Pearl Jam returns from a hiatus of more than three years, the longest of its career, with its highest-ever modern rock debut as “World Wide Suicide” lands at No. 3 on the Billboard Radio Monitor modern rock chart. The track, which also ranks No. 1 on the format’s audience chart, landed 68 Airplay Adds (six or more spins in a week on a station for the first time) out of the format’s 75 reporters.
“World” marks the quintet’s 31st modern rock chart appearance, which is second all-time at the format to U2’s 33. It’s also the fifth song to debut within the top 3 in the chart’s 17-year history and the highest since Linkin Park’s “Somewhere I Belong” debuted at No. 2 in March 2003.
The track is drawn from Pearl Jam’s upcoming self-titled eighth album, due May 2 via J Records. A North American tour begins May 9 in Toronto.
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— Anthony Columbo, N.Y.
U.K. rock trio Doves is prepping a digital live EP for release next month. The five-track bundle is tentatively due April 10, according to the band’s Web site, and will be available from leading download retailers. It will feature “Black and White Town,” “Almost Forget Myself,” “Snowden” and “Ambition” from Doves’ 2005 album, “Some Cities.”
The final cut blends “Where We’re Calling From” and “Pounding” from the group’s 2002 effort “The Last Broadcast, recorded last September in Brooklyn, N.Y. The other tracks were recorded last year at various U.K. shows.
— Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
The Alarm MMVI’s “Under Attack” is tentatively scheduled for a May 30 U.S. release via the Redeye Music Group’s Eleven Thirty Records label. The set was released Feb. 20 in the U.K. via EMI and features the single “Superchannel,” which in February bowed at No. 24 on the U.K. singles chart.
Frontman Mike Peters, the sole original member of the Alarm and its driving creative force, has spent much of this year promoting the new release while fighting cancer. He reports that he has been responding well to chemotherapy treatment and will travel this week to the U.S. to perform two shows with the band at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Texas.
“I have been feeling stronger every day,” Peters writes in a note to fans on the Alarm Web site. “I have been singing at every opportunity to strengthen my voice and build my fitness up and today I feel absolutely great.”
— Barry A. Jeckell, N.Y.