The very-late 2010s were a busy, busy time for Stephen Malkmus. 2019 saw the release of his first, true on-his-own record in the shape of Groove Denied, an LP that was sort of half-and-half between a surprising electronic approach and the classic indie-rock that Malkmus is known for. Then just a year after came Traditional Techniques which was more rooted in a country style, something he’s also been prone to do throughout all of his work. And in the midst of that came the announcement of Pavement reuniting, which was also supposed to happen in 2020, but didn’t because of that whole COVID pandemic thing. What a bummer that time was. But this fruitful period seemed to begin with the release of his and his Jicks outfit Sparkle Hard in 2018, the band’s first after a four-year wait since Wig Out at Jagbags.

Admittedly, I have to go back to that album and get a sense of it again. It’s been a while since I last listened to it. In fact, I may not have heard it since its release date all that time ago. I’m sure I thought it was a pleasant enough listen at the very least. I’m very sure that ‘Shiggy’ was a highlight, that’s one that’s always stuck with me. You’ll find many live performances of the track on YouTube, which I usually preferred over the album recording. ‘Bike Lane’ has a cool hook to it. As I said, I have to revisit the whole project. But the track that’s stood the test of time for me, that large span of time… six years, is ‘Refute’, the penultimate effort on the album, a country-tinged one at that, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it influenced the acoustic outlook of Traditional Techniques a couple years later. I think what caught my ear immediately was the track’s chord progression, which doesn’t really change throughout bar the choruses. Malkmus’s melody in those verses follows the movement of the chords, and once I had that down it was very much smooth, smooth listening. As is the case with almost all of Malkmus’s songs for me, the guy’s one of my favourite songwriters hands-down.

‘Refute’ is a tale of two people who are falling for another person in their own respective lives. The first verse tells the story of a man who’s very much interested in this lady with ‘Southern-ish eyes’ and ‘French knee-highs’, and is raring to give things a go with her. The second, delivered with the silky vocals of Kim Gordon of the great Sonic Youth, narrates the same-sex relationship between a woman and her ‘young au-pair’, the former wooing the love interest with ‘Egon Schiele prints and french fries’. The choruses are a command to the public to ‘marry on’, to keep on loving and keep this human race going (at least I think that’s what it’s going for). But in the bridge, Gordon, like a voice from the heavens, warns us to marry on, but to be weary because ‘the world doesn’t want [us] anymore’. Really, the whole track is a poke at marriage and how it’s not all that useful in today’s society, which I guess a lot of people don’t want to hear – as Malkmus addresses in the song’s outro – but it is what it is. A little twist in the song, there. Nice. I try not to recite lyrics in these posts, feels like I’m just filling up space by doing so, but it’s nice to sometimes give an idea what you’ll get if you choose to press play on the video above. Anyway, this is a cool song, take it with you if you dig it.