2:19
Dark Matter, 2024
Written by Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Eddie Vedder, and Andrew Watt
I like Pearl Jam when they're slow and introspective, but I like it even better when they take the wheels off and embrace their punk sides. Sounding like a meaner, leaner Bad Religion fed through a Seattle amp stack, they tear through the song, which features some of Vedder's most rapid-fire vocals and intense, machine gun drumming. The lyrics are similarly thrashing and urgent, the pleas of a drowning man. "Got me diving, got me diving / Got me deep, I get the bends / When I'm summoned, or too late coming." Vedder is intense even in a low growl, but here he and the band are playing like their lives depend on it. It's desperate, it's alive, it's immediate.