Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks: 49/50 - 2003/2004

49

2003/12/02, Slim's, SF

JoJo's Jacket
Grace
Dynamic calories
(Do not feed the) Oyster
Vanessa from Queens
Phantasies
Witch mountain bridge
Dark wave
Ramp of death
Baby c'mon
Animal midnight
Craw song
Church on white
Us
Jenny & the Ess-dog
Jam
Water and a seat
Post paint boy
Old Jerry

Another great 2003 show (I know, another one?, is this getting boring or what?). This has the same basic songlist as the other two shows – heavy on 'Pig lib' of course ('Sheets' seems to be the forgotten song – strange, as it seems ready enough for live performance), with a handful of first album singles tossed in and 'Dynamic calories'. No covers this time, but it does include the piano and vocal version of 'Jenny...' – John joins in discreetly on the bridge. (And the very greatest version of 'Old Jerry' ever – but more about that later.) I don't think anyone will complain when they hear the committed and inspired performances.

What does set this show apart are the three new songs: 'Grace/Mr Jolly', 'Baby C'mon' and 'Post paint boy'.

Apart from 'It kills' and a soundcheck jam of 'Mama' –we're finally reaching some new songs. This is 16 months after the recordings for 'Pig lib', don't forget.

Maybe there are tons of unrecorded shows (or recorded shows I don't know about) with all of the songs from 'Face the truth', but on the basis of what I've heard, the genesis of 'Face the truth' didn't happen on the stage the way it did for 'Pig lib'.

All of the new songs we've heard:
It kills
Mama
Nervous actors
Grace
Post paint boy
Baby c'mon

It's a start, but it doesn't really offer a clear direction for the new album. What's going on?

I don't know any of this stuff for sure, there's no Malkmus-lore to check these things – but I get the impression he was struggling at this point, in more ways than one. The songs didn't seem to come as easily as they used to (Pencil rot?). Maybe he was slowing down a bit – other things in life taking over, maybe hitting that point 'is this what I'm doing?'

He was struggling for musical direction too, I think – heading into the most protracted sessions of his career. You hear these rumours about dumping almost all of the non-album material recorded cause he was unhappy with how it turned out.

Now, these new songs played at Slim's. The two that made it onto the album – I know they're a lot of people's favorites, but not mine. They always sounded like placeholders songs to me, like 'thank god I've got a song down' (comfortably my two least favorite songs on the album).

And Stephen, stealing riffs? What would Chris Martin say?!
Just kidding, I don't give a damn about that thing. Copyright lasts way too long too, that's right Walt!

But the song that didn't make it – that's the one I want to talk about. 'Grace/Mr Jolly' is the stepping stone between 'It kills' and 'Freeze the saints' and 'Malediction' (even more than 'Nervous actors' which was sort of an appendix to 'It kills'). And besides that, it's got a beautiful melody. And yet it's not on the album. Why? I'm just guessing – maybe he felt it was too straightforward lyrically, not enough poetic dissimulation (like those other songs surrounding it). Did he develop some hesitations about this new, more vulnerable direction. It finally snuck out as a b-side a couple years later (thank God). An important song and more important, a beautiful song.

Anyway, this show was a moment of musical confidence. Musically the Jicks were on top of the world. Right at the end (in a track I just discovered on this thread) they literally burn through an epic version of 'Old Jerry'. Eight and a half minutes of musical sighing and longing – it's these kind of surprises that make delving through the Malkmus live archive so worthwhile. Everything I wrote about this song in Brussels (which I thought was the last known performance of the song) goes double for this one – which is now the final known version. It's almost like an excorcism. It's a damn pity they don't play it anymore, but after delivering this amazing version, you can see the point. 'That was amazing, let's never do that again!'

Next – soulsearching and evil synths.
50
Feb – aug 2004, Shamrock Justice Studios
Face the truth

Late 2004 emergency call to Cris Lombardi:
'You know that Malk album we promised with snappy songs, wayward guitar and messily endearing lo-fi production...'
Chris: 'Yeah!'
'A bunch of evil synthesizers broke in and ruined it...'
Chris: 'Evil synthesizers?'
'Remember those upbeat, crazy fun keyboards on the debut?'
Chris: 'Yeah'
'They came back twisted and angry.'
Chris: '… (sigh) Just put it out.'

