In his review of Dark Matter, the new Pearl Jam album dropping this Friday, Ryan Leas identified “Wreckage” as one of the tracks that calls back to the band’s earliest records, when the grunge-birthed classic rockers were arguably the biggest band in the world. Today the song is out, and it’s indeed a lot more appealing than “Dark Matter” and “Running,” self-consciously heavy songs that Ryan rejected as “clunky attempts at bygone ferocity.” I’m no Pearl Jam superfan, but this is the first song from them in decades that reminds me why they were such a cornerstone of ’90s rock.

Stone Gossard shared this statement:

That one probably has the biggest build for me personally, in terms of hearing it at first and thinking, it’s kind of an Ed song. I wasn’t quite aware of its potency until later. Andrew [Watt] encouraged me to play this little harmonic, acoustic part almost like a Cure melody. I’ve been playing along with the song to relearn it and I’m really looking forward to playing it live. It’s a really powerful lyric and I think we did a really great job of taking something and really pushing it to its limit.

Listen below.

Dark Matter is out 4/19 on Monkeywrench/Republic.