3
May-august 2000
Stephen Malkmus (2001)
Recorded at Jackpot!, Portland, OR
Personnel: SM / Joanna Bolme / John Moen
'The solo debut from the Pavement mainman you only thought you knew' says the sticker on my contemporary cd copy. The music press was primed for this first solo release, and there were glowing initial reviews. But soon the mood turned (I remember a scathing attack on this album a couple months later when the Preston School of Industry debut was reviewed in Mojo) – the relentless superficiality of this music brings us nowhere near the person Malkmus, they apparently decided. And so the lukewarm relationship between post-Pavement Malkmus and music critics took hold. And oh, how much they missed...
Maybe they felt the closest artist to a Bob Dylan for the '90s (forget about Beck – he's more of a Zappa) owed them a 'Blood on the (slay) tracks'. Well, anyway, times change and if Dylan was to start today he'd become a mathematician (so he said). You know that Stephen Malkmus is the original scrabble playing mathematician musician. Still is.
But back to this album, a particular favourite of mine which has lost none of its glow. Does it bring us closer to the man we only thought we knew? Sure does, it tells us the world lost a talented travel writer, the vacancy for a surrealist Paul Theroux has never been filled. No Malkmus album has a wider palette of locations. You can hear it in the jungle sounds opening the record (Malkmus in his safari outfit peeking out from under the thick underbrush, danger on the prowl), in the polar expeditions of 'Phantasies', 'The hook' with its pirate tales, 'JoJo's jacket''s B-movie odyssey (more of a Louis Theroux documentary!), 'civilized' Brit lost in colonial India ('Pink India'), ancient Greek architecture and mythology ('Trojan curfew') and back to the suburbs and American dorm rooms for 'Jenny and the Ess-dog'. This album should be called something like 'Swedish reggae', you know. After the twilight of late-Pavement this was a joyful step in the sun.
Maybe that was the problem. Western thought is conditioned anyway to take suffering more seriously than feeling good (the Dalai Lama would never make that mistake). Artists are supposed to suffer, right?, it takes blood and guts to sweat these songs out. In the year of the Stokes and the White Stipes nobody could take these merry escapist grooves seriously. Least of all coming from the indie world's favourite bratty and ironic brandisher of the widely feared put-down. A singer seemingly above admitting to ever having had an emotion. We know that's always been an entirely one-dimensional view and was never reflected in more than a few songs ('Summer babe', one verse of 'Range life' and 'Stereo'), but hey, it says something about the audience or the times that these were his most famous songs. There is nothing ironic or bratty about this record (maybe one 'Brothers in arms' reference, but the song needs it). He just sounds like he's really, honestly, enjoying himself. Hard to take, I know, such unguarded candour from a guy who's in a good place. And you know what, the record makes the listener feel good too! It was always destined to become a secret pleasure.
But enough about the wicked ways of the music press (though poking at the critics is one of my hobbies), let's talk about the sound of this album. Recorded at Jackpot!, Oregon (where 'Terror twilight' was demoed – and when will we hear those recordings?) over a couple of months (unless they just took a long break between recording and mixing), the Jicks is three people on this album: Malkmus, Joanna and John Moen (credited with starting it all in the 'thank you's') – a great little band. Compared to Pavement, this album is beautifully produced (not that I dislike the sound on my favourite Pavement albums, but I wouldn't describe the sound as 'beautiful'), but also it sounds pretty loose (even though we know from the Kim's Bedroom show that a lot of the random sounds were carefully plotted at the demo stage). It captures that vibe of throwing the weirdest sounds at the wall and seeing what sticks. A madcap spirit in some tightly structured songs. There's a lot of keyboards on there – Malkmus really getting into it. Lyrically, he's on fire, lost in surreal heroic travel fantasies. The songs fall into a couple of categories: of all his albums this may be the most poptastic with 5 supercatchy melodic 'hits', 3 of his most beautiful ballads ('Church on white', 'Trojan curfew', 'Deado'), two epics ('Black book', 'Pink India') and 'Vague space' (the song that caused the 'Swedish reggae' near-title, must be) and 'Troubbble' – well, even the weakest tracks are still pretty good (it's that kind-a record).
I could talk about all of them, but I want to mention the two epics.
'Black book' –
A thick sound, a mess of guitars.
He's on a quest for a black book (on locomotives to Kreutzberg and beyond).
Wild solos perfectly capture the movement, the mystery, puzzles within puzzles.
And it all starts to cook with deep, shamanic shambolic flute overdubs and lots of percussion.
But mostly those guitars...what a jungle.
'Pink India' –
(or as I call it, '6 minutes of bliss')
Jicks, please resurrect this treasure in the live set!
Starts with a beautiful fingerpicked melody on acoustic guitar – a singsongy dreamy melody as solid as a tree in the forest.
Cue a portrait of Mortimer, an impotent teabag spazz, pride of the vicar cast, sent off to Asia, expansion land, determined to be a man. (what lyrics!)
They linger on that last line to let it sink in, meanwhile the music gains a whimsical keyboard layer.
Back to a relaxed restating of the melody.
At 2 minutes a beautiful counterpoint melody (Mortimer singing to himself).
The insistent repetition is kinda like Jim O'Rourke's 'Women of the world', I think.
Break at 2'40”, the track veers into a rambling monologue 'tension grows in Afghanistan...I had a crap gin and tonic, it wounded me' (I love that line).
& then they veer off the track.
The final 2 minutes are a wonderful guitar sound reverie, constantly switching gears, building steam and letting off steam, endless little melodic variations, extra layers of sound.
Stephen, you old Jerry Garcia, you.
What ever became of Mortimer?
The record is chock full of wonderful songs. 'Terror twilight' and this album were a brief window in time in which his pop genius gift shone unfettered by more obscurist influences (be they post-punk or 70s prog/hard rock). Soon he'd be off on new adventures. But this wonderful record's lost none of its sway over me.
Back to the superficiality critique (look sorry, but I've heard and read the remark a lot about this record). Absolute nonsense, right? Listen further to the heartfelt affection and regret in 'Church on white ', to the lovestruck 'Deado', the wistful, almost philosophical 'Trojan curfew', the veiled but pointed self-portrait in 'Jenny and the essdog'... Like he quotes 'it's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred', that he's alright doesn't mean he isn't bleeding. The fact of it is that Malkmus's humanist philosophical discourse (which I first glimpse on 'Terror twilight' and was perhaps most clearly articulated on 'Face the truth') is way deeper than we're used to in music. No wonder it's often missed. It's a pretty big tree falling in a forest where music critics seldom venture.
NB: Was 'Deado' never played live? A lost song. It's never too late to resurrect this beauty, Jicks!
4
May-august 2000(?)
Polish mule
(JoJo's jacket b-side)
Not everything has to be deep. 'Polish mule' – recorded at the album sessions, I venture –, has b-side written all over it. A good old LA punk-ish romp, but of course without the self-destruction and aggression. That's not what Malkmus does. A nugget for the faithfull, but ultimately quite rightly not on the album proper.
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