Watch PEARL JAM's Animated Music Video For 'Retrograde'

May 14, 2020

PEARL JAM official music video for the song "Retrograde" can be seen below. For the visual, the band teamed up with director Josh Wakely. The animated clip opens with a lone traveler driving through the rain and descending upon a strip mall. Visiting a psychic, the protagonist witnesses the destruction of the world in a crystal ball as the seas overtake the Eiffel Tower in Paris, London Bridge in London, and the group's native Seattle. Fluid animation moves like an oil painting in motion as the animated musicians — Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Jeff Ament and Matt Cameron — step out of their respect tarot cards and into a march. While the water continues to rise, climate change activist and revolutionary Greta Thunberg appears behind the crystal ball as a clairvoyant.

"Retrograde" is taken from PEARL JAM's latest album, "Gigaton", which has been hailed "superb", "fascinating and ambitious", "inspiring and engaging", "their finest studio hour" and "PEARL JAM's best in a generation." The critics and fans alike have praised the band's new LP, which bowed at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart. Additionally, it landed in the Top 5 of the Billboard 200. Internationally, the album debuted No. 1 in Italy and Austria, Top 5 in Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Canada, and Finland and Top 10 in the U.K., Ireland, and New Zealand.

At Metacritic, "Gigaton" registered the group's second highest cumulative critical score — only bested by their diamond-certified 1991 debut, "Ten". Among numerous positive reactions, Associated Press exclaimed, "PEARL JAM come roaring back with superb new album." In a four-out-of-five star review, Rolling Stone wrote, "The group has blended the miasmic angst of 'Jeremy' and 'Alive' with a sense of tenderness and even flashes of hope." UPROXX promised, "PEARL JAM is reliable on 'Gigaton' at a moment when nothing else is," and Spin christened it "Their best album since the late nineties."

Produced by Josh Evans and PEARL JAM, "Gigaton" marks the band's first studio album since Grammy Award-winning "Lightning Bolt", which was released in October 2013. Internationally, the album is available and distributed by Universal Music Group.

Photo credit: Danny Clinch

Find more on Pearl jam
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).