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Posts Tagged ‘Malkmus’

6/20/12

It Has Opened A Lot Of Doors, Maybe

Stephen Malkmus “Jo Jo’s Jacket”

I was laid off from my associate editor position at Rolling Stone yesterday. My boss who broke the news, who I like a lot, made it clear that my dismissal had nothing to do with my performance, and that everyone has always been really happy with my output, creativity and work ethic. It was just a matter of budgeting, and a new plan to consolidate print and web editorial. I’m not really sure how they are going to pull that off – I wasn’t the only significant web staff member who was laid off – but I’m not really worried about it. It’s not my problem anymore.

I have zero ill will for Rolling Stone or anyone who works there; I will still write for the publication. One of my first thoughts upon learning the bad news was: Aw, I really liked working here! At the same time, I was planning on leaving down the line to pursue other kinds of writing and working, so really, I don’t feel too bad about this. I’ll probably be freaked out about money for a while, but aside from that, I can put my energy into a lot of new projects and challenges.

I am sort of amazed by how optimistic and happy I feel in the immediate aftermath of losing my job. I enjoyed working at Rolling Stone, but it took up a lot of my energy. Both the job security and time investment was holding me back from pursuing things I wanted to do. So instead of getting upset, I feel relieved. The job prepared me to do very well in this moment. I haven’t felt this excited in a while. It’s aggravating to think about the money side of this, but I have a lot of confidence that I can make it all work now.

I keep thinking about this Malkmus song, “Jo Jo’s Jacket.” It’s basically about how he quit Pavement in order to move on with his life and career. I think it’s the happiest song he’s ever written. He makes you feel his thrill at the prospect of moving on. The song smirks off fear with silly jokes; but frames the real meaning in quotes from Yul Brynner and Bob Dylan, and a wordless chorus that is just like — “Wheee! Away we go!” It wasn’t my decision to move on, but I feel the same because, without realizing it, I know this is exactly what I wanted.

Buy it from Amazon.

3/21/12

Bind You Like You Want To Be Broken

Pavement “Pueblo” (Live in Cologne, 1996)

Pavement is known for having very smart and clever lyrics, but most of the lyrics on Wowee Zowee are incomplete, improvised or outright gibberish. A lot of the lines that are clear are bits of evocative language that stuck at some point in the creative process, particularly in the numbers that were staples of the band’s live set before they were tracked in the studio. The record is in some ways improved by this impressionistic quality, amplifying moments of absurdity and adding a touch of mystery to emotional peaks, such as the climax of “Pueblo.” That section may be the most devastating thing Stephen Malkmus has ever written, as he returns from a desolate instrumental section by rising up with a ragged, surprisingly vulnerable “when you move, you don’t move, you don’t mooooove.” The verses suggest some kind of dramatic context, but I have no idea what this particular bit of verbiage means or what it has to do with a guy called Jacob. Nevertheless, it hits me in the gut like few other pieces of music. I know this feeling, this abstract thing that has resonated with me for over half of my life, and that it feels something like giving up something that you want so badly it stings. Malkmus is very rarely a guy who spells out the emotional content of his music, and this song is a good reason why he shouldn’t need to bother – when you can strike this chord, provoke this sort of complex emotional response, why would you ever need to be so literal?

1/10/12

Primitive Tools And Stutters

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “No One Is (As I Are Be)”

It’s not as if Stephen Malkmus has been spending his years writing a lot of songs that make perfect literal sense, but I find this one to be particularly slippery – I can key into the central emotion here but I can’t quite tell you what that emotion is, and the lines resonate with me in a major way, but when I really think about them, I am hard pressed to tell you why. And this may be part of why I love it so much, because it falls between the cracks of emotions and ideas in some distant corner of my mind. It’s obvious enough that it’s one of his songs about aging and maturity, but it flips the script from more recent Malkmus songs dealing with that subject matter, wherein he’s the grounded guy giving someone else advice. This is more like the sound of a guy settling into the idea of settling in – discovering that he’s happy to be out by the wood shed, pondering the depths of friendships, reflecting on the “never-ending nightlife that we shared.” In the end, he asks “What does it mean?” and the only answer he’s got is “I want to be there.” And maybe that’s the best summary of this song’s mood we can get: It’s the sound of wanting to be there.

Buy it from Amazon.

9/26/11

Words Are Such Bitter Friends

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks @ Webster Hall 9/25/2011

Baby C’mon / Spazz / Brain Gallop / Long Hard Book / Tigers / Pennywhistle Thunder / Forever 28 / Independence Street / Polvo / Share the Red / Animal Midnight / Tune Grief / Gorgeous Georgie / Senator / Asking Price / Stick Figures in Love // Planetary Motion / No One Is (As I Are Be) / You Love Gets Me High / 1% of One

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Brain Gallop”

1. Following the Pavement reunion tour, Malkmus has returned to the left side of the stage after years of performing in the center with the Jicks. I appreciate this: It suits his personality and emphasizes that despite the “Stephen Malkmus and” commercial consideration, the Jicks are a real band, and one that has existed for a decade now.

2. This was my first exposure to Jake Morris, the Jicks’ new drummer. He’s certainly not in the same class as his predecessors John Moen and Janet Weiss – he simply lacks the former’s raw skill or the latter’s heavy-hitting power – but he’s good with accents and loose grooves. He’s sort of like a tighter version of Steve West, and that brings the sound a bit closer to Pavement. “Brain Gallop,” for example, is the most traditionally Jicks-y song on Mirror Traffic with Weiss on drums, but this performance was much more Brighten the Corners in tone.