---

You know what I really hate about music critics? When they insist on writing autobiographical articles as if their lives have any bearing on the record I'm listening to.
So let me tell you about my conflicting emotions when Ms. Goodnight to the rock'n'roll era and I had our first child.
This was in 2009, so a couple years after Face The Truth came out. I told you that I liked Pig Lib from the first, but it kept growing in my estimation. Face The Truth, I liked bits of it, but I didn't really get it. It was only from 2009 onwards that I found my way in and it's been growing on me ever since. Hence this story.
Basically, first child ? soul searching. Some heavy things on my mind:
I'm gonna teach this kid how to live. But I don't have a clue how I'm living. What's a good way to live, a good ethos? What do I want to teach this kid?
I'm struggling with all these belief systems and philosophical credes, trying to find out what it means to be a good human being, and at the same time I'm kinda disgusted with humankind. How dare we fuck up the planet, nature, other human beings so. The hypocrisy of society is overwhelming once you get into it.
But then, what am I doing? I'm kinda realizing I'm in this for the long haul. I'm not exempt. How and to what am I contributing? Is this what I'm going to do with my life? Is this it?
It was the time I quit what I was doing (I'd been hanging by a thread for a couple of years anyway), went back to school, took another road.

Face The Truth is a messy record – and since the mess is so central to what it is, it's never going to be as objectively great as the debut or Pig Lib. But the heart of it is just as straight as those other albums. To me, it's really the last time Stephen went out on a limb like that, no idea if he could pull it off, right out of his comfort zone. And I value that a lot. It's a record that's taught me a lot of things.
I'm not saying Stephen went through the same things I did, but he went through something and he put it down in the record. The first line is 'There's a villain in my head and he's giving me shocks', so I felt that kinship.

---

Now, for starters, when I started listening to this again in 2009, I found all the disgust for humankind I was feeling mirrored there. Check out these lyrical fragments:

I'm here to sing a song
a song about privilege
the spikes you put on your feet
as you were crawling and dancing
to the top of the human shitpile

Turning ugly into ease
you're naked in a towel
your pride is a swollen subset
it will never ever ever pipe down

The fallacy of selflessness, the friendship etiquette
Normal is weirder than you care to admit
fatigued by socialized

I was shot for meat
Left alone with a crow
get into watercolors and you
never saw me again
But I plan to return and with verbs I'll attack
I'll trip I'll maim I'll leave you
With no skin on your back –
Kindling for the master
Everybody's got a heart to sink

I'm the leech who can preach

And one about music, which always makes me laugh:
I went to see a 'go to gigs alone' type of band
They elucidate that all alone understand

If the lyrics aren't enough, there's some evil sounding synths on this record, while most all of the music is slurred, obscured, phasing in and out of focus.
Yeah, I was finally feeling comfortable with this record. Shades of 'It's alright ma (I'm only bleeding)' in those lyrics too.

---

More important though, the record's got a way out. (Yeah, I'm sorry, this is going to turn into a long discussion about the lyrics.) I find it in three important songs (and a 4th, 'Mr Jolly' temporarily sidelined).

'It kills' is about growing as a person, it's not that easy.
Starts with questions – 'What you gonna do? I don't know my friend / But I'm open to suggestions if you'll proffer two cents'. He's looking for 'something I can hang my coat on'.
There are few passages in Stephen's lyrics as open and clear as this:
9 times out of 10, I'm not the guidance type
I've been sitting on a fence post for the brunt of my life
Now I need some help to find out what I feel
Face the truth, indeed.

But he knows why he's looking. The chorus is the key:
'It kills' – what's this 'it'? The time until you fill your heart. Until you do that you're just killing time.
'There's more to you than what you think and need' – now that's a line! How fucking hopeful and inclusive is that? I try to live by it. There's more than opinion and need.

The 2nd verse is the determination to follow through:
Where you gonna go? I don't know my friend
But I'll take this road forever or until it does end

---

So what is the road? Next stop is 'Freeze the saints'. Now of course, I'm pretty fond of most of this music, but whittling it down to a select number of masterpiece songs, so far I'll go with 'Church on white', 'Pink India', 'Witch mountain bridge', 'Old Jerry' and now this one.

