Pearl Jam releases Backspacer

Backspacer is the ninth studio album by the American alternative rock band Pearl Jam, released on September 20, 2009.

Pearl Jam began work for the follow-up to its previous album—2006's Pearl Jam—in early 2008. In 2009, the band began to build on instrumental and demo tracks written during 2008. The music on the album—the shortest of the band's career—features a sound influenced by pop and New Wave. The band released the album through their own label Monkeywrench Records with worldwide distribution by Universal Music Group via a licensing agreement with Island Records. Thus, it is their first studio album not to be released by a label owned by Sony Music Entertainment—they have previously recorded for Sony's Epic and J labels in the past.