3. The new songs are terrific live. As much as I love Real Emotional Trash, some of those songs could drag on a bit in concert. In contrast, this material is very brisk and snappy, with more rocking stuff like “Tune Grief,” “Senator,” “Forever 28,” “Spazz” and “Stick Figures in Love” coming off particularly well. The pacing of the setlist was sorta weird though, with a good chunk of time in the middle given to new material and mid-tempo tunes. If you’re going to have a potentially dull spot, that’s not the worst place to put it, but you could tell how relieved the audience was to hear a fast song when “Tune Grief” came around.

Buy it from Amazon.

8/22/11

You Can’t Repair A Lightbulb

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Forever 28”

The past few Malkmus albums have been heavy on perspective and sage advice, but the songs on Mirror Traffic are more cranky and restless. He still drops a bit of wisdom here and there – “no one is your perfect fit, I do not believe in that shit” – but he quickly undermines his pragmatism by admitting that he’s a contrary buzzkill who can’t help but spoil any good time. “Forever 28” is a perky, upbeat number about being snarky and miserable, but it’s not making that out to be a virtue. The chorus, which is much bigger and more soaring than what you’d normally get from this guy, cautions that “it just might hurt.” It, in this case, is having the generosity of spirit to be open to possibility and not slipping into the comforts of being jaded and negative. And it really can be a comfort – the path of least resistance. This song is pretty sympathetic to that, but it’s still trying to shake out of familiar patterns.

Buy it from Amazon.

6/9/11

Baby Steps Up Everest

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Senator”

Stephen Malkmus has never been the type to write “political” songs, though he’s flirted with the notion in the recent past, most notably on the Real Emotional Trash bonus track “Pennywhistle Thunder.” When politics come up in his songs, it’s mostly a tongue-in-cheek comment on corruption and foibles. That’s certainly the case for “Senator,” a tune that hints at some heavy concerns but comes to a cynical conclusion in its big hook: “I know what the senator wants / what the senator wants is a blowjob.” And then, later: “I know what everyone wants / what everyone wants is a blowjob.” In other words: We all just want our own petty gratification. The assholes in charge aren’t any different from the rest of us, for the most part. The song is basically a smirk and a shrug set to a miniature rock epic.

Pre-order it from Matador Records.

9/26/10

Talking Sentences So Incomplete

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield, Central Park 9/24/2010

Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / Frontwards / Spit On A Stranger / Shady Lane / Date With IKEA / Grounded / Cut Your Hair / Perfume-V / Conduit For Sale! / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Stereo / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Gold Soundz / The Hexx / We Dance / Silent Kid / Unfair / No Life Singed Her / Trigger Cut / Stop Breathin’ / Ell Ess Two / Here // Rattled By The Rush / Heaven Is A Truck / Summer Babe /// Kennel District / Debris Slide / Range Life

After the glow, the scene, the stage, the set…

The night after my last Pavement show — possibly ever! — I found myself wishing that I could just go back to Central Park and see another Pavement show. Like, somehow, going to the park and seeing Pavement every night could just be the new normal. But alas, Friday night was it for me, and for all the moments that were bittersweet, it was mostly just a total blast. All the Pavement shows I saw last week had their own character, and this one was the victory lap. They were on, and so was the audience. A lot of singing along, a lot of physical movement, a lot of unrestrained glee for these wonderful songs, and these charming men. I know I’ll be seeing Malkmus again before too long with the Jicks, and that there will be opportunities to see Spiral and Mark perform again, but man, I am going to miss Bob Nastanovich. I wish that he could just get some kind of gig — I don’t care, a podcast! A podcast would be enough! — that kept him in our lives. He’s a true gem, and there’s just nothing else like him in all of rock and roll. More bands should consider finding their own Bob Nastanovich.

Pavement “Grounded” [Live in London, 4/11/1997]

Every time they played “Grounded”, I did this thing when that huge, majestic riff comes in — tilt my head back, get up on my tiptoes as it ascended, and then “crashed” down as the motif ended with Steve West’s drum fill. It felt like the right response, it had just the right physical and emotional resonance. I will maintain forever that Wowee Zowee would’ve sold a lot more copies if “Grounded” was the lead single. Pavement’s singles erred on the side of the sillier, more novel tunes, but I think 1995 was the right time to remind listeners that the band had a darker, more emotional side, and could write this ambiguous yet totally devastating ballad about the inner life of some patrician doctor. It certainly would’ve made more sense on the alt-rock radio of that time than anything else on the record. (Would any other Pavement song make sense coming after “Glycerine”?) All these years later, it’s taken its rightful place among the band’s best-loved classics, a cornerstone of the reunion tour setlist. Most of Pavement’s best live songs are due to the energy level or opportunities for improvisation, but with “Grounded,” it’s just about the song’s intensity. It has an unusual and beautiful power.

Buy it from Amazon.

9/24/10

The Skies Won’t Sink My Soul

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield in Central Park 9/23/2010

Grounded / Gold Soundz / Silent Kid / Date With IKEA / Unfair / Spit On A Stranger / Rattled By The Rush / Stereo / Loretta’s Scars / Frontwards / Stop Breathin’ / Shoot The Singer / Trigger Cut / Cut Your Hair / Fight This Generation / Two States / Fin / Summer Babe / She Believes / Range Life // Kennel District / Shady Lane / Starlings of the Slipstream / Our Singer / Heckler Spray – Mellow Jazz Docent tease / In The Mouth A Desert / We Dance / Box Elder

Sunday was the warm-up, Tuesday was the classic, Wednesday was the rain night, and this…this was the weird show. Malkmus was in an odd mood — lower energy than the past few nights, a little cranky, a little sloppy — but it came together, especially as the set went on and things became more loose and goofy. I appreciate that each of these shows has had its own character, that I’m seeing different types of Pavement concerts. Ultimately, this was the kind of show the band is best known for. Even if this wasn’t them at their very best, it was a very good and entertaining show with some very memorable and emotional moments tossed in with lots of self-deprecating jokes from Malkmus, especially silly antics from Bob, and a noticeably dark tone in the improvised sequences.

