Stone Gossard: “This is everything we could have ever hoped for!”

Stone Gossard may well be the busiest man in rock music right now.

For starters, Seattle legends Pearl Jam are currently in the UK and Europe, touring their incredible, 5/5-rated new album Dark Matter. They’ve already played a hit-strewn set in Dublin (their first time back there in 14 years) and overcome some tour lurgy in triumphant fashion with help from a truly boisterous Manchester crowd. We’ve also seen a host of surprises in the Dark Matter era live – not least Eddie Vedder covering Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt.

“I did not see that coming,” says Stone, updating Kerrang! from his hotel on the road in the UK. “He does a solo song [in the set], that’s kind of what we’ve been doing lately. I love it. First of all, Hurt is unassailable. But I think the fact that he did it his way was great.”

Normally, a new record and world tour would be enough for most, but not Stone.

Indeed, what has perhaps flown under the radar of many is that he may well be in the most prolific streak of his storied career. Since 2020, Stone has personally worked on six albums. There were, of course, two Pearl Jam records. In 2023, we also got In The Moment That You’re Born, the final release from his beloved group Brad – itself an elegiac swansong for their late frontman Shawn Smith.

And then there’s his latest project, Painted Shield – a group that sees Stone join forces with folk singer Mason Jennings, keyboardist/vocalist Brittany Davis, drummer Matt Chamberlain and guitarist Jeff Fielder. Despite only forming in 2020, next month the band are somehow already releasing their third – yes, third – album in four years: Painted Shield 3.

Stone, it appears you have music coming out of your pores. What gives?

“I have ‘a flow’ going right now where a lot of old things are lining up and I’m in a position to make those things finalised,” he grins. “It’s fun because I’m saying yes a lot right now – my role is to go, ‘Great idea, let's do it! Go!’ That’s what I’m best at: being enthusiastic.”

There is a lot to be enthusiastic about. As with their previous entries, the new Painted Shield record is a kaleidoscopic alt.rock gem. Run ’Em All Down starts like a pulsating Giorgio Moroder electronic track before realigning itself into a fuzzy rock song with plinking synth accents. She Runs could almost be an Ill Communication-era Beastie Boys track at first with its chanted vocals and big bass groove only to eventually burst into a melodic chorus. Elsewhere, against all odds, Lover Divine finds a way to turn the word ‘Pharaoh’ into a catchy hook.

Beguiling, cool and utterly distinct, you never know what they’re going to come out with. The impending arrival of their third album is clearly a big source of pride for Stone.

And with Pearl Jam also set to play their debut – close your ears, Arsenal fans – Tottenham Hotspur Stadium gig (their first shows back in London since their acclaimed two-night stand at Hyde Park in 2022) there is a lot to catch up on.

Here, we find out more from Stone about Dark Matter, reflections on their classic album Vitalogy ahead of it turning 30 this year, and the “Frankenstein” approach to songwriting that makes Painted Shield such a thrillingly chameleonic group…

So Stone, you’re now a couple of months into touring Dark Matter – and two dates down specifically on the European/UK run. How is life in Pearl Jam right now?
“The band’s in a great place. From my perspective, you can hear the vitality in Dark Matter and the energy of it – we’re clearly excited about the music. The new songs are sounding good next to the old songs so we’re all generally in a place of, ‘Wow, this is everything we could have ever hoped for!’ Ed and Jeff have also designed new lighting and staging which is so cool. Dublin was a great first show, we hadn’t played together in three weeks… You know, you can walk out onstage after [that break] and go, ‘I don’t know how to play’ (laughs)!”

Does that really ever happen to you?
“You can start and not really be together for a second and you go, ‘Wow, this is how close it is to not working!’ In Dublin, the crowd were gorgeous and the Manchester crowd were so good to us – they were just like, ‘We’re not going to go home without having a good time’ and that was their decision to make that happen. Obviously, Ed had some frog in this throat, he was sick from something. It was hard for him, but it felt a little bit like one of those old, wild drunken club gigs, where it’s like, ‘The wheels are falling off, but it’s still fun!’ And for a guy with a cold, Eddie still sang great! I also loved when Mike McCready was unhinged [in Manchester]. He was speaking in tongues, basically – he gets so wound up and all of a sudden he really loses himself. And then it’s something more than just guitar playing. He’s communing.”

