Live review: Pearl Jam Australian Dark Matter tour debut at Gold Coast
The ‘90s rockers stormed the stage at a Gold Coast stadium on Wednesday night 75 minutes later than scheduled – but any sense of crowd frustration quickly evaporated.
Sometimes things go wrong at concerts, as they do in life, and how you choose to respond determines whether an experience is destined to be remembered fondly, or with a pained expression.
When Pearl Jam took to the stage at a Gold Coast stadium on Wednesday night, it was 75 minutes later than scheduled due to a severe storm that had lashed the area with rain and lightning.
Impatience and uncertainty abounded as the floor crowd was delayed from entering the arena out of concern for patron safety, and venue staff attempted to communicate clearly in a trying, fluid situation.
But there was a clear sky overhead when the Seattle quintet walked onto the stage, and much of the earlier frustration evaporated with the realisation that its first song arrived with the perfect opening lyrics: “The waiting drove me mad / You’re finally here, and I’m a mess…”
This was Corduroy, a 1994 song from its third album Vitalogy, written when frontman Eddie Vedder was struggling with the demands of global fame and meeting fans’ sky-high expectations about the generation-defining music that he and his bandmates had conjured.
Time heals most wounds, though, and the embattled, put-upon singer who wrote those words 30 years ago has been replaced by a pure showman who has long since learned to take a sad song and make it better.
The band were in storming form from the outset, and when combined with a stunning sound mix – complete with Vedder’s rich, chocolatey vocal tone soaring high above the instrumentation – the crowd settled in for what became a thrilling, superlative exhibition.
When he addressed the crowd between songs, top of mind for Vedder was the name of the bank-branded stadium: People First. “A lot of people had to work hard to make sure everyone was safe,” he said. “We are ever grateful – but thanks to you for making each other safe.”
A little later, he asked, “Everyone good in the home of the Gold Coast Suns?”, referring to the city’s poorly-performing AFL team. “We like the underdogs. We like the Gold Coast Suns!”
This bit of locals-only banter prefaced one of few swerves toward political commentary, with this being the band’s third show since Donald Trump was returned to the White House last week. “Let’s say an accident happens – or an election happens, that seems like an accident,” said Vedder, 59, before name-checking a new song: “Don’t react – respond.”
Those opening lyrics of Corduroy winked at a second meaning, too: it’s been a decade since Pearl Jam last performed in Australia, when it headlined the final Big Day Out festival in 2014.
That’s a long time out of market by any measure, particularly when rock music has continued its slow decline in cultural relevance, with variations of hip-hop, electronic and pop becoming the dominant sounds of the past decade.
But rather than feeling like a band of yesterday’s men curating a museum filled with dusty artefacts from when electric guitars were seen as life-affirming totems, this concert – in support of its 12th album, Dark Matter, released earlier this year – never felt less than fresh and vital.
Since it was an all-ages show, with plenty of young people among the 46,000 in attendance, perhaps a fraction of them will be moved to form rock bands in tribute.
It was that sort of show: inspired and inspiring, energetic and captivating, wherein the top note heard was one of deep satisfaction. It was a fine reminder of just how and why Pearl Jam caught fire with a series of albums that began with its 1991 debut, Ten.
Some bands disdain their early material, and it’s clear from their performances that returning to the songs that cemented their popularity is a rote task best done quickly, so as to move on to more recent material.
Pearl Jam is not one of those bands. In a 22-song, two-hour setlist backed by three giant screens displaying crystal-clear live footage and nature visuals, the old stuff was treated with as much reverence and respect as the four songs it aired from Dark Matter, including the title track, which pivots on a sprightly Matt Cameron drum pattern and a grinding guitar riff paired with Jeff Ament’s bass.
Five songs from Ten featured prominently, with a consecutive pairing of Black and Porch toward set’s end providing a stirring contrast: one of Vedder’s most devastating, delicate lyrics pushed up against a roiling, restless arrangement coloured by Mike McCready and Stone Gossard’s squalling electric guitars.
This band’s greatest asset in the live arena has long been its unpredictability. From night to night, no other stadium-level act changes its setlists so dramatically, chiefly at the whim of Vedder, whose handwritten song selections are distributed to his colleagues in the hours before showtime.
This approach can only work when there’s mutual trust between these five men – plus auxiliary players Boom Gaspar (keys) and Josh Klinghoffer (guitars) – and its effect is twofold: the musicians are kept on their toes, eschewing any complacency that can sometimes poison well-travelled performers, and the fans never know what they’re going to get on any given night.
This sense of spontaneity is so rarely seen at the upper echelons of the live music sector, where a desire for control and uniformity tends to keep major artists riding the same (or similar) setlists on rails while shipping their stage productions around the world.
There’s deep pleasure to be found in this approach, too: an athlete-like rigour in demanding the highest standards from oneself and one’s peers, so as to give the same show in Athens or Atlanta as you do in Adelaide a year later, say.
But it’s fitting that Vedder is fond of surfing, a sport where you best bring an optimistic attitude, as you’ve no control over the ocean.
Pearl Jam has trained its audience to be surfers, too: some nights you’ll catch a bunch of your favourites, and some nights you won’t. If it’s the latter, you can get mad about it – but it won’t change the swell.
Midway through the set, Vedder acknowledged two of Australia’s world surfing champions – Mick Fanning and Mark Richards, both in attendance – and then smiled as he thanked “the Aussie surf gods for giving us no f..king surf at all. We saved all our energy for this moment right here with you tonight. If the gods can hear this and they wanna give us some waves tomorrow, we won’t stay dry. I dedicate this to all the surfers. Every surfer believes in equal rights – and equal lefts!”
Then he strummed the opening chords to a beautifully melodic 2002 single containing a nugget of homespun wisdom that seems of a piece with his surfer’s optimism: “I know I was born and I know that I’ll die / The in-between is mine / I am mine.”
In a fine example of can-do spirit, Gold Coast City Council authorities had agreed to extend the venue’s usual curfew to 11pm and keep the public transport options open much later than planned.
The curtailed stage time – two hours, rather than the 150 minutes scheduled – meant some tough choices for the headliners, and thus inevitable disappointment for some fans: a setlist posted online afterwards saw several gems crossed out, including Just Breathe and Yellow Ledbetter, as well as Setting Sun, the gorgeous final song from its newest album.
At learning this, you had a choice: you could get mad about it, or you could be grateful for what we did get, which was two hours in the company of an extraordinary band of musicians whose passion for its mighty catalogue is undimmed. The in-between is yours.
Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter tour continues in Melbourne (Saturday and Monday) and Sydney (November 21 and 23).
More Coverage
