Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, "Real Emotional Trash"
Above: Part one of an eight part interview with SM about the making of his latest album. Prior to this I may have said that Stephen Malkmus can do no wrong, but in the face of that mustache, I stand corrected.
Also, before I get into the meat of this review, I should put out there the fact that I've been listening to "Slanted and Enchanted" on repeat for almost two weeks now. So, that's just where I'm coming from.
The opener "Dragonfly Pie" grabbed me from the get-go. With abrupt and unexpected shifts in rhythm and tone, it knocks you off balance, but hooks you for a fun ride.
He's using, again, that wangity synthy sound that employed on his last solo album, "Face the Truth" (hear it on "Pencil Rot" here). As with "Truth," you can hear a lot of his Pavement-y origins, but he's not stuck in the past. The deadpan nonsense lyrics are still there, but also too are flourishes of country, pop and piano balladry.
The album's tent peg, the titular "Real Emotional Trash," is a ten-minute emotional opus with two movements, the first a vaguely bluesy lament which gives way, in an extended instrumental break, to an upbeat "doin' it for themselves" second half. The effect is kind of theatrical. Although given my relationship to lyrics in general (I generally don't have time for them) and SM's specific brand of loose gibberish (which is, admittedly tighter here; we'll get to that later), I have no idea what this play would really be about. Upon repeated listens, the structure reminds me a lot of "Proud Mary." So this is Malkmus' Tina Turner moment?
OK, so I just said I don't really pay attention to lyrics. That's probably better phrased as lyrics are tertiary or maybe ever quarternary (I think I made that word up) to me when considering and processing a song, behind melody, rhythm and, I don't know, something else. So like, I can kind of tell that there is a story to "Real Emotional Trash," even if I'm not really interested in what it is. And there are a lot of these tracks that seem to be about something, with fully drawn characters. If this seems unremarkable, consider the following from "Fillmore Jive" (listen here):
I need to sleep it off
I need to sleep why don't you let me
I need to sleep why don't you
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
I need to sleep, why won't you let me
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
Why won't you, why won't you let me sleep?
(Sometimes when I'm suffering through a particularly pernicious bout of insomnia I sing this song to myself. And then I cry.)
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