Getting people to enjoy a new song on record is one thing, but bringing it into step with a beloved back catalogue is another. Do you have any sense of which Dark Matter songs are going down best live?
“Literally, the whole record is fun – and that’s different for me. Normally, we try to play everything off a new record and there are some songs that we haven’t learned to play live – something doesn’t quite feel right. But all of the songs from Dark Matter are working. That’s all about the work that we put in writing them and arranging them. Wreckage feels great to play.”

Out of curiosity, you’ve played every song on Dark Matter live multiple times except Got To Give, which has only been aired once. That track, co-incidentally, only has a partial portion of its full lyrics reproduced in the album sleeve, with a big chunk of them omitted. It all makes it seem like there’s a special aura about it…
“A mystery! I love that. Let’s go with that! There’s something special about that song, whenever we play it, the universe is gonna crack open and then light will come streaming in…”

So no special reason for it being less frequent?
“We’ve rehearsed it a lot and played it once. Ed is putting the setlists together and I think that one, for whatever reason, he’s just not ready to tackle.”

You told Zane Lowe that the Pearl Jam song you wished you guys would play more often is Can’t Keep, but you didn’t dwell on why. What is it about that track that speaks to you?
“That’s a special song. Eddie wrote it on the ukulele and then we did a [band] version of it. I think maybe for Ed he’s still struggling with it, like, ‘Which version do I like?’ But to me, I love the chord changes, and the dancehall beat – it has this pulse to it that that feels a good place for us to be. It has energy, it has momentum, yet the chords are simple in the way they’re coming at you. The lyrics are gorgeous.”

After the release of Gigaton, you told Kerrang! your hope would be that Pearl Jam would one day record their version of an OK Computer or Kid A – a record that really shocks listeners. Are you still hoping that you’ll do a left-field record like that in the future?
“I think I feel that way about every record. I want to unearth stuff, even if it’s a little bit difficult, I want it to be a record that feels good and shows growth. That’s the experimental side of it. But I do feel that way all the time. I always want everyone to switch instruments!”

There does seem to be a real restlessness to you, creatively…
“I don’t know why that is. I’m like, ‘I’ll play nothing but cowbell, someone else only has a one-string guitar, and someone has a boot that they hit – that's it.’ It sounds fun. I don’t know. You’d probably do it for an hour and go, ‘Okay, that was great, but let’s go back to what we were doing…’”

In a few months, Pearl Jam’s classic album Vitalogy will be turning 30. Have you spoken between yourselves about how – and if – you might honour that occasion?
“I'm sure there’s a reissue that somebody’s talking about. These anniversaries keep coming – there’s this constant reminder. It’s like, ‘You thought it was 10 years ago, but it’s really 20 years ago!’”

It’s often hard to tell whether you’re all just completely talked out when it comes to going back over the ’90s, or if you still find revisiting that period stimulating?
“I don’t mind, particularly if there’s something specific. I reminisce. I’m thinking back and looking at it and putting it in context now – that record, in that era. There was a lot going on, a lot of changes happening within the band, a lot of changes personally for all of us. I listen to that record and I’m proud because we kept it simple. It has a humility that I think is really charming and I appreciate. Ed, at that time, was really keeping us grounded. My instincts probably would have been to be really heavy and really quiet, and try to be more progressive or riff-oriented in a way. And that would have been harder for Eddie to tell stories over.”

It seems to be received wisdom at this point that Vitalogy is perhaps the crucial album in terms of preventing the band from imploding after your initial encounters with stardom were so intense. But is that how you actually see it?
“It was Ed learning about his own songwriting and where he wanted to take something harmonically. He was going where we wanted to go for those first two records, for the most part. It was him taking the reins. It was a transition. Everyone at a point in the band has had that moment of being like, ‘I've got to assert myself more – I need this!’ and all of those things add up to where we’re at now which is everyone having had that experience and now knowing that it’s really good to not be in charge sometimes! It’s a weird, strange thing.”

