The new Pearl Jam album is still an event. The grunge veterans no longer sell as many records as they did in their heyday, but their fan base is huge.
According to the press release, they only hopped into Rick Rubin's Shangri-La studios for three weeks for their twelfth studio record. The result actually sounds refreshingly spontaneous. "Scared of Fear," the opening track, moves along at a decent pace, and "Respond, react" even picks up the pace. The title track "Dark Matter," which has already been released as a single, is a sinister hard rocker – and the only really dark song here. 'Upper Hand,' 'Running,' shows itself to be a raucous little punk rocker that makes up for the ballad "Won't Tell," which wants to be played a little too forcefully on the radio.