Interesting that there’s no mention of Brendan having worked on the initial sessions when clearly there’s a story to be told there.

There’s always a story to be told that’s never told with this band

It seems more like some fairly analog dudes (joke goes here) with families and hearing problems were gifted the support team equivalent of the grandson who sets up their computer for them.

It’s a happy byproduct that this gave everyone way more time to try out and perfect fresh ideas.

Going back to the rising again, it’s not that different from how that record was built: people coming in at different times, getting to hear the record as it was being built and finding their best layer to add to the story.

There is a photograph of Lance Mercer that Pearl Jam fans know well. It is contained in the opening package of No Code . In the center of the room there is a table with six burning candles on it. All around are the musicians with their instruments and the spies on the ground to hear each other: Stone Gossard is standing, Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready and Jeff Ament are on the stools, Jack Irons is sitting behind the drums. That photograph and other similar ones taken in the rehearsal rooms of the group are the symbol of how the music of Pearl Jam is imagined: an intense and vibrant sound produced by five musicians who play together, live, in a circle. Pearl Jam's songs are what's going on inside that circle.

Gigaton was not registered as such. The album that will be released on Friday 27 March ( here our review) is the result of sessions of almost home-made recordings spread over a long period of time during which musicians have often worked on songs individually or in pairs. The collector and guarantor of these sessions is called Josh Evans, has been collaborating with Pearl Jam for fifteen years, is their trusted sound engineer and for the first time co-produces their album. "I've always been a fan of Pearl Jam, but I never told her this to keep them from frightening them," he tells me laughing on the phone from Seattle. Born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother, Evans has spent his entire life, except the first year of life, in the city of grunge. "I'm in Lincoln Park on Puget Sound," he explains. "There are people walking, there are dogs, there is a beautiful sun and it is a little relief these days". Add immediately,

Josh Evans will turn 42 this year . When Pearl Jam released the best seller Tenhe was 13. He asked his mother to buy him the CD. She went to Fred Meyer department store. Since he knew very little about that album, he also bought another one that was certainly good, the first of Led Zeppelin. "Try to imagine. I was a kid. It was 1991. It was Seattle. I was in it ». Evans could not have imagined that one day he would be part of the band's limited producers' club, a rather short list of names that includes Brendan O'Brien (six albums), Adam Kasper (two), Rick Parashar and Tchad Blake (one each) . “I wasn't supposed to get on that list. It just happened, "he says. The fact that the group did not call a screaming producer, and not even a trusted person like O'Brien, is an indication that Gigatonmore than any other Pearl Jam album it was made in an almost homely context. And it is not even the photograph of a specific moment of the band, as they were Ten or Vitalogy , but a puzzle that has been composing over two years.

Josh Evans got to know Pearl Jam during the sessions of their 2006 self-titled album, the so-called Avocado . He was assistant sound engineer at Studio X in Seattle where the group recorded. "It means I sorted things out, cleaned, brought sandwiches and coffee." When Pearl Jam moved their headquarters and rehearsal room they call Warehouse from the South Lake Union area, not far from Tom Hanks' house boat to Love Insomnia, in the Georgetown neighborhood they remembered Evans. They called him first for small whitewashing and moving jobs, then as a sound engineer. "I've been working full-time for them since 2008," he says. «In recent years I have had a role in Mike and Jeff's solo projects. I became the sound engineer at home, so to speak. " In the meantime, he worked as a sound engineer and mixer for other artists, from King Animal's Soundgarden to his debut Thunderpussy.

It was therefore natural to entrust him with the recording of the Gigaton demos . «At some point those demos became the album and I found myself in the role of co-producer. Nobody said it openly. Nobody asked me: hey Josh, do you want to produce this album? I was there, I was working on it, it happened. Maybe Matt would ask me for my opinion on the drum sound. Or Stone said to me: I have this idea, how can we put it down so that Ed likes it too? And so, slowly, I began to collaborate with the band also from a creative point of view ».

Despite having worked with prominent artists such as Brandi Carlile and Dave Matthews Band, and despite having got his hands on important projects such as the 2018 Chris Cornell anthology, Evans had never co-produced an album in his life. "Honestly? I tried not to think about it. I bowed my head and worked. If the band was happy, I was happy too. At the end of 2019, when I mixed the songs, I realized that I had co-produced the album of a group with thirty years of history and a large catalog. So I went to resent their old records, to be sure that my work did not disfigure. "

Gigaton sessions had started almost two years earlier, in January 2017. «Inside the Warehouse a small recording room has been created, the GT Studios. Nothing in particular, just the cabin for the battery, the control room. It is as if it were a home study. Some recordings were made before January 2017, the River Cross pump organ is from 2015 for example, but that was when they started getting serious. For a couple of months he worked every day. Not all together, but someone was always there. There have been breaks for the tour. And the death of Chris Cornell in May stopped everything. He was a friend and a source of inspiration for everyone. It blew us away. It took a year to recover and process the mourning ». It is said thatComes Then Goes is dedicated to Cornell. «I don't know specifically. But I'm sure there's a bit of Chris in all Gigaton songs . And so it is: in his texts he tries to make sense of what he lives, raising his daughters, climate change, Cornell ».

