If you were hoping to see Stone Gossard dwarfed by a 360-degree projection of a cosmic jellyfish while fiddling with his in-ears in Vegas, let’s shut that fantasy down now. “Oh god, no” the Pearl Jam guitarist laughs when asked if he’d want to play the Sphere. “Please don’t ask me.”
Instead, Gossard is basking in something far rarer in rock: a new album that actually sounds energized. Dark Matter—Pearl Jam’s 12th studio album—marks a rare moment where the band not only sounds like they remember how to punch, but also want to. “Sometimes you get a little bit more movement,” Gossard says. “A little bit more shifting… making it fresh again.”
This time, that meant going back to basics—live jamming, group edits, quick decisions, and tough skin. “It’s that melting pot of throwing yourself into the fray and not being in control,” he says. “Letting your art get destroyed by your bandmates works out.”
The process was different than 2020’s Gigaton, a record Gossard describes as more isolated, with band members layering their parts individually. For Dark Matter, they wanted the opposite: immediacy. Riffs got chopped up in real-time, second verses were vetoed mid-jam, chords got swapped out on the fly. “You’ve got to play around with it in the room,” he says. “And someone’s going to screw up and do something else, and everyone’s going to go, ‘Oh, that’s cool too.’”
It helped to have Andrew Watt, the 33-year-old producer best known for dragging legacy acts like Ozzy and Iggy back into relevancy, in the room. “He helped bring out our personalities,” Gossard says. “He’s imperfect, but he pushed us in a way we haven’t been pushed in a while.”
It worked. “Wreckage,” a late-session cut co-written by Ed Vedder and Watt on acoustic guitars, is already becoming a modern classic. “That song keeps revealing itself,” Gossard says. “It turned into one of my favorites. And Andrew always said that little part I play in it—that’s Cure.”
And The Cure came up a lot. “They teach you the power of the simplest little melody,” he adds. “You could be the greatest guitar player in the world or a 10-year-old learning that in an hour.”
Other influences made their way in, too. U2 looms large over “Won’t Tell,” a track that started as a Jeff Ament dream. “That band shows everyone something about songwriting,” Gossard says.
Still, don't expect to see Gossard giving himself whiplash at the edge of a stage riser. Asked why he and lead shredder Mike McCready don’t do the classic “back-to-back guitar hero” pose, Gossard’s answer is painfully on-brand. “I’m always the guy that looks like if he tries this, he’s going to fuck up,” he deadpans. “We’ll do it… but I’ll fall over, and then we’ll laugh, and the song will stop.”
Beyond Pearl Jam, Gossard’s Loosegroove label is thriving. Painted Shield has a new album, Brittany Davis is blowing minds, and Tiger Cub just wrapped a tour with Porno for Pyros. As for those long-promised reissues of Bayleaf and Interiors? “Not this year,” he says. “But definitely coming.”
And maybe, just maybe, another PJ album isn’t that far off. “I’d love to just start something—record for three days, do some more songs,” he says. “Because if we’ve got a great beat, we’re done. The song’s done.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
