam for more than 3X as long as any other drummer, and we didn't expect that band to have to do a sixth search for a drummer.

What Is Pearl Jam's Signature Song?

 

The music podcast, Signature Song, recorded an episode this week hoping to figure out what song is Pearl Jam's Signature Song.  Olympic Platinum?  Rock Around Barack?  Red Dot?  I'm probably not a good judge.

If you'd like to hear the discussion and hear what they come up with, you can check out the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music.

Put on your flannel and grow out your soul patch, kids. Episode 2 of our quest to nail down the signature song of literally every artist on the planet is all about Pearl Jam, a band with personal significance to our friendship, and a discography as deep as the ocean. We dig into the legacy of a group with a long career, but one album that cast a shadow bigger than the rest. Guess which one!

Pearl Jam in Pittsburgh

Credit: Karensa Wight

 

Binaural Turns 25

 

Pearl Jam in Pittsburgh

Credit: Karen Loria

 

Pearl Jam in Raleigh

 

Credit: Karen Loria

The Last of Us EP

Pearl Jam announced last night that they are releasing a very limited EP collaboration with Naughty Dog Games that features Pearl Jam music from the video game and television series, The Last of Us.

The 12" single on colored vinyl (clear with black smoke) will include four songs, “Future Days” from Lightning Bolt (2013), “All Or None” from Riot Act (2002), “Future Days (Live from Ohana Festival ‘24)” and No Code’s “Present Tense (Redux)” are pressed to Side B.

Fan Club members can pre-order one at the website ($25.00 + $10.04 domestic S&H).

At the same time, they released a video for Future Days and the audio from "Present Tense (Redux)" on-line. 

Pearl Jam in Raleigh

Credit: Karen Loria

 

Pearl Jam in Nashville

Credit: Geoff Whitman

 

Pearl Jam in Nashville

 

Credit: Karen Loria

Matter of Time Documentary

 The Tribeca Film Festival recently announced that the documentary, Matter of Time, exploring work to cure Epidermolysis Bullosa will debut at the festival this year.  The film is produced, in part by the Vitalogy Foundation.  Tickets for the show are available here.  There's no news yet on further distribution, but there surely will be.

You can review the official statement from the website below.

MATTER OF TIME is a compelling documentary chronicling the fight to cure Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), a rare and devastating genetic disease.

Fueled by the raw energy of Eddie Vedder’s 2023 solo performances in Seattle and driven by the fierce determination of patients, families, and scientists, MATTER OF TIME captures a rising global effort to cure EB and pave the way for thousands of other rare diseases.

Produced by Door Knocker Media in association with the Vitalogy Foundation, this is more than a concert film. It’s a story of defiance, innovation, and the belief that even the most impossible challenges are only a matter of time.

At the forefront of this fight is EB Research Partnership (EBRP) — a trailblazing force proving that rare disease isn’t just treatable, it’s curable. The mission is bold, their impact is real, and this film is their rallying cry to the world.

With an original score by Broken Social Scene and candid interviews from all sides of the movement, the film is a rallying cry for what’s possible when people come together—with urgency and heart—for something bigger than themselves.

Directed by Matt Finlin

Pearl Jam in New Orleans

Credit: Karen Loria

 

2025 Pearl Jam March Madness Champion: Hail, Hail

It was a close and much contested finals battle, but Hail, Hail reigned supreme over Animal in this year's Pearl Jam March Madness Tournament.  To help us celebrate it, Pearl Jam dropped a performance last night in Atlanta.

Avocado Turns 19

Pearl Jam in Atlanta

Credit: Karen Loria

Stip on SOLAT Podcast: "Avocado" Superlatives

 TSIS's own Stip joins the guys of State of Love and Trust postcast this week talking about all the things that make Pearl Jam's eponymous album great!  You can head to their website or watch the podcast on YouTube.

Jason and Paul celebrate 19 years of Pearl Jam's self-titled record by returning to their Superlatives series. Joining them are author and show regular Brian "Stip" Stipelman, and graphic artist, and former in-house Pearl Jam art director, Brad Klausen. Best Song Live, Most Introspective, and many more...

Soundgarden Announced as a 2025 Inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its inductees for 2025.  On November 8th, Soundgarden will join the Rock Hall along with six other performers, Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, and The White Stripes.

This marks Matt Cameron's second induction, having been previously inducted with Pearl Jam in 2017.

