Listen to Pearl Jam’s first single from their space-inspired new album

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Pearl Jam fans, rejoice. We’ve known for awhile now that the longtime rockers have been planning a follow-up to their 2020 album “Gigaton,” and there is finally concrete proof of its release, along with some actual new music. Today, the band released “Dark Matter,” the first single for the upcoming album of the same name.

The full album “Dark Matter” is set for release on April 19. You can pre-order it now and get the title track on PearlJam.com. Pearl Jam’s 2024 tour in support of the album kicks off May 4 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada, and continues through Nov. 21 with dates in North America, Europe and Australia. Fans can register for tickets now on Ticketmaster.

But back to the new song: Come for the politically charged lyrics, stay for a scorching guitar solo that closes out the final minute. Musically, it’s a throwback to the band’s hard-driving roots on grunge-defining albums like “Ten” and “Vitalogy.”

Lyrically, it’s clear that vocalist Eddie Vedder has a lot to say about the current political climate (“Deploy the dialogue / your word against the law”), all of it filtered through the central image of the spookiest substance known to science. The dark matter of the title refers to a mysterious substance that does not radiate or even reflect light.

Listen to the band’s new song below:

MORE: Stream Pearl Jam on Apple Music

This isn’t the first time Pearl Jam has turned to political demagogues for their inspiration — or space, for that matter. Vedder’s “Invincible” features lyrics like, “At the core of the cosmos / we are so much more than particles,” and NASA used the song in a video to promote the Artemis moon mission. The singer even did a video chat with astronauts on the International Space Station in 2022, which you can watch below:

What do you think of the first song off the new album?