I think Dark Matter may have rekindled my love for PJ

ten z

So, I've been a fan of PJ for years, but there was a stretch between Lightning Bolt and Dark Matter where I felt burnt out on the band's music, and Gigaton didn't exactly cure that burnt out feeling.  I had been aware of Pearl Jam ever since I was a kid when I heard Last Kiss on the radio.  My mom got me a copy of Ten to start my vinyl collection when I was 10 years old.  But it wasn't until my high school years when I truly became a fan.  I can just remember listening to Ten during either 2008 or 2009 and something clicked during that listening session.  I felt like I finally "got" this band and I wanted to know more about them.  This led to me reading up on them online and discovering that not only did they have more albums than Ten, they were also still active. This then led me to getting the rest of the albums that they had released up to that point and soon I was calling Pearl Jam my number 1 favorite band of all time.  I listened to their albums at home, on the bus on my way to school, in my mom's car, I just loved this band and their music.  It was me who introduced my Mom to albums like No Code and Avocado.  When Backspacer was announced, I preordered it from my local record store and while the album ended up not being perfect, I still loved it and I will always have a ton of love and nostalgia for it.

I joined 10c in 2010 because I heard about the fan club exclusive singles.  My mom gave me a membership as a birthday gift (she stopped giving me 10c memberships for my birthday when 10c switched to auto-renewal and I've been paying for the membership myself ever since).  The forum name I chose is because Ten is my favorite album and the z stands for DragonBall Z because I was super into anime back then.  I remember my mom and I hitting F5, trying to get fan club tickets only to be shut out and my mom having to get them from Ticketmaster.  That same year I saw my first PJ show in Hartford and while I was disappointed that my mom and I didn't get "Black" and there were some sound issues in the beginning, I still loved that show and I still have the t-shirt (though I stopped wearing it due to the logo fading).  I actually wore that t-shirt for my senior picture with the cover of Ten as the background (the photographer had me do both formal and casual pictures and I chose PJ for the casual one).  Point is, PJ was a huge part of my life back in my high school days.

I did slow my PJ listening habits down a bit during college, but when Lightning Bolt was announced, I preordered it from 10c the same day.  I saw the Buffalo 2013 show and it was the first and only time I have ever got fan club seats.  Still didn't get "Black", but it was still a great show.  Also, it was cool to hear the new songs before the album had even released.  Due to not having a turntable in my dorm (had to wait until Thanksgiving break to spin my LB vinyl), I bought LB on iTunes and I listened to it the night of release.  While there were a couple songs I liked, I was kind of disappointed in the album overall.

I don't know if I just overdid it on PJ during my teens, but my PJ listening habits slowed down so much by the late 2010s that the only time I listened to them was when a fan club single arrived in my mailbox.  Yet I kept up the membership because like I said, this band was a huge part of my life in the past.  When Gigaton was announced, I once again preordered from 10c and I found myself utterly disappointed when the album came.  I had hoped it would cure me of my burnout, but instead it just kept it going.  After the whole fan club single fiasco in 2020 and the realization that there would be no more fan club singles and on top of that my continuing feeling of burnout, I seriously began to consider quitting 10c and for a brief period in 2022 I did.  Long enough to lose my membership number and seniority, but not this forum account.

I was cautiously optimistic with Dark Matter, I didn't want to get my hopes up again.  The title track gave me hope and in the lead up to this album's release, I started listening to PJ again, playing songs I haven't listened to in years.  I ended up buying Dark Matter from my local record store instead of 10c because I didn't want to wait for the vinyl to arrive in the mail (I've actually been getting more and more into buying albums locally on or near release day and instead of preordering online).  I was cautiously optimistic when I went in to my first listen of this album, but after listening to this album from beginning to end...this is the most fun I've had listening to a new PJ album since Backspacer.  "Scared of Fear" is an amazing opening track and "React, Respond" is a great follow up to it.  "Wreckage" is a great song that I find to be rather soothing, such a contrast to the title track, which follows it.  The title track is easily my favorite song on the album, love hearing it in context with the rest of the album.  "Won't Tell" is really good, "Upper Hand" is okay, "Waiting for Stevie" rocks and while I didn't like "Running" at first, it's really grown on me.  "Something Special" is really sweet, but I feel like it should have been on Ed's next solo album instead.  "Got to Give" and "Setting Sun" are the only ones I feel kind of "meh" about.  Overall, 4 stars out of 5 and while I still think it's too early to rank it yet, I easily see this being in my top 5, either at number 4 or number 5. 

Since that first listen I've been listening to my favorite tracks from the album on my way to work and I've been listening to more PJ than I have in years.  So yeah, that's my thoughts on Dark Matter.