Eddie Vedder and the Earthlings Coming to Ohana Fest, September 26, 2025

 The Ten Club announced the dates for Ohana Fest in Dana Point, California later this year.  The festival starts with Eddie Vedder and the Earthlings headlining on September 28th and will also feature headliners, Kings of Leon, Hozier, Leon Bridges, Green Day, and Cage the Elephant throughout the weekend.

You can get ticket here or if you're in the Ten Club, you already got an e-mail with pre-sale details.

Pearl Jam in Atlanta

Credit: Karen Loria

Pearl Jam March Madness - The Finals!

... and then there were two!  After 2 months of March Madness, our Pearl Jam Tournament is down to Animal and Hail Hail.  Which song is going to take the cake?  Only the fans can say.  Get to our forum and vote while you still can!

Gigaton and Dark Matter : Looking Back and Looking Forward

Gigaton and Dark Matter – Then and Now

I have been thinking a lot about Gigaton and Dark Matter recently. Both of these albums landed with a visceral immediacy that made them feel like masterpieces, and I hailed them as such. They elicited emotional reactions from me that, even by Pearl Jam standards, were unexpected and profound. Each was absolutely the right record for its moment, full of songs I didn’t know I was waiting for and had no idea I needed. But recency bias is a real thing, and their true impact is best measured by time - their ability to evolve and stay relevant, evoke something eternal, or perfectly trap a moment you can relive forever. 

On March 27th Gigaton turned five, and April 19th marked one year since the release of Dark Matter. And these small but significant anniversaries offer the perfect opportunity to assess their staying power and see if they have earned their place in my pantheon of great Pearl Jam albums (My personal rankings have Dark Matter at 4 and Gigaton at 5. I love these records). 

For me, the closest point of comparison are Riot Act and Pearl Jam, the last pairing of records that, with deliberate intent and specificity, spoke directly to their time and place. Together, they offered a musical reckoning with that era of American life, equal parts diagnosis and catharsis. Riot Act tried and failed to make sense of the dislocating strangeness of a post 9-11 America, where President Bush took the unifying potential found in that moment of desolation and turned it against itself. He transformed our profound solidarity into a bitter space contested by us and them, demanding we define ourselves not by what we believe, but by who we oppose. You were either with us, or you are with the terrorists. No time for doubt, no space for nuance – yielding certainty without answers. And those who dared to question were cast out of the tribe. Left to wander the wilderness, alone.

Four years later, the world looked very different. Though still in office, Bush’s legacy had been written, its failure carved into history through ruined nations abroad and the drowned streets of New Orleans at home. And dissent flooded back into the space left by Bush’s retreat, as Pearl Jam’s songs named the blood cost the world paid for an administration’s feckless lying and incompetence borne of arrogance. The songs felt liberating, the release of a long held primal scream, but as an album its true power was unlocked through its juxtaposition with Riot Act. Each record was a companion piece to the other – the exile into the desert, and the return to civilization. The silencing and regaining of voice. And both endure, in their way. The best parts of Riot Act are divorced from the specificity of that moment and still call out to anyone who got lost trying to find their way home. Pearl Jam, on the other hand, began to feel dated, its rage very much of a moment whose time had passed. At least until recently. You would be hard pressed to find a better description of our current body politic than “Comatose”, and songs like “World Wide Suicide” and “Army Reserve” feel freshly relevant when you focus less on the narrative particulars and more on the fact that we still pay the cost of other people’s sins.

Like the Bush era records, both Gigaton and Dark Matter are responses to our time, with the end nowhere in sight. Gigaton was about the responsibilities we have to leave a better world for the generations that will follow. It was an optimistic album that stared into the future and found, within its dark, immeasurable distance, that light still endures. The album title and art asked us to think about this in environmental terms, but released as it was in March of 2020, it was impossible to listen to Gigaton as anything other than an eerily prophetic anticipation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world had literally shut down. We faced a disease that would kill over a million people in the United States alone. Little understood, with no cure. As I wrote in my review at the time, I was terrified. The world was on fire, and no one was coming to save us. We had to become the adults in the room. We had to fix it. We had to save ourselves.

And Gigaton’s message of hope was what I held onto during those early months. It was, at its core, a record that become more optimistic the more darkness you poured into it. When Eddie sang ‘all the answers will be found in the mistakes that we had made’ or promised that ‘hope dies last’ I clung to those words like I was drowning. For months those lyrics never left my head. And every one of those songs helped me process my lived experience in real time. The way “Quick Escape” ends like a rocket exploding after liftoff, trapping us here and clarifying the work “Seven O’Clock” challenges us to take on. “Retrograde” reminds us that nothing lasts forever, and within that impermanence is hope, if we reach for it. And “River Cross” promises that, together, we will find a way forward.

