Pearl Jam Announces ‘Dark Matter,’ Preps World Tour
The album will arrive on April 19 and the tour will begin in May.
Pearl Jam will release their twelfth studio album, Dark Matter, on Monkeywrench Records/Republic Records on April 19. The band also announced that they’ll be kicking off a 35-date worldwide tour this May.
To celebrate the news, the band has shared the title track, which you can check out below. Produced by multi-Grammy award winning producer Andrew Watt, Dark Matter marks the band’s first release since the critically-acclaimed Gigaton (2020).
In 2023, the members of Pearl Jam—Eddie Vedder [vocals], Jeff Ament [bass], Stone Gossard [rhythm guitar], Mike McCready [lead guitar], and Matt Cameron [drums]—retreated to Shangri-La Studios in Malibu where they simply plugged in and played with producer Andrew Watt at the helm. Writing and recording in a burst of inspiration, Dark Matter was born in just three weeks.
As a result, Dark Matter channels the shared spirit of a group of lifelong creative confidants and brothers in one room playing as if their very lives depended on it.
The band members previewed the record with a listening party at the iconic Troubadour in West Hollywood during Grammy week.
Regarding the album, Vedder said: “I’m getting chills, because I have good memories. We’re still looking for ways to communicate. We’re at this time in our lives when you could do it or you could not do it, but we still care about putting something out there that is meaningful and we hopefully think is our best work. No hyperbole, I think this is our best work.”
Ament added, “What Ed said about getting us in a room at this point, we felt like we were about to make a really important record. A lot of that had to do with the atmosphere Andrew set up. He has encyclopedic knowledge of our history, not only as a band and how we wrote songs, but as players.
“He could pinpoint things we did on old songs to the point where I was like, ‘What the f__k is he talking about?’ His excitement was contagious. He’s a force. I just want to say thanks for keeping us on track. I couldn’t be prouder of us as a band. I feel so grateful for the fans, but mostly for my brothers and these people I’ve made music with.”
