Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks: 123 - 2012

123
2012/08/12, La route du rock, St Malo, France
Flower children
Independence street
Planetary motion
Houston Hades

Four new songs from the festival set at La Route du Rock (the full set is on YouTube). 'Flower children' has been slowed down, the organ is even more prominent, but the mood is less tough, less psychedelic nugget, more like a ballad drifting in psychedelic fog. Maybe the experiments on the arrangement spelled the song's fate – they couldn't quite get a handle on the song and so it got lost along the way. Well, maybe they felt that way. To me the original version, as played during the fall 2011 tour, was pretty much perfect. But this is a nice re-arrangement. Stephen sings the melody to 'Smells like teen spirit' over the final verse. He doesn't quite seem to have settled on a vocal line for this re-arrangement.

'Independence street' and 'Planetary motion' are by now familiar fare, but two excellent rendition nevertheless.

And then the debut of one of the great recent songs 'Houston Hades'. Musically there are few variations compared to the LP version. Lyrically in this early version the Houston 'trucklovers gunfuckers' are balanced by the Portland 'indierocker cocksuckers' (Ha! A lyric I can get behind!) Immediately the new direction is set – yes, a proto-prog introduction still reminds of the first wave of songs, but then, a breezy, effortless, undeniable riff anchoring the entire song (it's not too far off to say the riff is the song). With Mike on the piano the arrangement opens up, sounds full of air. Sounds like a real good time. And it's got wordless falsetto singing echoing the riff. Sounds like a door closes and another door opens. This was the key to the sound they would nail on 'Wig out'. Since we're in France, I'll call it 'joie de vivre'.