SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
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Pearl Jam's 'Binaural' ear-marked by unusual sound mixing

Tuesday, May 16, 2000

By GENE STOUT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER POP MUSIC CRITIC

The new Pearl Jam song "Rival" opens with the menacing sounds of a growling
dog. "Thin Air" drips melancholy like a Roy Orbison tear-jerker. And
"Breakerfall" rages with the anguish and desperation of an empty heart.

"There's a girl on a ledge, she's got nowhere to turn/ 'Cause all the love
that she had was just wood that she burned," Eddie Vedder sings in the
angry, searing rocker.

Pearl Jam's new album, "Binaural," is due in stores today on Epic Records.
Powerful and atmospheric, it reflects the Seattle band's collaboration with
producer, engineer and musician Tchad Blake.

The album, the band's sixth, comes out at a time when Pearl Jam is in a good
space, guitarist Stone Gossard said in a phone interview.

"Everything's going fine. We've having a lot of fun," he said.

The band is about to hit the road. It will begin a 27-date European tour May
23 in Lisbon, Portugal, followed by a U.S. tour beginning Aug. 3 in Virginia
Beach, Va. Pearl Jam performed warmup shows last week in Bellingham and
Vancouver, B.C.

Though Pearl Jam feuded with Ticketmaster in the mid-'90s over ticket
service charges, the band will sell most of the tickets through Ticketmaster
and the remainder through local, independent agents.

The U.S. tour includes a benefit concert Nov. 5 in the Seattle area, but a
location hasn't been announced. Like the group's July 1998 concerts at
Memorial Stadium, the show will be a benefit for local charities. Among the
organizations that received money in 1998 was the Red Feather Development
Group, a Bellevue-based non-profit group that builds and rehabilitates homes
for Native American elders throughout the United States.

"There will probably be at least 10 beneficiaries this time," Gossard said.
"If you look at the list we had last time, a lot of them will be back."

As the tour gets under way, Pearl Jam will celebrate its 10th anniversary as
a band. The group's first album, "Ten," catapulted the band to international
fame in the early '90s, a time when grunge turned Seattle into a rock mecca.

"That's a real milestone," Gossard said. "And when we start this tour, we
will have had the same drummer for two tours in a row."

Former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron is the latest in a string of Pearl
Jam drummers, including Jack Irons, Dave Abbruzzese and Dave Krusen. Cameron
-- whose wife, April Cameron, played viola on the new album -- replaced
Irons.

"Matt has been making records with us and touring with us, but I don't know
whether he's officially a member or not," Gossard said. "It's always been a
little vague to me.

"He's got a wife and a family and he's got his own musical projects that he
puts a lot of energy into. Those are all big priorities in his life. But as
long as he wants to play with us, we'd love to have him. He's such a great
musician and a great friend."

Gossard gave credit to producer Blake for the new album's unusual title and
sound.

Blake, who has worked with Los Lobos, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt and Elvis
Costello, is a member of Latin Playboys, the Los Lobos side band featuring
David Hidalgo, Louie Perez and Mitchell Froom. The Playboys' 1999 album,
"Dose," is intense and surreal, embellished with hi- and lo-fi sound effects
and experimental textures.

"The sonics of his records and the atmosphere he creates are pretty
unique,"Gossard said. "Tchad mixed a lot of songs on Tom Waits' 'Bone
Machine.' Some of it was really industrial sounding, but organic at the same
time."

Patient and creative, Blake was an asset in the studio.

"He's the kind of guy who loves working on stuff because he likes the way it
sounds and not because he thinks it's going to be a hit," he said. "He's
just very in tune with trying to be creative in the studio and being patient
with that process. He's a great engineer."

The new album got its title from the binaural microphone that Blake brought
into the studio. Normally used in acoustic laboratory environments for
testing and studying the nuances of human hearing, the binaural mike
resembles a plastic human head with microphones where the ears would be.

"With a binaural mike, you basically set it out there in front of you and
it's a stereo recording device that simulates what things would sound like
in your head," Gossard said.

"When we looked up the word 'binaural,' it meant to listen with both ears.
So it seemed like a fitting title for the album."

The binaural microphone is what gives the song "Soon Forget" its razor-sharp
presence. Vedder, who wrote the song, accompanies himself on ukelele on the
tender, humorous track.

"Sorry is the fool who trades his soul for a Corvette," Vedder sings.
"Thinks he'll get the girl, he'll only get the mechanic. . . . He's living a
day he'll soon forget."

"It's a beautiful little song, sentimental and fun at the same time,"
Gossard said. "I think it was something that everyone in the band
immediately responded to. As soon as we heard him play it, we were like,
'Oh, that's gotta go on the record.' I think Ed was just joking around."

Recorded at Gossard's Studio Litho in Fremont, "Binaural" took about eight
months to write and record. It features music and lyrics by Pearl Jam core
members Gossard, Vedder, bassist Mike McCready and bassist Jeff Ament, as
well as drummer Cameron.

"We worked over a longer period of time than we normally do, but we weren't
super-rigorous about it," Gossard said.

"We'd work for a couple of weeks, then take a month or two off, then come
back and work for a couple more weeks."

Gossard wrote the music and lyrics for three songs, "Rival," "Thin Air" and
"Of the Girl," a sweet, simple love song.

"I work all different ways," Gossard said of his songwriting. "You have a
riff and you just start playing it and then you start humming something and
you start filling in words. That's how I do it.

"Whatever that mood is, you try to explore it and try to be as
unself-conscious about it as you can possibly be. Sometimes that means
singing the same riff for weeks and weeks until all of a sudden the right
words pop into your head."

"Rivals" (which opens with the growling of Blake's dog, Dakota) is a
vengeful, ominous song that begins with the words, "All my rivals will see
what I have in store."

"I just came up with the riff and we played with that for a while," Gossard
said. "I kind of saw it as a cartoon exploration of competition and paranoia
and people's perspective on who's out to get them. I thought of relating
that to how nations deal with each other and sort of push each other around.

"And then while we were working on the album the whole Columbine High School
tragedy happened and it started reflecting some of that stuff, too. So it
just kind of has a weird mishmash of influences."

"Binaural" follows the release of last year's "Live on Two Legs" and 1998's
"Yield." The single "Nothing As It Seems" was released in April and is at
No. 4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.

The original May 23 release date for "Binaural" -- the CD cover features a
Hubbell Telescope color photo of the Hourglass Nebula encircling a dying
star 8,000 light years from Earth -- was moved up a week.

"In this day and age, if you have the record done and it's ready to get out,
you might as well put it out as soon as possible," Gossard said.

"As soon as the advance copies go out, people will start to get the record
and if it ends up online, there may be a situation where people are getting
it before it goes on sale."

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