“Rock songs are great, compact little art projects,” Stone Gossard said, describing the 11 songs off his upcoming solo record Moonlander.
Announced two weeks ago, the record is the second solo album from the Pearl Jam guitarist and it is something that has been in the making for more than a decade. The record consists of songs Gossard has written over the years between his stints in Pearl Jam and his other band Brad. So far he has released the first two tracks off the album, the uptempo rocker “I Need Something Different” and the album’s title song.
Today Gossard unveils the track “Both Live,” one of Moonlander‘s more playful offerings. It’s carried by a steady guitar riff, bouncy piano notes and subtle horn, clarinet and hand clap embellishments that add to the song’s peppy, feel-good vibe. You can listen to “Both Live” here.
“I remember writing it and working on it a lot when I was doing a lot of kayaking in Seattle. I was out on Lake Washington and it was a beautiful day out and that’s where the line of ‘I want to use my fins’ came from,” Gossard said. “It’s sort of a play on I want to use my limbs, but you’re out on the water and it made me think about being a fish. So instead of using my limbs I wanted to use my fins.”
“The song is a little bit about someone giving you permission to be yourself and saying ‘hey get out there and take your best shot,'” he continued.
The record features a broad mix of sounds including twangy rock tunes, bluesy songs and a few slower introspective numbers. The broad instrumentation of “Both Live” with its horns, piano and woodwinds, are representative of the types of sounds heard throughout the album, which are quite different than what you’d hear on a Pearl Jam album. To help create the various soundscapes on Moonlander Gossard called on names that will be familiar to fans of Pearl Jam and Brad including current Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, who assists on some songs, and former Pearl Jam skinsman Matt Chamberlain who also lends a hand.
“It’s a real homespun crowd,” he said. “I really got excited about having different instrumentation on this album.”
Gossard’s homespun crowd on “Both Live” includes Regan Hagar from Brad on drums, former Brad member Mike Berg on piano, Hans Teuber adding horns and clarinet, well-known local producer Barrett Jones on bass and Pete Droge.
For Moonlander‘s release Gossard decided to take a bit of an unconventional approach to making the music available to fans. He is releasing one song a week leading up to the album’s June release date and each song will have an accompanying piece of original artwork. The 11 pieces of art, which were inspired by time he spent drawing with his 5-year-old daughter, combine to create the album’s cover artwork. Fans can win autographed posters and plush dolls made to represent the characters in the artwork via a Twitter contest. He will also release a pair of four-song digital EPs on iTunes which will contain the album’s first eight tracks — Apollo (May 7) and Luna (June 4) — leading up to the Moonlander‘s June 25 release.
He said this distribution method gave him an opportunity to try something new while also showcasing the album’s artwork.
“We had some artwork we were feeling good about and we wanted to make this more about an event that was going to last a little bit longer than just something like a record coming out and doing a few interviews and being done with it,” said Gossard. “It sort of slowly reveals what it is. It was just an idea to try something we haven’t tried before and so far it’s feeling pretty good … it’s sort of spreading the pressure of the release out over a longer period of time and I’m feeling real good about it.”
You can sign up for updates on the album as well as get the remaining tracks and artwork emailed to you weekly over at the Moonlander website.
