“We used to laugh, we used to sing, we used to dance, we had our own scene… we used to believe,” sang Eddie Vedder on Sunday night in front of 35,000 fans at Fenway Park (they return on Tuesday).

Ed, we still laugh, sing, dance, have our own scene and believe in it as long as we see Pearl Jam live.

The lyrics are from “Scared of Fear” – the title track from Pearl Jam’s April LP “Dark Matter,” a record that could easily have been released between “Vitalogy” and “No Code” and been a huge hit when there were still huge rock hits. The lyrics and the music, the pressure, the rush and the heavy bass of bassist Jeff Ament, fit Pearl Jam’s entire catalog. The experience felt like the welcome rush of love and volume that the band still brings to concerts today. “Scared of Fear” touched the band to the core.

In the 35th year of their career, Pearl Jam manages to turn thousands of strangers into a unified scene in a huge baseball stadium.

That sense of togetherness can also emerge when the crowd feels like a bunch of half-broken, dead-alive kids in a pit at a punk concert – like on the howling “Hail, Hail,” the wonderfully chaotic “Even Flow,” and the “State of Love and Trust,” performed as if it were at Seattle’s Central Saloon in 1992.

The feeling can spark a cathartic, collective scream into the void as the band lulls you with familiar riffs and guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready rage hard in that one-two punch (see “Given To Fly,” “Do the Evolution”). Or it can come as a spiritual experience, a departure to something bigger, grander. Vedder began the encore solo and acoustic, offering a tender “Just Breathe” for Tim Wakefield.

And, most gloriously, it can scrunch all of those experiences into one big ball of pain/redemption/rock ‘n’ roll. “Alive” felt like a rock warhorse, a brand new song, a baptism, and an epic emotional surrender.

But it’s all part of a community, a scene, and that has tremendous value. At a show at Fenway (or any show with 35,000 people), that’s always harder to feel.

Pearl Jam offered so much in a 26-song set. The band played new songs that will be old favorites in a few years (fans, please listen to the almost Tom Petty-esque “Wreckage”). McCready went from “Yellow Ledbetter” to a Hendrix-style national anthem. Vedder talked about historian Howard Zinn and the moon and sensible gun laws (along with a rare “Glorified G” and “Jeremy”) and childless cat ladies.

But the key is that, as so often happens, they created a community. Rock and roll is a participatory activity. Art demands an engaged audience. Those rare stadium shows that achieve transcendence do so through the crowd. Pearl Jam evoked that on Sunday, putting energy and emotion into old songs that sound fresh and new stuff that becomes classics.

Originally published: September 15, 2024 at 11:05 p.m.