And we did. We survived. But we didn’t do it together. Like President Bush before him, Trump, and the forces he enables and embodies, took that moment of unity and tore it apart. The brief experience of solidarity, the recognition that we are stronger when we lean into each other, even when our bodies had to remain apart, shattered. We reached levels of absurdity that made the post 9-11 environment seem sane, where simply being asked to wear a mask in public was seen as a monstrous violation of liberty to people whose identity could only exist in opposition. Recognizing our communities sustain us, and are therefore worth protecting, became not just political, but partisan. We left that era united by an awful common experience, the incredible triumph of having survived it, and more divided than ever. Some of us built boats, while others set them on fire, and collectively, we failed. We failed to recognize our only way forward is together. We failed to cross that river.

Credit: Geoff Whitman

The Gigaton tour, when it finally happened, didn’t look like Riot Act. There were no Trump masks. Eddie’s concert speeches focused on building community and reclaiming solidarity through music. These shows were not about creating a political moment. They were about finding a way into the future, marking the boundaries of the road we must follow.

As befitting a record written collaboratively, Dark Matter sought to bridge that distance between us. It looked upon the wreckage of our world and realized we are long past the point of it mattering ‘who’s wrong and who’ right’. The central struggle of our time is about how to rebuild. Every song on that record is about the existential importance of human connections. Every moment an exploration of the power of and need for love, and the terrible price we pay in its absence. Dark Matter is breathless and relentless, and for all its searching, it contains a moral clarity rarely found in their music. Not because Pearl Jam has ever struggled to tell right from wrong, but because there was almost always an intellectual modesty, an uncertainty, a fear of committing too strongly lest someone get trapped in someone else’s conclusion.

Twelve albums and a lifetime into their career, it had become clear that love is the only source for the meaningful solidarity a better world requires. Dark Matter is a record in which almost every song grapples with the fear of ending while there is still work to be done, and yet it remains arguably Pearl Jam’s most optimistic record – if for no other reason than it finally offered the bands core thesis with more force and immediacy than ever before in songs like “Waiting For Stevie”, “Got to Give”, and “Setting Sun”. Dark Matter recognized the failures of Gigaton without invalidating its promise or refuting its humanism.

Despite the trauma of 2020-2024, these were hopeful records, offering light in the face of an expansive and growing darkness. But that was before 2025. These anniversaries occur in a very different world. An even darker world, one facing an even greater threat than COVID-19. That disease attacked the body, but it could be isolated, controlled, cured. The rot at the heart of American society speaks to the cancer in our souls. It lays bare the thin fragility of the ties that bind us together and reveals how easily those threads can burn.

The threat of COVID -19 was external. Today, we are at war with ourselves, and before we can set anything to right, we have to find a way to make peace without surrendering. Five years after Gigaton I am more afraid than ever. Perhaps it’s a new fear. But I suspect this is what I’ve feared all along – validation and proof that our worst instincts are not an aberration. That the ugliness in our souls defines us. That this, in fact, who we are.

What happens to all of us, if all we care about is destroying our enemies, rather than finding ways to live with them? If all we care about is winning, despite the cost we pay ourselves and force onto others? How do we escape the dark solipsism of our time? Gigaton speaks to the power of dreams, but what if we can only dream of nightmares?

Credit: Geoff Whitman

In the Spring of 2024 Dark Matter played like a series of guideposts, reminders of the foundational truths capable of leading us to the home we spent a lifetime searching for. It felt more than aspirational. It finally felt achievable, as if Pearl Jam had at last found a way to make these ideas self-evident. You couldn’t listen to “Waiting for Stevie” without understanding that we can rise above the fears that diminish us. You couldn’t listen to “Got to Give” without feeling that it is our imperfections that bind us to each other and in the process make us strong. You couldn’t open your heart to Setting Sun and not walk out of the experience feeling cleansed. At peace. And not finished.

