Last year was a banner year for Pearl Jam. The band celebrated 20 years as a band with a retrospective book, its own festival, reissues of records, a new live album, a documentary directed by Cameron Crowe, its own special craft beer and a few other offerings. This year Pearl Jam has slowed down a bit as a unit but that hasn’t stopped every member of the band from working up to something that doesn’t directly involve Pearl Jam.
Eddie Vedder is still touring behind Ukulele Songs, Mike McCready is working on a new Mad Season album as well as a solo record, Stone Gossard has been busy with Brad and Matt Cameron is off globetrotting with Soundgarden. Even Boom Gaspar, the band’s honorary sixth member, released some music this year during his Pearl Jam downtime.
So what’s Jeff Ament been up to?
Ament has been working on his second solo album, While My Heart Beats, while Pearl Jam has been dormant.
The 11-track record will be released Tuesday by Pearl Jam’s label, Monkeywrench Records. It is his follow-up album to 2008’s Tone and based off brief listens to some of the album’s songs Ament shows a more direct approach to songwriting on the record as opposed to Tone’s slightly more experimental offerings. Of course Ament is a veteran of several bands and songwriting is something he’s pretty comfortable tackling which should make While My Heart Beats a good listen.
