Pearl Jam's Gigaton

dannybones64

Friday, Jan. 24 — Sneak peak at Pearl Jam’s new album

Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, here performing at Safeco Field in 2018, hosted a sneak preview of Pearl Jam’s new album, “Gigaton,” in L.A. on Friday. (Dean Rutz / The Seattle Times)

Even before the first tequila shot, Eddie Vedder seems to be in good spirits.

The Pearl Jam frontman is holding court in front of an invite-only crowd gathered in a dimly lit Hollywood event space. It’s a typical industrial-chic room where industry players and journalists, full on mushroom crostini and tiny cheeseburgers, are sprawled out on lounge-y bench sofas and stools before the main event. The NeueHouse Hollywood is a stone’s throw from the concert hall Carlile rocked the night before and less than a mile from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery where Chris Cornell’s ashes are buried, making this small pocket of valet country feel like Seattle’s Grammy week ground zero.

We’re here for a sneak preview of Pearl Jam’s new album, “Gigaton,” arriving March 27 alongside a spring and summer tour (no Seattle dates at this time). Intrigue around the Seattle titans’ first studio album since 2013’s “Lightning Bolt” spiked days earlier when the band unveiled curveball single “Dance of the Clairvoyants,” which finds Pearl Jam armed with synthesizers and channeling its inner Talking Heads.

“I’m really hoping it’s loud,” Vedder says of the Dolby Atmos system — think surround sound on Jose Canseco-grade steroids — it will be played on. “My ears are not what they used to be. It’s an occupational hazard.”

Before the playback begins with Vedder leading the room in a ceremonial tequila toast, he offers a few words about the record he describes as having a layered, multidimensional sound — hence the Dolby Atmos system. Of the creative process, Vedder says: “You’re always searching for a little sort of magic. … To say that there was some magic” in this record would display “more self-confidence than I’ve had in my entire life.” Though he seems to believe there is.

Without drawing too many conclusions from a single listen, much of “Gigaton” feels like new terrain for the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers. At times there are hints of post-punk, warbly psych licks, spaced-out synth sounds, as well as Who-vian stadium thunder that wouldn’t sound out of place on other Pearl Jam records. For those wondering, “Dance of the Clairvoyants” may reside on the outer edges of the band’s latest experimentations.

As the album blasts through the arsenal of speakers, Vedder sits in a reserved section with one of his daughters, Republic Records honcho Monte Lipman and others, hunched over listening intently. Midway through, Vedder briefly works the room with the aura of a rock sage beach poet. But for a while there, he was just a convivial dude with a tequila bottle needing to be killed, coaxing people to drink at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.