Pearl Jam releases 186 old live shows that would have been, like, amazing to have had last year

Pearl Jam opened up its archives today, announcing that it’s putting audio from 186 of its old live shows on to a variety of music services. Clocking in at 5,404 tracks, the set of live songs is an incredible trove of material, one we can only imagine digging into during circumstances that might require us to stay indoors for long periods of time—possibly even a year!—while desperately seeking to find something, anything, to distract ourselves from constant reminders of our own mortality. But releasing it in the summer of 2021 is pretty good, too, we guess.

We kid Pearl Jam—a band of noted kidders—but this is a pretty massive release of material, covering concerts recorded in 2000, 2003, 2008, and 2013. The so-called “bootlegs” (it’s a little weird to call 5,400 tracks officially released to Spotify bootlegs, but so it goes) can also apparently be arranged into personalized custom setlists, provided you’re a member of Pearl Jam’s new fan hub, Deep—which you probably are, if you’re the kind of person who’s vaccinated, or soon to be vaccinated, but who still wants to spend your time rearranging live Pearl Jam releases while safely ensconced indoors.

Pearl Jam released its most recent album, Gigaton, last year; the band is set to embark on a tour in support of the album once getting out of the house and doing so is fully feasible again.