'Backspacer' Audio Q&As

Back to Pearl Jam it seems. With only just over 10 days to go for the new album release, I can't seem to get enough news about it and the juiciest news I find, I'll share. Today that news is Billboard.com and their feature article that was posted a couple days ago. It's essentially a Q&A session, BUT with audio! Below is an excerpt from the intro of that session:

"Backspacer," Pearl Jam's first album in three years, is the nearly night-and-day opposite of the band's self-titled 2006 record. Where the almost hour-long, four-years-in-gestation "Pearl Jam" pummeled with sharp edges ("World Wide Suicide") and hard politics ("Marker In The Sand,""Army Reserve"), "Backspacer" was cranked out in a month in the studio. Due Sept. 20, the new album finds the band with an irresistibly sunny lead single, "The Fixer," that earned them their highest ever Hot 100 debut, and a sub-37-minute-long brew of uptempo rockers ("Johnny Guitar") and vulnerable ballads ("Just Breathe"). It also finds the nearly 20-year-old Seattle quintet trying something old (working with Brendan O'Brien, who produced several of the band's 90's albums) and something entirely new: self-releasing "Backspacer" through deals they've brokered with indie record stores, digital retailers and a big-box exclusive with Target.

As the band warmed up to start a slew of North American dates in support of the new album, frontman Eddie Vedder and guitarist Stone Gossard sat down to talk in-depth about the new songs. Read and listen to audio clips of the interviews as Vedder divulges how "The Fixer" is "a classic man/woman thing," the "ethical litmus test" that went into how the new album is being released and his favorite Bruce Springsteen bootleg. Gossard, meanwhile, digs into which "Backspacer" song is one of Vedder's "greatest songs ever" and why Pearl Jam is "much better when we're not thinking" too much.

For the excellent full article itself plus the audio files, please visit Billboard.com. In the meantime, I'm off to hunt for more news!

NOTE:  Pic above by Danny Clinch and found on the Billboard article page. 

Technorati: pearl jam,