PEARL JAM's STONE GOSSARD Says 'Gigaton' Album 'Definitely' Contains 'Some Really Straight-Ahead Rock Songs'

PEARL JAM guitarist Stone Gossard spoke about the band's upcoming album, "Gigaton", in a new interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 radio. One day after PEARL JAM shared "Dance Of The Clairvoyants", the first single and video from the disc, Gossard said the track represents "the outer edge of something that we haven't tried before, a new way of configuring our sort of collaborative talents." But he went on to say that fans shouldn't expect the rest of the record to follow the same musical path.

'There's definitely some really straight-ahead rock songs," he said, according to Rolling Stone. "There's some very spare and very simple ballads. It's got it all, I think. And it's really us. We really did it by ourselves. [Eddie Vedder] did a great job. There was a pile of songs and he sort of took and really, really, in the last two months, mixed and sort of selected the tracks that really were going to be special. And he did such a great job of bringing everybody's personalities out. It was probably different than any of us would've made individually, but it really captures, I think, the spirit of the band."

Gossard also discussed the sometimes abstract and metaphorical meanings that Vedder is imprinting in the new PEARL JAM songs. "He's not going to come out and say exactly in sort of very plain language maybe what you might think after reading the newspaper," Stone said. "But I think that his mysticism and his way of using words and art and music is a powerful sort of tonic. I think that underlying it all is going to continue to be a hopeful and beautiful but at times tragic message."

"Gigaton" arrives on March 27 and is PEARL JAM's first studio album since 2013's Grammy-winning "Lightning Bolt". In support of "Gigaton", PEARL JAM will embark on its first leg of North American tour dates in March and April, kicking off on March 18 in Toronto.