January 2014 marked the arrival of Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks’ sixth album Wig Out at Jagbags, which itself was the first proper record of the band’s that I was patiently waiting for. Having listened to Pavement’s discography from front to back the previous year and also had a dip into Malkmus’ first solo album, I gotta say I was hooked to whatever he did and was also preparing to unleash on the masses. It was also three years on since the last Jicks album. That too I downloaded just to get a feel of more recent work. Jagbags eventually came. First impressions of it were that it was okay. Almost ten years on… that feeling remains the same. Feels to me like a slicker, slimmer part two of Mirror Traffic, but the songs just didn’t grab me as much. ‘Lariat’, the ‘single’ from the album is the band’s most popular song on Spotify though, so what would I know? In my opinion, the album possesses two highlights in the form of ‘Cinnamon and Lesbians’ (which woulda had its own post had the timing been right) and its opener and today’s song ‘Planetary Motion’.

The thing you’ll notice about ‘Planetary Motion’ is that *gasp* it’s not played in your regular 4/4 timing. Nope. To begin the proceedings is a track that switches between 6/4 and 5/4 during the verses, stays at 6/4 during the choruses and then plays at 7/4 during the instrumental/solo break. Now, usually when you get this sort of tampering with the rhythm, you’re left to wonder if this’ll be some prog rock thing where there’s just too much of everything going on. But this is Stephen Malkmus we’re talking about here, guys. Even with the unusual timings, the tune still rolls at an easygoing tempo. It does start of with quite the stomping rhythm, but once those choruses and that instrumental break kicks in, you’re back into that familiar laidback territory that only he can pull off so well. As to what the song’s about, well, I’d say that it’s about the wonder of the Earth and how it just keeps on turning, how the Sun keeps shining, how us humans just keep on living and how all those things will just keep on happening with no real end in sight. Sounds like the basis of a classic existential crisis/dread song, but Malkmus sounds to be at peace with it all, the song’s just that chill.

Doing some extra research on the track, it seems that there were live performances of it as early as 2011 – so either it was a possible outtake from the Mirror Traffic sessions or just a brand new track that was written straight away after the band finished making that album. You can also read this interview. The whole read is worth it, but there is a part where he talks about his annoyance with the ‘yellow odyssey’ lyric in this track and how he buried it with another vocal singing on top of it. People who like to think that Malkmus doesn’t care about his craft are sorely mistaken. Malkmus’ decision to bury the ‘yellow odyssey’ line appeared to have confused every lyrics site online who tried to find out what he was singing during those parts. A lot of them replace the line with a question mark before transcribing the next part of the song.