Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament provides his update on the next Pearl Jam album.during the debut Kyle Meredith and…While the band feels they’ve “earned the right to do what we want,” Ament said, their latest effort isn’t quite finished and “doesn’t feel like a record yet.”
Just two weeks ago, Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard shared with Meredith that he thought the new album was “close to the finish line,” an assessment that Ament mildly disagrees with. “A lot of the time the hardest part of[finishing]a record is figuring out which songs are going to be on, do we need to record another song, what’s the artwork, what’s the title, etc,” Ament said, noting that the band Planning to take the remainder of the summer off to work through these issues.
“By September, we’ll still be answering the questions we’re at now, and we’ll be asking those questions again,” he continued. “I think everyone’s hoping we’ll have a record next year. If we have a record next year, it means we’ll probably have a few more shows, and I think there’s a couple of places we haven’t played in a long time, So I think we’ve got things written.”
He cites the band’s drive to embrace their rock royalty status while exploiting each member’s strengths and aspirations as both a blessing and a challenge. “We’ve earned some kind of right (to do whatever we want), but it’s difficult because we have five guys pulling the cart,” Ament explained. “Sometimes you end up pulling the car in the opposite direction. But, (it’s about) embracing all of that, embracing everyone’s ideas, hopes, dreams, aspirations and style… I think that’s what we want musically Yes. I think we want to get through it and get the best parts of each other.”
In Ament’s view, each member of the band has a “superpower” or type, and when they lean on each other, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. “We all have hopes and dreams for the new Pearl Jam song — hopefully by the end of the song, everyone feels like their character is a part of it,” he said. “That’s where our band is right now. Like, I want to hear Mike McCready blow the door open. I want to hear a lyric from Ed that makes me laugh, or makes me really sad, or, you know , very sad – he can do as well as anyone. I think everyone in the band has a superpower. It’s like, “How do we pull these superpowers out of each other to write great music ? “Again, we’ve earned our right to do whatever we want. But I don’t think showing off our strengths is the worst way this band is currently operating.”
Earlier this year, Pearl Jam launched a 25th anniversary edition yield and Give way.Ament also touches on these topics and more in his interview Kyle Meredith and…so listen to the full text above.
At the end of August, PJ is about to embark on a 2023 tour.See a full list of dates and get tickets here.