But the spring of 2024 is now, absurdly, a halcyon memory. Our country is not just on fire. It is burning down. There is real evil in the world, and it is ascendant, and it must be stopped. This is not hyperbolic. It is what clarity looks like. And “Dark Matter”, a song, that once felt like an outlier, now rings with the force of diagnostic prophecy. Its music sounds like a society collapsing in on itself, like endless waves of destruction drawing closer and closer until they finally wash over us – a dark inversion of Eddie’s favorite metaphor. The tired and beleaguered injustice we experience when ‘everybody else pays for someone else’s mistakes’ is the perfect encapsulation of what it means to live in this moment and fear it will last forever. Mike’s air raid guitar solo does not urge us to seek shelter. It rails against the grim reality that there is no safety to be found. Anywhere. One year out, Pearl Jam may have never written a song that so perfectly captures the immediate moment, helping me emotionally process an experience so totalizing I cannot find a single fixed point from which to describe it. In March 2024 “Dark Matter” was the warning we must heed. In April 2025 it is a challenge we must answer.

We are lost. I am less confident than ever we will be found. But our only way forward is together. That we have strayed so far from each other doesn’t make this any less true. And I will keep searching for that path home, because in the end we can either lay down and surrender, or we can find a way to walk it together. These are the choices before us, and Pearl Jam’s music has conditioned me not to give up. Five years from Gigaton the river is wider, deeper, more dangerous. But our only safety is on the other side. And the grace that Gigaton insists on extending to its enemies matters more than ever. Someday this will end, and we will have to find a way to live with each other. We will have to find a way to forgive each other, for not being our best selves. For failing the great test of our time. For being human.

The call to find the strength within ourselves so that we might love the worst of us is more urgent than ever. I wake up every day fighting off a burning desperation and crushing sense of powerlessness. A fierce hatred that terrifies and diminishes me. An instinct to surrender that is at moments overpowering. But these records have been out long enough to become a part of me, as every Pearl Jam album eventually does. Every day I am listening to these songs, even if I haven’t put them on. And every day they remind me that I am not alone. That this fight is not just mine. And it is not over. We may not cross the river. But we can hold each other up and not drown in our attempt. And maybe our children will someday make it across and succeed where we have failed. It falls to all of us to give them the chance we wasted. We may not live long enough to see the sun rise. But it does not have to set on our watch. It cannot. We owe it to the future, and we owe it to ourselves.

When I first heard Gigaton it felt like a gift. And I experienced Dark Matter as a revelation. But today, I experience them as necessities and obligations. There must be a way forward. We have to find it. And they are the soundtrack of my search.

Pearl Jam in Hollywood (Florida)

Credit: Vicki D Photography

Pearl Jam Final Four

 

Our Pearl Jam March Madness tournament has entered the Final Four.  Three of the contenders, Hail Hail, Tremor Christ, and Immortality are former champions, and we have one dark horse, Animal.

We are so close to finding out the best song of the year.  Pearl Jam didn't play any of these four last night in Hollywood, Florida, but by the time we have a champion, we can be front row with our signs.  Or, you can just vote for your favorite here and define the year!

IMMORTALITY vs. HAIL HAIL

TREMOR CHRIST vs. ANIMAL

Pearl Jam in Hollywood (Florida)

 

Credit: Jenn Ross

Pearl Jam March Madness Enters the Sweet Sixteen

 Our March Madness Tournament has finally entered the Sweet Sixteen.  Match-ups went up last night. Unbelievably, we're down to six albums.  Yield has been completely eliminated, but Lost Dogs managed to bring two songs to the tournament (3 depending on how you count Breath).

 You can vote here to determine the best Pearl Jam song of the year!  Here are the match-ups!

Breath vs. Jeremy

Go vs. Immortality

Hail Hail vs. Can't Keep

In My Tree vs. Last Exit

Animal vs. In The Moonlight

Strangest Tribe vs. Daughter

Present Tense vs. Rearviewmirror

Off He Goes vs. Tremor Christ

2025 Tour Merchandise

 

Pearl Jam's merchandise contractor, TSURT, has posted the merchandise options for Pearl Jam's 2025 U.S. Tour.  You can get a preview of the items here and start planning!

Binaural Spacial Audio BluRay

In celebration of next month's 25th Anniversary of Binaural, Pearl Jam is releasing a BluRay audio version that includes spacial audio and hi-res mixes done by Josh Evans.  Dark Matter and Vitalogy have had similar treatments.

You can pre-order the album now with release expected to be on June 6, 2025.

Experience Pearl Jam's Binaural like never before. In honor of the 25th anniversary of the album, dive into its world with the spatial audio blu-ray. Feel every note and lyric of tracks like “Light Years” and “Nothing As It Seems” wrap around you in a way that's beyond amazing. Whether you're reliving the memories or discovering it anew, it's time to let the music take over.