Pavement “Our Singer”

“Our Singer” was very rarely played in the old days; it only just came back to the sets in the final weeks of this reunion tour. When it’s performed, it’s just Malkmus and Steve West, and in last night’s performance, Spiral and Bob walked on for a couple shouts. This was one of the best and most moving performances of the week, spare and loose but very much in touch with the raw, anxious emotion at the heart of the song. A lot of songs from the Slanted & Enchanted era are about waiting for things to happen or bracing for potential failure; “Our Singer” is the one that puts that theme front and center without doing anything to obscure the point. There’s a lot of hope in the lyrics, a feeling that he’s right on the cusp of something worthwhile even when he’s singing “I’ve dreamt of this but it never comes.” I’ve always thought of this song as music for the dawn, alert and awake and about to face the day. Maybe it’s the day. Maybe it’s just another day. You never get a sense of the stakes. That sounds true to me.

Buy it from Amazon.

Elsewhere, I did a chat interview with NPR’s Jacob Ganz about these reunion shows over at The Record blog.

9/23/10

No One’s Gonna Make Me Rearrange

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield, Central Park 9/22/2010

Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / Perfume-V / Trigger Cut / Unfair / Range Life / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Spizzle Trunk / Shady Lane / Fight This Generation / Summer Babe / Cut Your Hair / Kennel District / Gold Soundz / Zurich Is Stained / Stereo / [break while lightning storm clears the field] / The Hexx / Two States / Spit On A Stranger / Grounded / Silent Kid / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Stop Breathin’ / Date With IKEA / Feed ‘Em To The Lions (Linden) / Here // Conduit For Sale!

It had to rain at one of these shows, right? There was a thunder and lightning storm through the majority of this set, necessitating a 8-10 minute break after “Stereo” to let the storm pass over the park area. This was obviously not optimal conditions for the show, but it was a bonding experience for the audience, and only emboldened people’s enthusiasms. You don’t wait an entire year, eleven years, or your whole life to get put off by a bit of rain, right? The band was in good form — not as spectacular as the previous night, but still more or less in the zone. “The Hexx” and “Zurich Is Stained” were my personal highlights, though I think the most memorable moments came during major crowd-pleasers like “Stereo,” “Here”, and the triumphant, defiant version of “Conduit For Sale!” that closed out the night.

Pavement “Conduit For Sale!” [Live in London, 12/14/1992]

“Conduit” has always been one of Pavement’s great live songs. It’s one of the few that inspires a lot of thrashing about, and the only one that allows a significant spotlight for every member of the band. I still have a very vivid memory of the first time I saw them play it when I was 17. I remember Bob stalking the stage as the song shifted into the “no one’s gonna save me, no one’s gonna make me rearrange” part, and Spiral was kinda shimmying, and Malkmus was manhandling his guitar and shouting wordless exclamations after each refrain. There’s such a strange and wonderful dynamic between these very, very specific personalities, and “Conduit For Sale!” is the ideal showcase. Last night, it was a surreal, vaguely violent catharsis. Playing “Here” and “Conduit” at the end was like Pavement’s version of ending the show on “We Will Rock You”/”We Are The Champions,” but in reverse order of sentiment.

Buy it from Amazon.

9/22/10

Slow It Down, The Song Is Sacred

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, 9/21/2010

Shady Lane / Frontwards / Heckler Spray / Ell Ess Two / Starlings of the Slipstream / Stereo / Kennel District / Grounded / Rattled By The Rush / We Dance / In The Mouth A Desert / Perfume-V / Unfair / Fin / Gold Soundz / Debris Slide / Range Life / Trigger Cut / Cut Your Hair / Perfect Depth / Fight This Generation / Box Elder // Date With IKEA / Shoot The Singer / Conduit For Sale! / Silent Kid / Heaven Is A Truck / Stop Breathin’

At this point, I have seen and heard a huge number of Pavement and Malkmus shows, in person and on recordings. I can confidently say with a fair degree of authority that last night’s Pavement show in Central Park was among the best shows they have ever played. They were on, they were playful, Stephen was in good voice and in an obviously upbeat mood. The set was long and full of wonderful songs, including two — “Perfect Depth” and “Heaven Is A Truck” — that made their reunion tour debuts. The former was a lovely surprise; the latter was gorgeous and extended into a brief meandering jam. The band was very sharp and together, far tighter than most people ever remember them as being, but still loose enough to have that tossed-off swagger and swing that is crucial to their appeal and impossible for other groups to replicate. I have three more nights of Pavement ahead of me, and now I’m wondering if they can top this performance.

Pavement “Shoot The Singer” (Live in St. Louis 10/14/1999)

This was the song at the top of my wishlist for these shows, and it didn’t disappoint. There is a delicacy to “Shoot The Singer;” it’s the closest Malkmus has ever come to approximating the crisp moonlit sound of R.E.M. circa Murmur. Actually, it might be the closest anyone has come! The actual subject matter is obscured, but the emotion of it is not — melancholy and slightly bitter, overwhelming romanticism pegged down by clear-eyed pragmatism. It’s the song where the drama fades, and the music at the end — particular in the live arrangement — slowly drifts down from fantasy back to earth. Stephen keeps telling us “don’t expect, don’t expect, don’t expect.” Yeah, yeah, we know. Easier said than done.