Like 'Church on white' crosses over from the personal (the death of a friend) to the universal, it's the same in this song which interweaves a beautiful declaration of love with some great advice for leading a good life.

Seasons change
Nothing lasts for long
Except the earth and the mountains
So learn to sing along
and languish here

'Here' is in this life, on this earth. Change is the way of all things, learn to sing along, our natural state is to languish in this existence. 'Languish': I don't take it as meaning 'feeling miserable', more like in a state of waiting, powerless to affect our ultimate situation as being here. We just don't know if this is it, or if there's anything after, where we're going, what happens after this state, what the meaning is of this waiting state. No way of knowing.

It's not that easy. He recognizes the difficulty in his partner too:
It was long ago
that all of your willing dimensions
lost the flow
and vanished in veneer
But he wants to know if underneath she's the same as him (see, he's lost the flow too). If they are the same, then 'help me languish here' – that's basically, be with me forever, right?

Summing it all up:
You said 'Done is good' but done well is so much fucking better
Share the wealth and cauterize the tears

If you want to know, well you are so much like me
– can mean two things. If you want to know if you are like me, yes. Or: if you want to know, if you're looking for the answer, I am too.

If there's a more beautiful love song written this side of 2000, I haven't heard it.
And the guitar solo isn't half bad either.

---

At the end of the record 'Malediction' picks up the theme again. This is like a 'goodbye to my old self, I'm going on this new path' song.

So long,
goodbye to the nervous apprehension
I wouldn't want to miss ya
My heart is unable to stay so
unstable no more

This is a long term commitment, you've got to leave your old habits, and there are risks, but even if it goes wrong, it's better than not risking yourself.

Leave this house
if you do not know how
you'll learn along the way
The road to rejection is better
than no road at all

Basically:
If you wait till you're ready
You'll never make an amends

Yeah.

I think that stuff is just beautifully put. Words to live by.

---

Did anyone in the media pick up on that stuff? Did they? They're just not really interested in engaging with new things from this artist. They were all, 'the most messy he's been since 'Wowee zowee' so that's a good thing, right...'

I haven't talked about a string of fine tracks on this record – basically, up to and including track 8, this record is tops with me. And it's out there – take your pick from the no-wave Funkadelic of 'Pencil rot', tribal experiment 'I've hardly been', the realization of his folk rock ambition in the beatific 'Loud cloud crowd', 'No more shoes''s updated San Francisco '68 sound (QMS!)... 'Mama' is the sound of Malkmus writing the final installment of the trilogy 'Ode to Billie Joe' (Bobbie Gentry) – 'Clothesline saga' (Bob Dylan) – 'Mama' (and who doesn't look back on idealized childhood days in the midst of turbulent change?). And 'Kindling for the master' is...uhm...lo-fi disco? It divides opinion, I know, but I love it. It seems a bit churlish to go on about the one track on the album I don't like, but I'm in this argument now.

So, back to my autobiography. Disgust for humankind, check. Looking for a good way of living, check. Is this what I'm going to with my life?

'Post-paint boy' – I'm not the only one reading this as a half self-portrait, I hope.
This is where the record lets me down. Well, my main reason that I'm not so into the song is that the melody just doesn't speak to me that much. It doesn't seem to go anywhere. I also feel the lyric is just a little too obvious, too much stretching of one idea, while I'm used to a Malkmus lyric stacking up more ideas than I can process.

But I listen to this song and I trip over that line 'The maker of modern minor masterieces for the untrained eye'. I just don't like that line, and every time I feel that maybe Stephen's been living that line for a couple of years. You know, 'well, this is what I'm doing, I'm a musician, maybe it's not so important, but this is it'. Not that he doesn't care, in fact the attention for craft has gone up, he wants to do it right. But he's not putting it on the line, he's trusting craft over inspiration. I wouldn't hesitate to call a lot of what follows 'minor masterpieces', but there were less surprises and maybe less major masterpieces. I'd rather have the mess if the stakes are higher. Then again, such is life. And it's not that there were no surprises, just a little more spread out in time.

'Face the truth', that record is pretty essential to me.