The band didn't provide Evans with guidelines , but from the outset it was clear that Gigaton would be unlike any other Pearl Jam album on the writing front. “They wanted to compose differently than usual. They no longer wanted to get together in the hall, turn on the amps, play and record, even if some piece born like this is there, for example Who Ever Saidthat basically they are the ones playing together in the same room even if then Mike has put strange atmospheres experimenting with the E-Bow. Maybe two members of the group came to the studio and recorded a draft song. The next day, two more came and radically rearranged what had been done the day before. And on the third day someone else came and took his own. The important thing was to have an open mind and not be afraid of messing up writing and recording. The rule was: no rule. "

Songs born this way include Seven O'Clock and Dance of the Clairvoyants . «Since there are no rules, the instruments were exchanged in Dance . In Alright there is a 12 string guitar played by Matt and it is not that Stone said: mmm, I would have done this part better. Do you have an idea? Just do it. That's how they made this record. Maybe Mike and I would stay looking for a particular sound for five hours. The point was not to achieve a certain result. The trial counted. " Evans also made drum loops to build some songs on. "If you hear Alright well , there's a sort of electronic percussion in the background at Björk."

Despite the appearance, the rhythmic part of Dance of the Clairvoyants is entirely played by Matt Cameron. “It's one of the things on this album that I'm most proud of as a sound engineer. If you had come to see the recording you would have heard Matt play everything live exactly as you listen to it on the record, except for the sound of the double cymbals that is programmed. It took a whole day of work to handle with cushions, tape and other things to make Matt's instrument sound like an electronic drum kit. " The most difficult piece to make was Seven O'Clock. "They brought it up the day we started recording in January 2017. They played it for two, three hours. Over the next two years, sound engineer John Burton and I worked on it. It was a jam from which we went fishing for the parts that seemed particularly strong. The refrain was played with four or five different rhythmic approaches. What you hear is an assembly. The fact that despite everything sounds like a song makes me proud. "

There is no band in rock history that has kept the excitement for music intact after twenty or thirty years of career. Pearl Jam is no exception. Led Zeppelin have made albums not up to their fame such as Presence and In Through the Out Door , Who Face Dances and It's Hard . They, with due proportions, published Backspacer and Lightning Bolt. The almost insane intensity of certain songs and performances of the 90s, when the group seemed perpetually on the edge of the precipice, gave way to a new form of awareness and calmness. To try to make great music, or at least something exciting, it is no longer enough to lock yourself together in a room. It takes new stimuli. And so at GT Studios, Josh Evans has served not only as a co-producer, but also as a motivator. «Sometimes I had to be a psychologist, between births, deaths, illnesses, family problems, not to mention the election of Trump. But most of the time my role was to find sounds that fascinated and inspired at least one of them, and then tried to involve the rest of the band, And yes, sometimes I went to get coffee, like in the old days ».

Seven years separate Lightning Bolt and Gigaton . Pearl Jam had never spent so much time between records. Aside from Cornell's death and concert commitments, the sessions are during a long time because the band "didn't have to release a record at all costs. They had to be satisfied with it, they had to be sure it was strong. And then they took advantage of the luxury of having the GT Studio and not having to book an recording room. Only in 2019 did we understand that we had a collection of solid songs on our hands ».

Gigaton's so-called homely character is also reflected in the place where it was mixed. Not in a large recording studio, but in a more modest place, Evans' personal studio. "Basically, in my home garden."

yeah...Super interesting. And I do hope we get more interviews from the band or josh.

But Josh sure was the quarterback in this whole process. And I hope they are confident about this whole process now and will create more in the coming years...

Oh man, now I REALLY want to know how Can't Deny Me came into being and where it went and what other songs came and went with it!

Gigaton review from Riff magazine:

https://riffmagazine.com/album-reviews/pearl-jam-gigaton/

lol. I could not disagree more with that review. Pretty much trashes every song as forgettable, no melody, nothing catchy but then this:

“Retrograde” may be the best song on the record. It may be Pearl Jam’s best song this century. Warm and mellow, at some point it really grabs the ear while building into something gorgeous and hopeful. Drummer Matt Cameron emerges past the halfway point, pounding out huge accents to well-structured melody. It really brings back some of the band’s best moments.

lol

lol he actually wrote "Superblood Wolfman"

this review is just weird sentence construction to cover up nothing to say

why do all these people care so much about "hope" as if "hopeful" is another damn instrument? are they all Christians?

Thanks for sharing the Josh Evans interview. Very interesting insight into the whole process. Some real nuggets of information in there, but one that can’t help but stand out to me is “ Or Stone said to me: I have this idea, how can we put it down so that Ed likes it too?”. I understand that the band approached the creative process as if there were no rules, and anyone can add, create, or modify another’s creation, but I think it’s particularly interesting that josh mentioned Stone saying that about Ed, and that the request sounds preemptive. It’s like Stone knew Ed wouldn’t like it.

Definitely curious about that. ANy band dynamic conversation gets my antenna hot.

I suppose though, generally would always fall to the singers lap to get excited about it and feel inspired to write for and sing over one of your own songs.

Love that interview; thanks for posting. Eat up stuff like this

It certainly demonstrates how a new producer can quietly be a big influence on the final product

Hey! Our friend lecherouslittlestump got it right with this fake quote

Ed being the problem confirmed once again

if they keep making records like this I don't care how they do it; stick with Josh and the next one could be even better

I’m no audiophile but even I cant wait to get this on cd and hear it properly.
There’s so much going on in each song. Love that stuff