ABC/Craig SjodinPearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard has shared an update on the progress of the band’s next album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Lightning Bolt.
“We’re going to make a record, and we’re in the middle of it,” Gossard tells Rolling Stone. “We’re just going to keep plugging away until we get one done.”
Last year, Pearl Jam dropped the political song “Can’t Deny Me,” and bassist Jeff Ament says there’s more where that came from.
“We’ve gone in, probably, four or five times in the last couple of years, so we have a whole ton of unfinished stuff,” Ament says. “We’re just sort of in a little bit of limbo.”
“I’m sure everybody’s got a bunch more riffs, and I’m sure [frontman Eddie Vedder‘s] got a handful of journal lyrics,” he continues. “It’s just going to take us all getting into a room together for six weeks and just knocking something out.”
The grunge icons had been meaning to record new music for awhile, but has been slowed by “life stuff,” including the death of Chris Cornell in 2017.
“I think when Chris passed, that’s really been a tough one to wrap our heads around,” Ament says.
Both Gossard and Ament, who played with Cornell in the band Temple of the Dog, performed at last week’s star-studded I Am the Highway tribute show in Los Angeles.
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