“We used to laugh, we used to sing, we used to dance, we had our own scene… we used to believe,” Eddie Vedder sang to 35,000 fans at Fenway Park on Sunday night.

Ed, we still laugh, sing, dance, have our own scene, and believe, as long as we’re seeing Pearl Jam live.

The lyrics came via “Scared of Fear” — the lead track from Pearl Jam’s April-released LP “Dark Matter,” a record that could have easily been put out between “Vitalogy” and “No Code” and been a huge hit when there were huge hit rock records. The words and music, the push, rush, and heavy low-end of bassist Jeff Ament, connected to the whole sweep of the Pearl Jam catalog. The experience felt like the welcome crush of love and volume the band still brings in concert. “Scared of Fear” resonated with the band’s very core.

Thirty-five years into its career, Pearl Jam can turn thousands of strangers standing in a massive ballpark into a unified scene.

That togetherness can come while making the crowd feel like a bunch of half-broken, deadly-alive kids in a pit at a punk show — as it did during the howling “Hail, Hail” and wonderfully chaotic “Even Flow” and  delivered-like-it-was-1992-at-Seattle’s-Central-Saloon “State of Love and Trust.”

The feel has the ability to bring out a cathartic, collective scream into the void while the band cradles you in familiar riffs, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready raging hard in that twin attack (see “Given To Fly,” “Do the Evolution”). Or can come as a spiritual experience, a rising toward something bigger, greater. Vedder started the encore solo and acoustic, offering up a tender “Just Breathe” for Tim Wakefield.

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

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

Over a 26-song set, Pearl Jam covered so much ground. The band played new songs that will be old favorites in a few years (fans, please look up the almost Tom Petty-ish “Wreckage”). McCready segued from “Yellow Ledbetter” into a Hendrix-style National Anthem. Vedder talked about historian Howard Zinn and the moon and sensible gun laws (paired with a rare back-to-back “Glorified G” and “Jeremy”) and childless cat ladies.

But the key is they created a community, as they so often do. Rock ‘n’ roll is a participatory activity. Art demands an engaged audience. Those rare stadium shows that achieve transcendence do it through the crowd. Pearl Jam evoked that on Sunday by pouring energy and emotion into old songs that sound fresh and new stuff that will go on to be classic.