Buy it from Amazon.

9/21/10

Pressed Into A Little Electric Two

Pavement @ Williamsburg Waterfront 9/19/2010

Cut Your Hair / Date With IKEA / Rattled By The Rush / Ell Ess Two / Grounded / Frontwards / Shady Lane / Unfair / Perfume-V / Fight This Generation / Silent Kid / Box Elder / Stop Breathin’ / Two States / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / We Dance / Summer Babe / Fin / Stereo // Spit On A Stranger / Trigger Cut / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Gold Soundz / Kennel District / Range Life

When I saw Pavement at the Pitchfork festival back in July, it was a very intense experience. I would’ve been freaking out no matter what, but my energy level was pushed to an extreme by a large and very enthusiastic audience. Pure fanboy bliss. This show was a lot more mellow. There were definitely a lot of people having a good time, but this wasn’t a crowd of excitable superfans. It was more just like a normal show. Which is weird, right? I may be seeing Pavement play almost every day this week, but it’s not like you get to see a Pavement show every day. My theory is that all the hardcore people will be at the Central Park shows, which were the first reunion tour gigs to go on sale a year ago, and this Williamsburg show was for the less committed stragglers. This was a great gig and I had a wonderful time and got to see the band perform songs I’d never seen them do before, but I’m looking at this one as a warm-up. The main event begins tonight.

Memorable moment: During “We Dance,” Bob brought out Stephen’s wife Jessica, and danced sweetly with her on the right side of the stage. After the song, Stephen said “That was for Jessica Hutchins. She put out on that one.”

Pavement “Box Elder” (Live in Hollywood, 4/24/1994)

I don’t think I ever appreciated “Box Elder” as much as I did Sunday night. It’s a simple, compact tune, and aside from a couple strange lines, one of the most direct songs Stephen Malkmus has ever written. It’s from their very first 7″, and it begins a theme that carries on through Malkmus’ most recent material: Hey, I’m moving on, can’t stick around here. Gotta keep going. See ya. This tour is about as sentimental as Malkmus gets, and well…he certainly doesn’t seem that way up on stage. “Box Elder” resonated with me because I was connecting its desire to move on with someone else, but maybe I was also tapping into something in Malkmus’ performance — he’s here and present, but he’s got his eyes on the exits, and ready to go somewhere new.

Buy it from Amazon.

3/8/10

Southern Boys Just Like You And Me

My (10.0!) review of Quarantine the Past, the new Pavement retrospective compilation, is up on Pitchfork today. As a supplement to that piece, I’m re-running one of my favorite posts from my R.E.M. catalog review site in which I wrote about Pavement writing about R.E.M.. For yet more Pavement, here is my in-depth interview with Stephen Malkmus from last year, and here is a tumblr I’ve put together tracking the band’s activities on their current reunion tour.

Pavement “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence”

Before I ever owned a copy of Reckoning, I was obsessed with a song called “The Unseen Power of the Picket Fence” from the No Alternative compilation. It was the very first song that I ever heard by Pavement, who would eventually become my all-time favorite band, and it just happened to be a tribute to R.E.M. in general and Reckoning in specific. On a very basic level, it’s a song about the magic of discovering music without knowing all that much about it, and the way enthusiastic, imaginative fans can rush to fill in their own history and meaning to art when they are not weighed down by the baggage of a shared culture.

In 1984, R.E.M. was a mystery for Stephen Malkmus to solve, just as his band would become a puzzle for me in 1994, and I’m certain that both bands benefited enormously from withholding information the public, and forcing the listener to develop their own context based on what they could glean from the records and whatever made it into the mainstream press. As usual, imagination allows for greater drama and insight: “Unseen Power” starts off with Malkmus identifying with the band’s southern roots despite having spent his own formative years in California, and ends with him imagining R.E.M. as stoic defenders of Georgia who confront General William Tecumseh Sherman at the end of his devastating March to the Sea. It’s all rather colorful and strange, but in an intuitive way, it summarizes the band’s appeal in the early ’80s than most anything else I’ve ever encountered.

In the second verse, Malkmus provides a quick recap of R.E.M.’s discography as of 1984, with a decided focus on Reckoning and its tracklisting. Though I knew “So. Central Rain” and “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” at the time because I had a dubbed copy of Eponymous, some of the titles were warped by my adolescent ears, i.e., for some reason Reckoning came across as “Black Honey.” Through the verse, Malkmus seems awed by the songs, and so when I finally heard “Camera,” “Harborcoat” and “Pretty Persuasion” for myself, I was acutely aware of their legendary status, at least in the mind of the guy from Pavement. However, he made one thing very clear in that verse: “Time After Time” was his least favorite song. “TIME AFTER TIME” WAS HIS LEAST FAVORITE SONG!!!

R.E.M. “Time After Time (Annelise)”

“Time After Time” is not my least favorite song on Reckoning. Not even close, actually. Bill Berry and Peter Buck shine on the album version, with the former filling out the space between the latter’s loose, trebly notes with a variety of light percussive textures. The song gradually builds up to a rather majestic peak, but even still, the tone remains decidely mellow and understated. This is in part due to Michael Stipe’s cool, reserved vocal performance, and an airy arrangement that seems to evaporate into the atmosphere just when it rises into the sky. In a way, it’s the song on Reckoning that comes closest to what Malkmus achieved on his records with Pavement — it presents an extraordinary and specific sensation in a disconcertingly casual sort of way. In other words: “Time After Time” is slanted and enchanted.

