Pearl Jam have released a new EP, and true to their ethos of doing absolutely nothing the conventional way, it’s not just a standard drop of unreleased B-sides or anniversary padding. Instead, it’s a carefully curated, emotionally weighted companion piece to The Last of Us — the HBO series that adapted the video game saga of grief, trauma, and broken trust with just enough hope to keep its characters (and its viewers) alive.
At the centre of this EP is Future Days, originally the closer on 2013’s Lightning Bolt, but now arguably more famous for its dual life as the heartbeat of The Last of Us Part II and its HBO adaptation. In Season 2, Episode 5, Ellie (played with shattered intensity by Bella Ramsey) sings the opening line of the song — a gesture that hits fans of both the game and the band right in the soul. This isn’t a throwaway needle drop. It’s a deliberate invocation of loss, memory, and the fractured intimacy at the core of The Last of Us.
The new Last of Us EP features Future Days as the opener, followed by All Or None (from 2002’s Riot Act), a live rendition of Future Days from Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival, and a reworked version of Present Tense (Redux) from 1996’s No Code. It's equal parts mournful, cathartic, and defiant — which is to say, it’s Pearl Jam. The vinyl is a Ten Club exclusive. Of course it is.
This is the band being unapologetically themselves — emotionally literate, politically aware, and musically devout. That same spirit was on display last week when they brought Peter Frampton — yes, that Peter Frampton — onstage in Nashville.
Eddie Vedder introduced him not with some canned Hall of Fame platitude, but with reverence: “This gentleman was someone we looked up to before the Ramones… Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend, he was right up there.” Vedder made it clear: Frampton Comes Alive! wasn’t just a record. It was a foundational experience. One that eventually inspired Pearl Jam to legitimise live bootlegs and embrace the rawness of real-time performance.
Frampton, 75 and still wielding more musical charisma than artists half his age, joined the band for a spine-tingling performance of Black — the emotional centrepiece of 1991’s Ten. In that moment, past met present, legend met legend, and for a few minutes, nothing else mattered.
Pearl Jam don’t just release music. They contextualise it. And this EP — along with their reverence for Frampton — proves they’re still operating on a level where the art is everything, and the emotion it evokes is the point.
