Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks: 149 - 2015

149
2015/01/11
Portland, Yoo Hoo all ages show, Crystal Ballroom
Blank space
Lariat

The Jicks play for kids and their parents.
Now that I am a parent myself, I realize it wouldn't be funny at all if they'd break into 'Harness your hopes' all of a sudden. No sir, it would not!

I gotta admit I went the distance with this Taylor Swift cover.
No, I never had any moral or esthetic objections. At first I just saw it as one more in the line of ever widening cover opportunities Stephen takes on. A Black Crowes song for a Vice self celebration, sure, why not? I don't even know what a Vice is, but so it goes. (By the way, that 'Remedy' cover is not here, cause, you know, I have some standards. I could never listen to that again.) 

A Taylor Swift cover for the kids, ok. But that's all the attention I gave it.

But now I really like it. It slowly creeped into my consciousness. The piano, the musical ebb and flow, some of the internal rhymes in the lyrics, the sweet guitar solo, the enthusiastic less-than-pitch-perfect Jicks backing vocals. It's got something.

I'm not waiting for a tribute album, that would be pushing it.
I'm not rushing to the supermarket for '1989'.
But I like it a lot.