Buy Quarantine the Past and Reckoning from Amazon.

4/27/09

A Specialized Thing I Would Like To Know About

Pavement “Cataracts”

There is a part of me that is incredibly frustrated by the fact that this song is an incomplete sketch, and will likely remain so for all time. I find it hard to understand why anyone, even someone so overflowing with high quality music as Stephen Malkmus, could throw this away without even finishing it, or at least trying one more take without calling out instructions to his drummer. Still, knowing Malkmus’ tendencies as well as I do, I get the feeling that if he had completed the song, he probably would’ve altered the lyrics so that its moments of totally straightforward flirtatiousness would become more silly or opaque. This would not have been such a great thing, particularly as this song does so much to capture the rawest essence of Malkmus in flirt mode — sweet yet chill, funny but direct, clever without trying very hard.

The fact that he’s barely got his words together makes the mumbled bits come off like unimportant asides, underlining the importance of his clear, declarative statements. It’s like he’s nervously darting his eyes around the room, but making perfect, confident eye contact when he says exactly what he means. I’m fond of the fact that he’s singing bold, direct lines like “I know why you love me, dear,” and “take a chance on how you feel now,” but it’s even better when he spits out a perfectly formed Malkmusian come-on like “you’re nothing but a specialized thing I would like to know about.” Even when shambling about, the guy has this impossible grace. Some guys go for smoothness and swagger, but he barely ever seems like he’s trying too hard to impress — he just does. He’s got style for miles and miles, so much style that songs like this get wasted.

Buy it from Amazon.

2/9/09

Alone In This Vortex

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Walk Into The Mirror”

“Walk Into The Mirror” is essentially a post-modern hippie song, but it is not especially snarky or ironic. Instead, the song finds Stephen Malkmus paying tribute to a particular strain of idealistic, optimistic, inclusive sort of rock and roll from the 60s, adapting its language to fit his own concerns, and engaging in a meta-commentary on hippie-dippy aesthetics in the present tense.

The tune starts off with a few lyrics that lay on the flower child vibe thick and heavy, but it’s an intentional cliché, and Malkmus trusts the listener to both recognize the affectation and take its sentiment at face value. Within a few lines, communal creation of music is compared to work songs and spirituals, but through a rather unpretentious allusion to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Only one line later, and the guy is flipping the rosy, nostalgic view of 60s rock established at the start of the song, and bringing up the fact that much of that music was about jilted love, which is of course the primary topic of all pop music.

There is no clear point to be made about the 60s in the song, aside from perhaps acknowledging that the varying conventional wisdom about the era and its music is shaped by hagiography, fiction, commercialism, and kneejerk bias. We definitely need to approach this sort of art with a bit of critical distance if just to avoid getting suckered into drinking Baby Boomer Kool-Aid, but I think the implied argument here is that it’s also okay to engage with this sort of earnest sentiment on its own terms. Its rhetoric still has use, not just on a philosophical level, but as a valid mode of expression in rock and roll.

As much as the verses toy with the idea of “the 60s,” the chorus comes across like an evergreen Malkmus-ism about an escape into the surreal. In context, the notion of walking into the mirror does have something of a hippie flavor, but I think that mostly comes down to the way the song foregrounds the roots of his own lyrical tics. Between the hopeful vibe of the melody and the assertive momentum of its beat, the question asked in the chorus has a very obvious answer: Don’t you want to walk into the mirror? Oh God, yes! I hardly know what it would entail, but I very much would like to walk into the mirror, thanks for asking.

Buy it from Bleep.

A couple months ago I got to interview Stephen Malkmus for Pitchfork, and after a bit of a wait, the feature has been published on the site. I’m very proud of how it came out, and I’m super grateful for the opportunity to do a nice long interview with my favorite musician. The conversation spans his entire career, from the beginning of Pavement on through his current work on the next Jicks album, with a particular focus on Brighten The Corners. We spent a fair chunk of the interview discussing his motives and methods in regards to the songs that never get properly finished, or get cut from the albums, which is something I had been wondering about as a fan for quite some time. If you’ve been curious as to why “Walk Into The Mirror” didn’t make it on to Real Emotional Trash, you’re in luck — I made a point of specifically asking about that song, and he gave a pretty good answer.

7/21/08

A Weak Stone’s Throw From Sheepshead Bay

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks @ Siren Music Festival, Coney Island 7/19/2008

Baby C’mon / Gardenia / Dragonfly Pie / Jenny and the Ess-Dog / Phantasies / Hopscotch Willie / Elmo Delmo / Cold Son / Baltimore / Astral Facial / We Can’t Help You / Real Emotional Trash // All Over Gently / Pencil Rot / Two Tickets To Paradise


The very fact that I went to this show is a testament to how much I love Stephen Malkmus and his Jicks. I really can’t emphasize enough how much I loathe the Siren Festival — it’s gross, overcrowded, always has terrible sound, and it’s totally out of the way. (It took me about 90 minutes to get there, which is about the same amount of time it would take for me to go visit my parents in the Hudson Valley.) I was there out of love, but I’ve got to say, I did feel a bit of resentment about having to go out to this thing.


