Pearl Jam‘s 11th studio album, Gigaton, arrives on Friday (March 27th). The band’s first LP in seven years, since 2013’s Lightning Bolt, was supposed to be launched with a massive global listening/screening event this week as well as a spring North American tour. Both fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic, although the band did set up a preview hotline and released three tracks in advance.
Guitarist Stone Gossard told us a while back that Pearl Jam feels like its songwriting is as strong as ever after so many years: “We're still writing songs in a way that, we don't take it — we haven't started hiring people to write songs for us, or feeling like we can't do it ourselves. And we keep being rewarded for our work that we do with each other and the chances we take in terms of trusting each other and songwriting and collaboration and all that stuff.”
Prior to the release of the album, Pearl Jam shared the song “Dance of The Clairvoyants,” “Superblood Wolfmoon” and “Quick Escape,” the latter a warning about climate change that features a slam against Donald Trump.
It remains to be seen how sales are affected by the outbreak. Many physical retailers are closed, while Amazon is prioritizing deliveries of essential items over things like CDs and vinyl. It is unclear whether digital or streaming sales of the LP will be impacted as well.