Malkmus provides consistently listenable album
When Stephen Malkmus split with Pavement a few years ago, a nation of indie rockers hung their heads in disappointment. When he returned with a solo album in 2001, they held their breath and exhaled joyously when they saw that he had not, after all, blown it.
That self-titled album sounded, as he had ensured it would, like Pavement with a different rhythm section. Granted, the lo-fi audio slop and random moments of screaming have been replaced with high-gloss production value, but that change had been in process before Pavement split.
The album is full of sparkling pop gems, breezy deliveries, ironically observed character studies and chuckling word play. It’s a simpler sound than the past, devoid of the I’m-smarter-than-you angular dynamics of Pavement. But it’s still a sound worth listening to.
Now comes his newest album, Pig Lib, and it’s a puzzler. Malkmus has slammed things into reverse here, and his once-trademark clipped rhythms, contradictory chords and spontaneous howls are back with a vengeance.
Maybe he feels he played things a little too cute on his last album or maybe the reversal is related to the increasing influence of his backing band, The Jicks, whose name makes it to the album cover this time. Whatever the reason for the change, instead of feeling like a confident second stab at independence, this feels more like a shaky transition.
After the first track, “Water and a Seat,” which is a fairly deliberate attempt to throw your expectations off guard, comes “Ramp of Death,” a sweetly observed memoir of a good relationship gone bad. Unlike its title suggests, the song is about as close to a love song as the album gets, and the line “stop avoiding me, or start avoiding me,” alone is worth the price of admission.
The album then spins off humorous rock numbers, “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster,” cynical pop tracks, “Vanessa from Queens” and prog-influenced flare outs “Dark Wave.”
At points, it feels a little unnecessarily complicated, and the whole thing stumbles a bit near the end with the nine-minute long “1% of one.” But these faults certainly don’t overtake the album’s strengths.
When “Witch Mountain Bridge” pulls its rhythm out from under you and slides into a straight away with Malkmus crooning, “Yes it’s all over your head so enjoy the dim vacation,” you can’t help but smile and think, damn this guy’s good.
And that’s what makes Malkmus so consistently listenable. His hooks, upon first listen, don’t seem like hooks, but jagged lines and missed chords. His lyrics are half-heard and misunderstood. And then, a few spins in, everything falls into place, the breaks start breaking hard, and you finally realize that, yes, he did just say “Bob Packwood wants to suck your toes.”
Even once you know what Malkmus is saying, you still don’t really know what he’s saying, and you think that maybe he doesn’t either. The answer, however, is irrelevant because at two in the morning when the booze is running low, there’s nothing better than throwing on one of his tracks and smiling at how confused the rest of the party looks.