Thankfully, it was worth it. I didn’t show up to the festival until around 7 PM, just a little while before the Jicks hit the stage, and right around the time the sun was going down. Without the overbearing sun, it was actually a fairly pleasant experience. Well, aside from being surrounded by some world-class indie dinks, but really, by the 30 minute mark of the Jicks set, most of them had cleared out to see Broken Social Scene. (How’s that for an indie generation gap, by the way? As these people streamed out, actively rejecting greatness and embracing bland mediocrity, I kept thinking “in indie rock terms, this is the face of the enemy.” I can be melodramatic.)

Unsurprisingly, the Jicks show had subpar sound, and the band was troubled by shoddy monitors. I don’t understand how this festival has gone on every year of this decade, and they still haven’t bothered to improve this rather crucial aspect of putting on a large-scale show. Nevertheless, the band turned in a pretty good show with a handful of welcome surprises — a very promising new song near the end of the main set, an amusing Eddie Money cover, and “Phantasies,” which I had not seen in concert for some time. “Cold Son” and “We Can’t Help You” were both far better in this show than when I saw them performed back in April, mainly because Malkmus performed both with his red-and-cream electric guitar, and not on his acoustic. I don’t think acoustic guitars suit him very well — they just aren’t colorful enough for his voice and his compositions.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Tuesday Afternoon” (Live for Fair Game, 4/1/2008) – My original plan for today involved writing about a particular song from Real Emotional Trash, but that number wasn’t performed in this show, and I don’t really have the time or energy to write about it well as I’d like today, so I’m going to put it off for a little while. Instead, I’m posting this very obscure cover that the band recorded in a session that I produced for Fair Game with the show’s engineer John Delore. Normally, I’d tell you more about the song, but really, everything I know about it comes from Stephen’s banter at the start of this track. He’ll fill you in.

Fluxcast #2 – The Fluxcast is back, by popular-ish demand! I’m still working out how to do this, so feedback is helpful. I actually made two of these over the weekend, and I much prefer the third episode, so that will run later in the week. This one is fine enough, but in retrospect I’m not too happy with the way I grouped similar songs into blocks. Also, I had to record the back-announcing for the first mic break twice, and in the second take I forgot to explain why I made that opening block in the first place. So, uh, sorry about that.

4/3/08

The World’s Stuffed With Feathers, Table-Bottom Gum Holding It Together

John Vanderslice “White Dove” – John Vanderslice and his band are very sharp and precise, and through their set, they do a fine job of translating the careful sound of his studio recordings into performances that live and breathe in the moment. Nevertheless, the best part of his show comes at the end, when he and his bandmates enter the audience with acoustic instruments, shhh the crowd, and play a folky singalong (without so much of the singing-along) in the round. I saw it happen twice this week, and though it’s clearly a ritual, it doesn’t seem forced or false. As much as I love the crisp beats and the neat keyboard sounds of the main set, I kinda wish he and the band had spent a bit more time on the floor. (Click here to buy it from Barsuk. Also, a big thanks to John. I owe him one.)

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 4/2/2008
Pencil Rot / Elmo Delmo / Out Of Reaches / Hopscotch Willie / We Can’t Help You / Real Emotional Trash / Malediction / Gardenia / Dragonfly Pie / Cold Son / Baby C’mon / Oyster // Tuesday Afternoon (Randy Holland cover) / Alright Alright Alright (Mungo Jerry cover) / Old Jerry (brief instrumental tease) / Baltimore

Wow, this was just so much better than the Monday show. I mean, that was a pretty nice show and all, and if you only saw that one, you shouldn’t feel like you got screwed or anything, but the sound quality and physical space at the Music Hall is soooooooo much better than at the insanely overrated Bowery Ballroom, and Malkmus was considerably more disciplined and “on” in this set. There’s always going to be a playful sloppiness in his live performance — it’s pretty integral to his persona — but on Monday, he often seemed a bit apathetic. In this show, he struck a nice balance of goofiness and focus, even when he led the band into an odd improvised detour in the final solo section of “Hopscotch Willie.” “Elmo Delmo” and “Real Emotional Trash” were the major highlights, but the versions of “Baby C’mon,” “Gardenia,” and “Alright Alright Alright” were spirited and boppy.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks “Malediction” (Live in Portland, 2005) – I’ve got to say, “Malediction” came as quite a surprise. Some of you may remember that “Malediction” has a particular personal resonance for me; to the point that in retrospect, it basically sounds like my life in 2005. Hearing the song in concert three years later is a funny thing — aside from just loving the song on the basic level of enjoying its textures and melodies, it gives me this feeling of pride, like “I took that advice, and it worked out very well.” But it’s still a living thing, and the advice never stops being relevant. I’d kinda set the song aside for a while, but hearing it last night was a nice reminder. (Click here to buy it from Matador.)

4/1/08

It’s The Old Fruit That Makes Wine

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks @ Bowery Ballroom 3/31/08
Dragonfly Pie / Gardenia / Baby C’mon / We Can’t Help You / Hopscotch Willie / Real Emotional Trash / Cold Son / Post-Paint Boy / Oyster / Elmo Delmo / Baltimore / Church On White // Out Of Reaches / I Don’t Care About You (Fear cover) / Alright, Alright, Alright (Mungo Jerry cover) / Dark Wave

You know what? The Jicks is funky music. They’s a powerhouse. Especially Janet Weiss.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks “Real Emotional Trash” – If you look back on it, through every phase of Stephen Malkmus’ career as a musician and songwriter, there’s a fairly constant lyrical theme. Basically, everything he writes is an expression of restlessness, and the dulled anxieties of a guy who always has his eye on the exits, even when he’s perfectly happy. This is not a man who writes about being hung up on anyone — he’s either getting flirty with you, enjoying the moment with you, unhappy with you, leaving you, or looking back on what you had while moving on into the horizon. In the songs that are not directly or indirectly about relationships, he’s either dodging the topic of himself with oddball narratives or abstracted language, but even then, there’s this feeling of “hey, let’s see what happens, let’s find out what’s out around the bend.”