Single Blu-ray disc contains Spatial and Hi-Res Stereo Mixes

Mixed by Josh Evans

PRESALE. 1 Per Order.  No Quantity Limit.  6/6/2025 Release Date

Dark Matter Turns One

 

"We're All Alone In This Together" A Presentation by Stip

 

Our own Stip, author of "I Am No Guide: Pearl Jam Song-By-Song" is giving a presentation on the music and meaning of Pearl Jam in support of the Community College Humanities Association on May 1st, 3:30-5pm EST.  You can register with the QR code here.

Pearl Jam helped define 'grunge' and 90s rock music, and their music offers reflection on how to nuture the solidarity that makes us human in a world that consistently undercuts it. This presentation explores the evolution of lyrical themes and politics around authenticity, intergenerational solidarity, democracy, environmentalism, and gender across a thirty year career that, at its core, centers the human need for connection.

Pearl Jam March Madness Reaches the Top 64

 

If you were waiting for a more manageable list of songs, the time is now.  We've broken down Pearl Jam's catalog down to our 64 favorite songs.  We need your help to get the list down to one!  Vote here, and let your voice be heard!

Here are the songs still in play!

Porch, Force of Nature, Breath, Black, Life Wasted, All Those Yesterdays, Hard to Imagine, Jeremy, Down, Go, Red Mosquito, Cold Confession, Immortality, Sad, Nothing As It Seems, Setting Sun, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, Hail Hail, Can't Keep, Satan's Bed, Brain of J, In My Tree, River of Deceit (Mad Season), Hunger Strike (Temple of the Dog), Last Exit, WMA, Do The Evolution, Of The Girl, Release, Low Light, Waiting For Stevie, Animal, All Night, Help Help, In The Moonlight, Who Ever Said, Daughter, Amongst the Waves, Corduroy, Insignificance, Alive, In Hiding, Say Hello 2 Heaven (Temple of the Dog), Strangest Tribe, Tremor Christ, Alone, Given to Fly, All or None, Off He Goes, Man of the Hour, Even Flow, Habit, Rival, Wreckage, Dance of the Clairvoyants,  Grievance, Parachutes, Rearviewmirror, Present Tense, Push Me/Pull Me

Pearl Jam March Madness Plows On

 

The NCAA may be down to the Championship, but Pearl Jam has 128 songs to go!  We've got a long road to hoe before we've determined the best Pearl Jam song of the year.  

New matches are posting daily, but we will probably be done by May.  That can only happen with your help!  Head to the Red Mosquito Message Board to cast your votes!

Happy Birthday, Mike McCready!

 

Credit: Geoff Whitman

Gigaton Turns Five

Eddie Vedder Releases Needle & The Damage Done

 We previously mentioned the upcoming Neil Young tribute album, Heart of Gold, featuring Eddie Vedder as well as Brandi Carlile, Fiona Apple, and the Lumineers, among others.  This past Friday, Eddie released his cover of Needle & The Damage Done via digital streaming formats.  It's a heartfelt, timeless, and a brisk 1:47 that you should head out listen to right now.

Then hit our link above and purchase the album.

Pearl Jam March Madness 2025 Has Begun!

It's the time of year again!  While the NCAA goes to battle to determine which college team is the absolute best, we generate an AI image of the band and basketballs and lay down the format for determining the best Pearl Jam song in existence.

We've agreed a few times.  Black, Go, Immortality, and Do The Evolution have all have multiple championships, but anything could happen this year.  Dark Matter has really shook up the contenders.  

But we won't know the winner unless you help us!  If you've got an opinion (and frankly, if you don't, you're not our kinda people) come on over to our forum and vote for your favorites.  The winner will be announced .... well sometime, there's a lot more than 64 songs that we have to work through.

New Beginning

This past Friday, Matt Cameron and his collaborator, Shaina Shepherd, released a new EP, titled New Beginning, across digital formats.  The album is produced by long time Soundgarden collaborator, Nathan Yaccino.  Do you love Matt Cameron's other solo projects?  His contributions to Pearl Jam?  Than this is straight up your alley.  Check it out now or look for the upcoming vinyl release.

TRACKLISTING

1. The Moment I Found You

2. Move

3. Next Time

4. Self Denial

5. New Beginning

Happy Birthday, Jeff Ament!

 

Credit: Geoff Whitman