Pearl Jam: Dark Matter in the Dark
Landmark’s Ritz 5
214 Walnut St.
Philadelphia
April 16, 2024
The theater lights faded until nothing remained but the pixelated heads of 60-something Pearl Jam fans, the sound of sharp, upbeat guitar blaring through a fuzzy sound system, and the internal nagging of my own inner critic — as one of the ’90s’ most popular rock bands used movie tickets to sell their latest album, Dark Matter, to the masses.
The occasion was a one-night screening inside Philly’s Landmark Ritz 5 and more than 200 other theaters across the U.S. offering preview screenings of the album.
I paid $13 Tuesday night to watch that global “record premiere and musical experience like no other!,” as it was touted by movie theaters worldwide.
The event, an experiment in how to launch an album with a mixture of sound and visuals in a movie theater setting, was accessible to everyone from aficionados to acquaintances. But it was still exclusive. Because those of you who missed it have to wait until Friday, April 19, two whole days and change, for the album to drop.
But you won’t have missed much in the meantime.
I expected the organized theater experience to grant the public an otherwise irreplaceable listening opportunity -– or, at least, to try to do so.
We had been told the basics of what we were in for prior to purchasing seats. First, we’d listen to the whole of Dark Matter in the dark theater, void of distraction. Then we’d hear the album a second time around, with visuals playing on the big screen and instructions to dance, sing, throw popcorn or whatever we felt so compelled to do.
Those looped into advertising the event played up the mystery involved in the cosmic-themed album release. “The show’s starting!” Pierre Robert, famed disc jockey for rock station 93.3FM WMMR, told us as the overhead lights began to dim.
Would there be an intermission? What kind of thrilling manifestation of rock n’ roll lay before us?
Robert posed those rhetorical questions before answering himself:
“Nobody knows!” he declared, evaporating into the back of the theater.
At the same time, a bright orange Chevrolet steered onto the digital stage.
My friend, who had nearly jumped off the trolley when I told her the post-work “movie” I was leading her to was actually a Pearl Jam spectacular, whispered sincerely into my ear: “Is this Pearl Jam?”
A few ads later, I was finally knee-deep in some so-called dark matter: “We used to laugh/ we used to sing/ we used to dance/ we had our own scene,” vocalist Eddie Vedder sang on the album’s opening track, “Scared of Fear.”
The album is a brooding examination of regrets and failed relationships and intimate reflections specific but not exclusive to those having reached middle-age. It was immediately clear that the songs were meant to be shouted live to a pit of rowdy people rather than studied under quiet scrutiny.
For a moment, at first, the theater did feel church-like. Vedder’s voice, deep but somehow bleating, sounded like a sacrificial lamb, pleading alongside the yearn of a shredding electric, “We used to believe.”
Other than one couple displaying a chronic addiction to scrolling, phones remained in pockets. The usual sounds of straws vacuuming empty Coke cups and popcorn bursting between bones were absent. Most viewers sat up straight and motionlessly observed the soundscape spreading around them.
When the first song concluded, scattered applause emerged from a confused crowd.
“Will Pearl Jam be offended if we don’t clap?” my friend asked, before leaving her seat to go outside and search for some THC. “I’m not high enough for this,” she apologized, “and they’re playing the album twice anyway.” I noticed more phone screens light up and heard chatter begin to disrupt the virtual performance.
The movie theater’s massive room and sound system seemed to work against the music rather than uplift its meaning. I couldn’t make out most of the lyrics. Each song seemed repressed by the blaring speakers, which favored vocal lines over background instrumental intricacies. The resulting implication was unfortunate: The music wasn’t bold or big enough to fill up the surround-sound space.
The lyrics I could suss out started to thematically align: “Let’s get to the point,” I heard Vedder beg. “Am I the only one hanging on?”
“Turns out forever has come and gone. I’m the only one standing.”
The second time around, I was grateful that lyrics appeared on the screen. The “visuals” that had been teased looked AI generated, the exact kind of trippy but palatable and ultimately boring abstract images associated with psychedelic rock. In other words, they looked exactly like an Apple computer screensaver. (I’m talking about this one here, the so-called iMAC Flurry, which upon reflection sounds like an act of plagiarism against McDonald’s.)