So naturally, things were bound to get a little complicated once he settled down. After dispensing advice to both himself and others on Face The Truth, the songs on Real Emotional Trash find the writer easing into stability and commitment. Basically, the fourth Jicks album is the emotional flipside of the fourth Pavement album, Brighten The Corners, a record primarily concerned with observing domesticity and weighing its merits from afar. In some cases, he’s clearing having a good time with it — “Gardenia” may end with an expression of dull frustration, but it’s a genuinely sweet tune about the daily reality of unconditional love. In others, he’s self-medicating and pondering a creeping existential dread. Tellingly, most the record focuses on the latter, as it begins with his “stoned digressions,” and ends with him spacing out just enough to obscure his ego and sidestep his fears.

The epic “Real Emotional Trash” splits the difference between the pleasure and the angst. There’s some deliberate irony at the start, with him singing “taking out the wife,” and then “daddy’s on the run” with a just a bit of distance in order to get across a bemused “huh, I guess this is my life now” sentiment. Like a lot of the songs on the record, it’s the sound of a guy feeling out the space in his life, and figuring out how to slip into new roles and responsibilities. As the song progresses from plaintive balladry to groovy rocker, the lyrics shift to a fantasy of escape and adventure. Some of the lines are lifted directly from the lost classic “Carl The Clod,” including a clever bit about embracing advancing age, but the most gutting line is his conclusion, in which he essentially declares himself unable to control his wanderlust and places the burden of commitment on his partner: “Police me, or please me.” (Click here to buy it from Buy Early Get Now. It is no longer early, but you still get high quality bonus material. Actually, let’s be really, really, really real about this: If you buy it this way, you get “Walk Into The Mirror,” the best song from the sessions.)

3/4/08

He Is No Less Lost

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Elmo Delmo” – There’s something in Stephen Malkmus’ voice that keeps him from sounding morose, depressed, or even angry. His songs approach those feelings, but there’s something about his personality and the very sound of his voice that downsizes negative emotions or dilutes them, leaving just an insidious trace of fear, doubt, and longing. He sounds as if he can shrug off anything, and for all I know, he can. I’m not sure if I’d cast Malkmus as an optimist, per se, but he seems entirely incapable of approaching the worst in life without levity and perspective. This may be the root of why I identify with his music so completely — the subtle emotional gray scale of Malkmus’ body of work comes closer to feeling like my baseline state than any other music that I know.

Malkmus’ unflappable, well-adjusted everyman persona is exactly what makes “Elmo Delmo” one of the scariest pieces of music that he’s ever written. The song starts off sounding rather epic and heroic, with language and dynamic shifts that emphasize a sense of courage and strength, even when he’s talking about a purple puma and a meta grotto. That takes a turn after a few verses, when we finally get a sense of what he’s up against: “I’m one with the grid / it turns me into a double form / I risk dissociation at every turnpike.” Immediately after that reveal, the bottom drops out, and an extended instrumental passage takes us on a guided tour of the darker corners of our hero’s mind.

And then it begins: Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. It’s total gibberish, but it burns a hole in his skull, and the mindless repetition beats his brain to pulp. It’s the onset of madness, the break from reality. Elmo Delmo is a cute, cuddly abyss. The worst traps seem innocuous at first. In the end, he rebels. He pulls against the tide, and swears to seize his life from Elmo Delmo, and the song goes out on a fight, but there’s no resolution, just this ambiguous cliffhanger. (Click here to buy it from Buy Early Get Now. You’re kind of a fool if you buy this record any other way.)

11/23/07

Something Is Happening Here But You Don’t Know What It Is

Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers “Ballad of a Thin Man”David Edelstein’s review of Todd Haynes’ new film I’m Not There in the most recent issue of New York Magazine may be positive, but in complaining that Haynes is more concerned with deconstructing Bob Dylan than getting inside his head, he clues us in to just how little he understood what the movie is actually about, i.e., not the guy who sleeps and eats and DJs on satellite radio. It’s about the cultural representation of Dylan, and as such, it’s more about us than it is about him. Not to undersell the film’s substance, but when you boil down all the things that I’m Not There has to say about Dylan in particular and art in general, it’s essentially about how we turn artists into icons, and the way the mythology that we create around them can take on a life and meaning that is far greater than the person, and sometimes even the work itself.

Haynes splits Dylan into six characters, none of whom are called Bob Dylan. (The name is never once uttered in the film.) Only half of the actors resemble the man, and the one who is most clearly evocative of his actual style and mannerisms is a woman in drag. It’s important that it’s drag, by the way. Cate Blanchett’s performance as the Dylan of Don’t Look Back is meant to be an over-the-top, fabulous caricature of the artist at his most iconic, and it’s the representation that is most charged with transgressive sexuality — both his own, and what Blanchett claims for herself as she occupies his persona. Blanchett’s Dylan is my favorite, mainly because she is standing in for the version of the man I appreciate the most: The “pop” Dylan; the cynical, frustrated young artist who fought against being pigeon-holed by the media; the iconoclast who stood up to the smug, self-righteous conservatism of the folk movement at the Newport Folk Festival and the Royal Albert Hall. The events of those two concerts are represented in the film with a great deal of humor, surrealism, and melodrama. It’s a folk story, passed down through generations, and that’s the point. It isn’t about the truth of those events, it’s about the cultural resonance of his actions, and the way we tell and internalize the meaning of the narrative — it’s the moment where Dylan ceases to be a folk singer, and becomes a folk hero.

