The band’s ninth LP is due out September 20th. “The artwork collaboration between Tom Tomorrow and the band for this album is so compelling, we felt like it deserved its own online gallery showcase,” said Tim Bierman, the manager of Pearl Jam’s Ten Club, who as Rock Daily previously reported, is already taking pre-orders for Backspacer. Click it to head to Pearl Jam’s official site and add the image to your set of nine snapshots - once you find them all, there is a reward (keep reading …)įor Backspacer‘s artwork, the band enlisted their friend and political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow. Vedder sings “Soon Forget,” a bouncy parable about materialism, backed by nothing but a ukulele.If you’re seeing an awesome illustration up top, it means you’ve found one of the nine pieces of Backspacer album art that Pearl Jam are hiding all over the Internet today. The album reflects both Pearl Jam’s longstanding curse of self-importance and a renewed willingness to be experimental or just plain odd. Apparently as tired of grunge as everyone except Creed fans, Pearl Jam delve elsewhere: jumpy post-punk and somber meditations, tightly wound folk rock and turbulent, neopsychedelic rockers that sound like they boiled out of jam sessions. Binaural is a warts-and-all album it has grabbers, songs that sink in slowly and a few absolute duds (e.g., “Light Years”). It comes across as part of an extended conversation among the five band members - all of whom participate in songwriting, including new drummer Matt Cameron from Soundgarden - and fans loyal enough to check in for Pearl Jam’s latest musings on love, death and social responsibility.

By contrast, Mad Season by Matchbox Twenty sits up and begs for a chance to grapple with songs, advertisements and engine noise on a Top Forty radio playlist.īinaural makes no attempt to ingratiate itself. A Latin Playboys member who has produced Soul Coughing and Bonnie Raitt, Blake is a proponent of binaural recording, which places two microphones where your ears would be he’d rather have spontaneity than polish. On Binaural, the band hunkers down in the sonic basement with producer Tchad Blake.

Pearl Jam sound relieved to be on the sidelines. They’ve reacted to the new circumstances in diametrically opposed ways. Sincere-sounding guys leading guitar-driven bands have been upstaged by other testosteronic life-forms: the ultramacho boors of rap metal and gangsta rap, and the simpering, animatronic pinups of boy bands. Between Matchbox albums, Thomas co-wrote and sang Santana’s blockbuster radio comeback, “Smooth,” and collected a Song of the Year Grammy.įor all their disparities, Pearl Jam and Matchbox Twenty have ended up behind the same pop curve. Formed in Orlando around longtime band mates Thomas, bassist Brian Yale and drummer Paul Doucette, the group had been together for a matter of months when it made its 1996 debut album, Yourself or Someone Like You, which has now sold more than 10 million copies. Matchbox Twenty, by contrast, were late-breaking, avidly commercial followers of 1990s folk-rock bands like Counting Crows and Hootie and the Blowfish. Meanwhile, their music spawned so many imitations that it became hard to hear the heartfelt, wayward intensity of the original. Pearl Jam had pulled together survivors from Seattle underground bands, and they reached the Top Ten almost grudgingly, always worrying about their integrity. They arrived from decidedly different angles. īack in the 1990s, Pearl Jam and Matchbox Twenty both won mass audiences with the aura of earnestness they share. The movie’s pressing question: Who will take Ms. He’s a dead ringer for Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty. But a touch of smarmy self-interest always seems to lurk just under the surface. He’s surprisingly savvy about other people’s feelings, and he can usually mouth the right words. Prospect Number Two, striding through the cafeteria, could be a clean-cut student-council candidate on the stump: overachieving, glad-handing, eager to please. He mumbles and hangs out with his buddies, embarrassed when he gets too much attention on his own, and he looks a lot like Eddie Vedder.

Out in the parking lot is Prospect Number One, a scruffy, leather-jacketed misfit, shy but stubborn, with a tendency to brood over everything from romance to the World Trade Organization. She’s being courted by two characters, each working his own kind of sensitive-guy behavior. The camera tracks across a suburban landscape toward Little Ms. Roll credits for Basic Teen Romance, plot Number Four.

Pearl jam binaural album art