Eddie Vedder, frontman for Pearl Jam, has announced that he will be releasing his first solo album in over a decade, ‘Earthling,’ on February 11th, 2022. Vedder’s new album will debut via his own imprint, Seattle Surf, through Republic. The album was first teased back in September when Vedder introduced “Long Way” as the record’s first single. An additional track, titled “The Haves” was released this morning alongside a lyric video to promote the upcoming album.
‘Earthling’ is being produced by Grammy producer of the year and self-proclaimed lifelong Pearl Jam fan Andrew Watt. Watt also features as one of the members of Vedder’s new solo band, the Earthlings. The group, who made their musical debut at September’s Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California, also includes Pearl Jam touring member Josh Klinghoffer, bassist Pino Palladino, instrumentalist Glen Hansard, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith.
“There was something there right away that I wanted to chase and finish,” Watt previously told Variety about jam sessions with Vedder ahead of announcing the album, which yielded “Long Way.” “It was just the right place and the right time and it all happened very organically. It sounds like people playing together in a room, which is what a good rock song should be.”
In addition to the release of “The Haves,” Eddie Vedder also joined the latest installment Audible Words + Music series with “I Am Mine”. In the recording Vedder discusses the origins of some of Pearl Jam’s biggest songs including “Immortality,” “Porch,” and “Better Man”. The rocker also reminisces on his difficulty adapting to his band’s rise to fame in the early 1990s. In particular he speaks about a period of time following the 1993 release of Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs’ album, where he barely left his house.
“I had this cool house in Seattle, like an old ‘70s Northwest architecture house on an end of a street,” he says. “I had a basement and that’s kind of where I spent all my time. And then I started smoking cigarettes and then I’d start like, spray-painting words on the wall — like, a hallway would just say ‘happenstance.’ Then I’d make sculptures out of duct tape on another wall and I would just never leave. I had a pinball machine. I would just stay in the laundry room and play pinball. I would never go out and I was by myself a lot. But I had typewriters, and the Italian dentist I got the house from, he put in a little wine room. So I’d sit in this tiny, cozy, little wine room, dark, with a candle and cigarette and a bunch of wine, just by myself. It was a weird time.”