Unsurprisingly, my second favorite Dylan in I’m Not There is the one played by Marcus Carl Franklin. Unlike the fairly representational versions of Dylan portrayed by Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, and Christian Bale — or the glamorous post-modern/meta representation of Heath Ledger, who plays an actor playing Dylan in a biopic — Franklin’s character is purely metaphorical, and stands in for the young Dylan eager to cast off his past and reinvent himself on his own terms. The scenes with Franklin suggest that the singer’s transforming persona is an intrinsic part of his character, and of his art — from early on, he understood the power of becoming a character, of becoming something else for the benefit of his art, his audience, and himself.

The film does not follow a linear path, but it’s important to note that the story begins with Franklin since it establishes the central conflict of the picture, i.e., the complications of reconciling the differences between the artist’s embrace of affectation, and the premium placed on authenticity in folk music, and the culture at large — or at least up until the end of the 70s, since its worth noting that Dylan’s life after his conversion to Christianity in 1979 is not acknowledged in any way by the film. (It makes sense — nothing else after that moment in his life has any particular mythic resonance, and so Dylan the legend effectively died when his life ceased to be a story.) Even though there are six incarnations of Dylan in I’m Not There, there’s really just two versions of his myth on display, and they are at odds with one another — he’s either the idealistic truth-teller, or the guy who forces us to look beyond objective truth of biography and dig into the complicated mess of life via fiction, poetry, and reinvention of character. You don’t really have to pick one or the other, but I’m pretty sure I only really have use for the latter version.

Oh yeah, and doesn’t Stephen Malkmus sound like he’s on his very best behavior on this version of “Ballad of a Thin Man”? When I first heard his three cuts on the I’m Not There soundtrack, I was kinda shocked by the reverence in his voice. I mean, I wasn’t expecting him to goof off or rewrite the lyrics, but after seeing the film, the straight, somewhat mannered vocal take makes a bit more sense — he’s providing the singing voice of Cate Blanchett, and he has to bend to her performance. Well, that, and he’s a Dylan fanboy, and I imagine he was just trying hard not to fuck it up. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

6/28/07

Everything Extraordinaire

Pavement “Old To Begin” (Live in Amsterdam, 4/4/1997)

1. In my senior year of high school, I took weekend classes at Pratt. Though Pratt’s campus is located in Brooklyn, the class met at the Puck Building. (People outside of NYC might recognize it as the building that was used for exterior shots of Grace’s office on Will & Grace.) Anyway, I had to commute into Manhattan on MetroNorth, and then take a brief subway ride down to Bleeker Street, and for some reason, I got into the habit of always listening to this particular song while on the subway. (I think it’s because I’d start the album as soon as the train pulled into Grand Central, and I would catch the 6 train right around the time “Date With IKEA” was over.) The first few times it was probably an accident, but it became a ritual, and ten years later I can’t hear the song without thinking about that period when I was so happy and optimistic and the weather was always weirdly perfect.

To provide a bit of context, only six months later, I’d be stuck in a depression that wouldn’t fully lift for two years, but everything in the spring of 1997 was just about right. I can never relate to people who had a hard time in high school — I only have happy memories from that period. I was happy mainly because I felt like my future was bright and wide open, and that certainty made me confident and enthusiastic. When I was in college, I felt disappointed by virtually everyone and everything, my confidence mutated into arrogance, and circumstances made me feel trapped and isolated. The sunny, easygoing music that defined my spring of ’97 — Pavement’s Brighten The Corners, Blur’s self-titled album — gave way to the epic misanthropic angst of the two records I heard the most in the second half of that year — Radiohead’s OK Computer, and Blur’s The Great Escape. (Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out and The Fall’s 458489 A Sides kinda fall halfway between those two extremes, I guess, but I associate them more with the earlier period.)

2. Even after all this time, it still makes me laugh when I think about how easy it can be to mis-hear the title phrase as “Ode To Bacon.” It’s not even very funny! Similarly, I am overly amused by how you can substitute the “we need secrets, we need se-crets-crets-crets” line in “Gold Soundz” for “Ryan Seacrest, Ryan Sea-crest-crest-crest.”

3. I can think of very few lyrics about breaking up with someone that are more mature, kind-hearted, and thoughtful than “time came that we drifted apart to find an unidentical twin.”

4. I’ll always associate Brighten The Corners with being 17, but I think that I’m only just now growing into the “holy cow, dude, I’m a grown-up and so are all of my friends” sentiment of the record. Spiral Stairs throws himself into the trappings of suburban stability, and Stephen Malkmus does his best to search for alternatives, but with his mind set on responsibility. They are both a little bit cynical about their choices and options, but they’re both earnestly trying to figure out who they want to be for the rest of their lives.

(Click here to buy the original studio recording on the Brighten The Corners album from Matador.)

Elsewhere: My review of 1408 is up on The Movie Binge but, ah, it’s not exactly my best work. However, I strongly recommend checking out some other recent posts on the site, most especially Erik Bryan’s hilarious take on Evan Almighty, Meghan Deans’ witty assessment of Lady Chatterley, and Bryan Charles’ very personal account of watching You Kill Me alone on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Also: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from the Sea and Cake, Arthur & Yu, and My Teenage Stride.


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