Let’s go from one third album to another. In what ways specifically do you feel Painted Shield have pushed things forward on your new record?
“With Painted Shield, it’s this fantastic combination of people and I have no idea where it could go. When people are agreeing to things that wouldn’t normally be their homebase [musically], that’s where good things happen. The first record was really a lot of back and forth between Mason and myself, with my riffs and his interpretation of them, and then some of his stuff. The second record was more Matt-oriented. This one is Brittany becoming more and more comfortable with this vehicle and feeling like they can get in there and play around. It’s bounced around a little bit. The next one will be interesting…”

Wait, next one? This interview about Painted Shield 3 isn’t going to be obsolete by the time this runs is it? Is Painted Shield 4 already about to drop?
“(Laughs) No, we’ve got time. We have 20 minutes before we get to that.”

In the best way possible, the single Lover Divine is quite a weird song. On the one hand, you’re making the word ‘Pharaoh’ an ear-worm, on the other the lyrics are really heavy. Why are Painted Shield going full ancient Egyptian on your single?
“I think it’s a heavy metal song, honestly. You know what I mean?”

You’ve gone full Iron Maiden Powerslave era, thematically?
“There’s this side of music where, sometimes, you can be a character that you want to be, or there’s something about that character that you’re attracted to, or you need to get out. It’s the opposite of where Mason usually comes from. He’s the most deferential and thoughtful person – all of his lyrics are deep and about love and pain. With this it’s like he’s made an action movie (laughs).”

You were speaking before about Brittany’s enhanced role in Painted Shield, which really comes to the fore vocally on Versions Of Her. How has Brittany grown into the group?
“Mason wrote that song, and it was acoustic. We laid it out and we all really thought it was a great song, but then we thought, ‘Well, what if Brittany sings Mason’s lyric?’ Brittany’s keyboard playing and ear is amazing to witness. All of a sudden the song’s harmonics changed and then it became this other thing. Matt put this beat on it, and it’s truly a Frankenstein of sharing, really, because it started with one idea and then it just kept growing and turning into something else. It was a real experiment. At the studio [for this album] we got all the keyboards pulled out and Britt gave us a lot of that ’80s stylised sound – particularly on Transector. There’s so much of Britt’s musicality on this stuff. Again, I’m saying, ‘Yes! This sounds great! Let’s go!’”

Window was originally a Mason song that ended up in the form it has because you suggested, rather drastically, that he takes “all the chords” out. What is the key to relaying a change that big in a diplomatic way so as to, you know, not cause offence?
“The lyric is the same, the vocal is the same, but the musical pulse and harmonics are shifting behind Mason from where they started. So he’s letting go and allowing the harmonics to shift behind him in a way that is probably fresh to his ear. So we’re fucking with it, but we do have to be thoughtful about that, too.”

Not doing so has destroyed a lot of great bands…
“It’s our band, we created it with that in mind. It’s built into it. It’s like, ‘This is a place to do anything!’ We have a high tolerance. Your feelings can get hurt and then you’re fucking out of it, like, ‘Oh my god, I’m not good – I thought I was!’ So many people are great at things that they don't think they’re great at. That’s what I always think. What people are obsessed with in their own psyche, sometimes you can see outside of that and go, ‘Oh my god, if they flip the script, and did the opposite, they could really be doing something fantastic as well.’ I try to be aware that what I’m attached to might, at the end of the day, become something else. And it happens a lot.”

Finally, it’s been over 10 years since your last solo album, and as you are in this most prolific streak, will it be long before we get another Stone Gossard release, given the amount of songs you have?
“My guess is it’s gonna be a while. I also don’t have a bunch of solo songs…”

C’mon, in 2021 you told us you have more songs than you know what to do with. Surely you have loads stock-piled?
“I got two-part riffs, man! I got an A section and a B section ’til the cows come home – I got so many of those! But those start to sound the same if you do 10 of them, so you’ve got to just figure out how to make those special. I’m just having so much fun doing all this other stuff with [Stone’s record label] Loosegroove, with Painted Shield – I feel very fulfilled creatively right now. And I’m also really having so much fun playing with Pearl Jam, and falling back into it with new perspectives in terms of how to have fun and how to be part of it.”

Get your tickets to see Pearl Jam in London this Saturday, June 29.

Painted Shield 3 is released on July 26.

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• “It promises many great things”: Our original review of Pearl Jam’s legendary debut Ten
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• 13 brilliant B-sides that should’ve been on a proper studio album