Pearl Jam have made “a good start” on their next album

Following 2020’s excellent Gigaton, plenty of side-projects, and a solo album from Eddie Vedder earlier this year, it sounds as though Pearl Jam will be getting together to record new music “pretty soon”, having made a “good start” so far on their next album.

Guitarist and songwriter Stone Gossard has revealed to 101 WRIF (via Classic Rock) that the grunge legends have been working on new material – and there are some “songs that are getting close to being done” and there’s also “a bunch that aren’t”. “We’ve got demos for days,” he enthuses. “Everybody writes in the band, so now it’s really just trying to figure out what’s something different for us and what’s something exciting.”

That doesn’t mean we’re actually going to hear anything that soon, though. Stone estimates that “it’s gonna be 2024 before the record comes out, is my guess. But we’re working on it.”

In a 2020 interview with Kerrang!, Stone teased how he’d like to “make another record that really shocks people” following some of the more experimental stuff on Gigaton.

“There’s some new territory there, and I think it bodes well for whatever comes next,” he said. “I think we’re still scratching the surface in terms of what really could be significantly different sounding songs. I guess I would probably compare [what I’m thinking of] to an OK Computer/Kid A moment, thinking about Radiohead’s transformation and the journey that they went on.”

When asked if that moment still lays ahead for Pearl Jam, Stone replied: “I hope so. It’s not going to be OK Computer, obviously, but a moment where we stumble onto something that is significantly different. That prospect always intrigues me. I’d like to make another record that really shocks people – that makes them go, ‘Wow, that’s unexpected!’”

Read this: Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard: “Eddie Vedder is my muse. Every song I write is for him, ultimately”