Stone Gossard talked a bit about the status of Pearl Jam’s new album during a recent interview with Rolling Stone and he dropped some good news and bad news for fans anticipating the band’s tenth studio record.
The good news is that Eddie and the boys are continuing to, in Stone’s words, “expand their horizons,” with their studio output. What’s that mean? It’s tough to say since Stone is speaking in rock ‘n’ roll cliche but my guess is that the tenth Pearl Jam record will sound a lot more like No Code than it will Vitalogy. Hopefully it also means the record will sound a lot better than the track Olé, which was debuted in September of last year and in my opinion is rather weak sauce compared to the rest of the Pearl Jam canon.
And then there’s bad news. When asked about the status of the record Stone said the band is “in no rush” to finish up the album. What’s that mean? Again, it’s another tough one to decipher but the guys in Pearl Jam seem to be keeping themselves pretty occupied with non-PJ happenings. Eddie Vedder is touring the US solo, Brad is releasing a record and touring, Mike McCready’s UFO tribute band Flight to Mars will be doing a brief tour and Soundgarden working on a new album. All of those things seem like they might take time away from Pearl Jam’s studio time so expect to wait a bit longer for the follow-up to 2009’s Backspacer.
Here’s what Stone told Rolling Stone about the album:
I don’t know, it’s hard to say. We’ve recorded some songs, and we’re going to record and write some more. You never know, it might be that we’re a song away or two, or it might be that we’re going to record six or seven more songs. I think the main thing is that we’re not in a rush and there’s no urgency to it. The most important thing is that we put something out that continues to expand our boundaries rather than trying to follow what we’ve done in the past. I think it’s a good time to hopefully continue to experiment, and continue to shake it up. So that people can go “Wow, that’s kind of weird for Pearl Jam,” and then 10 years later they can go, “Oh, that’s my favorite period.” Which is always kind of what happens. You try something and at first everybody doesn’t necessarily understand it, and then you look back and you go, thank God we tried something new, because it really opened a door up for us to be able to do this and this and this beyond that.
I’m fine with them taking their time, theyr’re doing a lot with their said side projects right now, and that in itself is of great quality! The boys will deliver, they always do!