Tag Archives: stephen malkmus and the jicks

#1107: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Refute

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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.

#1046: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Planetary Motion

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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.

#1033: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Phantasies

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Does anyone out there have an insight as to how Stephen Malkmus feels about his early, early “solo” albums with the Jicks? I guess, just like any artist, as time goes on you become more focused and familiar with the more recent stuff and you may not feel the same closeness you once had with that old material. Would be a bummer if that’s the case, because the Stephen Malkmus album from 2001 is my favourite out of the Jicks albums to date. Not saying that everything he’s done since then hasn’t matched up to it. I just enjoy a large number of the tracks on there.

‘Phantasies’ is the second song on the album, and going a unique way in terms of a lyrical narrative, Malkmus sings from the persepctive of, presumably, an Inuit living in Karakatu, Alaska – a town that doesn’t exist – and going about their daily business with their fellow Inuit colleague. It’s a nice, little, upbeat tune. Coming after the sorta surreal opener of ‘Black Book’, ‘Phantasies’ turns the album’s direction into a more approachable direction. And a fun one too. Malkmus sounds like he’s having a blast just singing it. There are keyboard-activated vocal samples that are played like a kid in high school when the teacher’s left the room. The synth that follows the vocal melody during the verses has a childlike innocence to it. The “Whoa a-whoa-ohs” in the choruses are kinda silly, but that’s really what the whole song is going for. Silly and carefree, but still with a lot of heart.

All of this, the music, the lyrics, the performance, the whole untroubled air of it all, I’ve come to link with Malkmus’ then-newfound freedom after the breakup of Pavement two years prior. There’s that clip of him in the last Pavement show where, with a pair of handcuffs dangling off his microphone, he says to the audience – “This is what it’s been like being in a band all these years.” Something along those lines. And now that was over, it was like a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders. The whole feeling of freedom isn’t confined to just this song though. The whole album revels in it. Malkmus sang he wasn’t having fun anymore on Pavement’s final album. In this song you can hear the huge difference in tone when he was.

#797: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Mama

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Eight years. Eight years I’ve been doing this series and the beat goes on. Have a read of the first one. Back to the scheduled post.

I haven’t known ‘Mama’ for as long a time as a lot of the other songs on here. I listened to Face the Truth initially in 2018 when I was at my first job at uni, and I could get away with being on Spotify for the whole day and go home without really achieving anything. It was a strange place to work at. Then as Stephen Malkmus was to release his electronic Groove Denied album in 2019, I revisited Truth again and ‘Mama’ stood out as a highlight.

Face the Truth was listed as a proper solo studio album by Stephen Malkmus, much like the 2001 album. The Jicks are still credited on the back though, and feature on many of the tracks. It’s more or less a Jicks album. I do think though, that Malkmus plays all the instruments on ‘Mama’. He did so on the Pavement song ‘AT&T’ and there’s something about both tracks bring off the same vibe. Maybe it’s the drums, I’m not sure.

In ‘Mama’, Malkmus sings about the good times of his youth. Just being a kid in the house while mum and dad were doing mum and dad stuff. It’s easygoing, very laidback. Very sunny and relaxed. It’s a nice tune. Things pick up a pace in the middle for the guitar solo and middle instrumental before slowing right down into the last verse and chorus. I also think that this was his take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Proud Mary’. The tracks are too close in tone for it to be a coincidence. Pavement played some CCR back in the day; I think it’s fair to say he’s a fan.

#773: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Loud Cloud Crowd

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The past two years have been a busy time for Stephen Malkmus. Since 2018, he’s released an album every year. That one saw the release of Sparkle Hard with the Jicks, which was then followed by his proper solo debut album Groove Denied, a record that was bit more electronic and definitely stranger in its sound. Then came Traditional Techniques earlier this year, but definitely feels as if it was released in another lifetime the way this year’s been. To cut things short, these releases made me go back and listen to his older albums in the Jicks catalogue.

I came across Face the Truth – which I’ll say is probably my second favourite of his after the 2001 self-titled album – and ‘Loud Cloud Crowd’ got to me on that first listen. It sounds like the soundtrack to the beginning ceremony of an event. Like the Olympics of something. Gives me the same feeling I get with Vangelis’ ‘Chariots of Fire’. Big things are on the horizon. I don’t know. I just get good feelings from this track. I think it’s generally about being optimistic about the future, and how it’s up to you to make your own path to make things happen. Though in the standard Malkmus way, he makes his lyrics just a bit surreal and jokingly cryptic that it’s truly understand what the subject matter is. I’m not sure what a ‘loud cloud crowd’ is; it’s probably nothing to dwell on. What I know is, that type of crowd sound quite important the way Malkmus sings it.

In terms of the music, it plays upon the quiet verse/loud chorus dynamic. It’s a bit more subtle here than how you would usually here it in a Pixies or standard grunge song though. Malkmus sings in the verses alongside a subdued guitar line and synth-bass. Some rolling tom-toms enter the frame to build some layers, and then the chorus comes in with some added synth-strings that add to the sort of regal tone the track is going for. I feel the whole arrangement’s done very well. An unrelated note but this song was also on the soundtrack for Major League Baseball 2K6. That’s a game I don’t have and probably won’t own anytime soon. But that fact is usually a common topic in the YouTube videos for this song.