Pearl Jam almost finished recording new album

Pearl Jam‘s guitarist Mike McCready has revealed, in a recent interview with Guitar World, that the recording process for the band’s new studio album is “just about finished.” The effort is being recorded with producer Andrew Watt, who has worked with artists such as Ozzy Osbourne, Eddie Vedder and The Rolling Stones.

McCready said:

It’s just about finished. I think there’s a few tweaks here and there that have to happen, and we’re probably not going to have anything out this year. But Andrew Watt brought an energy and a youthfulness and a great ear to us that I think we needed. He kind of kicked us in our asses a little bit. Like, ‘Okay, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go go go!’ He’s the most hyper guy I’ve ever met besides myself. But he’s a giant fan of our band, and he’s a really smoking guitar player in his own right. He got us into a room and just pushed us as hard as we could be pushed.

You know, it’s hard for a quote-unquote outsider to come into our world because we’ve done things a certain way. We’re open to new things, but we are also in our own world. We’ve done things for 30 years. So we know the dynamics of our band very well. But sometimes we need to get pushed and questioned, and Andrew did a great job of that.