Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard said the band has started recording songs for the album that will follow 2020’s Gigaton.

He noted that work was underway with producer Andrew Watt, who oversaw singer Eddie Vedder’s recent solo album Earthling, while also having produced Ozzy Osbourne and others.

“We’ve recorded some songs. We’re on our way. We’re making music,” Gossard told Consequence in a recent interview. Adding that the band felt “psyched,” he said, “Andrew is a total character. Really, like immediately, we were writing quickly. Spontaneously. Bring in a riff. Let’s knock it out. Matt Cameron is playing his ass of. ... We were just doing some recording in Andrew’s basement in Beverly Hills, basically. So far, so good.”

He said the band was maintaining an approach that included “just throwing rough vocals on, just taking stabs at stuff, trying stuff.” “I want to keep staying in that state of mind where we make looser records and are quicker in terms of being able to generate that feeling or art," he explained. The driving questions were: “What is another process? How is it that we can do something new? What’s the next step? … We’re talking about trying different formations of how to generate song ideas, particularly ones that move us in a cool direction or in a direction that makes people go, ‘Ah!'”

Still, Gossard said, the original Pearl Jam “alchemy” hasn’t changed. He described it as "us being together and trusting each other and believing in that same process of rock ’n’ roll." “It’s simple," he said. "It doesn’t require any scientific knowledge, or any special skill set other than a belief, and a little bit of talent, and some love for each other. … We’re always pushing that to this day.”

Pearl Jam start a brief North American arena tour in May, then return to the road again in September.

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