“What is that, sonic the pinecone?” my friend, who had returned appropriately stoned, questioned while looking at a cobalt blue sphere twisting around on screen.
Finally able to parse out the faster paced lyrics with the help of subtitles, I liked what I heard as Vedder chanted furiously on a track titled “Running”:
Lost in a tunnel and the tunnel ain’t no fun/
Now I’m lost in all the shit you’re flushing/
Lost in the tunnel and the tunnel’s getting funneled/
Like the sewage in the plumbing ‘cause we left the fucking water running …
(That particular song was coincidentally released ahead of the rest of the album — check it out in the above video.)
The audience chuckled at the light obscenities. But nobody danced or sang. Ultimately, there was no scene, and nobody had a good idea about what to do with themselves or the niche community of 60-odd Pearl Jam fanatics scattered around them.
That was a disillusioning vision, given that Pierre Robert had earlier reported that Pearl Jam’s manager had told him that Philly is “the best market for Pearl Jam in the world.”
Pearl Jam is known for avoiding press interviews and music videos after their MTV hit, “Jeremy,” threw them deep into the limelight in 1992. But I was probably naive in thinking their intention for the “one-night only” movie theater extravaganza was purely about the music.
The band’s concept of a movie theater album launch seemed to tread lightly in the footprints of megastars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, who made AMC millions last year with their respective concert movies. But the event simultaneously sought to challenge, at least ostensibly, the kind of big-budget, celebrity-centered, visually-saturated attention-sucking schemes that so often blur the lines between honest art and blatant marketing schemes.
I left the Ritz not high on artistic awe, but curious as to whether anyone actually made money off the event — and if so, who and how much. Despite the fact that I genuinely like the album I heard.
As Pierre Robert prefaced prior to the screening, “I like to go to shows even if it’s a band I don’t particularly care for, because I wanna see if I can catch that vibe between the band and the audience.”
He referred to the band, the audience and the vibe as that well-known “love triangle.”
I wished the whole hour and a half that I spent inside could’ve been used to witness a Pearl Jam concert, noticing the no-doubt charismatic connection that exists between old bandmates and the crazed worship channeled from long-term fans.
Jen Coppertino, whom I met at the show, is one of those fans. She has seen 151 Pearl Jam live shows to my none.
“The live show is still the live show,” Coppertino told me. But Tuesday’s movie event was reminiscent of the way she first recalled hearing Pearl Jam: “As that teenager laying in bed with your headphones on.”
The 47-year-old also remembered sitting on a Minneapolis sidewalk in hopes of hearing the band after she’d been deemed too young to get through the doors of her first show. The next Pearl Jam show she’s slated to see is in Vegas on May 16.
Coppertino marveled at how the band has matured over time while maintaining their sense of “piss and vinegar” into their sixties. “This is definitely the most introspective album I’ve ever heard them do.”
For lifelong fans, once teens now reaching their fifties or beyond, the movie-going experience was a way to take time out of a busy day-to-day to listen to the latest musical exploration of their generational peers and role-models.
For this Gen-Zer looking for an easy access point to better understand a band I barely know but philosophically enjoy, the black-out theater felt like a disappointing reflection of a disappearing commitment to demonstrating artistic risk and to growing collective movement out of music.
Despite the newfound vulnerability and sustained excellence featured on the fresh album — including adventurous lyrical syntax and intra-band chemistry — the event was motionless, and, in turn, emotionless.
It was, as the band had branded it, a “random gravitational collision.” Maybe next time, the theater can play a PSA: Click it, or ticket.
Next
Following the full abum release on Friday, Pearl Jam is launching a worldwide tour, for those looking to see them live rather than in theaters. That tour includes two nights, Sept. 7 and 9, in Philadelphia. Tickets, though most shows are already sold out, are listed here.
Nora, meanwhile, is onto City Winery Thursday night to hear multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons.
