There’s a dicey thing in music called the “guilty pleasure.” I have many (you know what I’m talking about Lionel Richie) Stephen Malkmus is the opposite of a guilty pleasure. He oozes credibility and you can feel safely cool listening to him. He used to be the leader of indie rock royalty band Pavement for god’s sake and his solo stuff is essentially just new Pavement albums.
The thing that’s great about Malkmus is that while he has this credibility, his stuff still has the “pleasure” part of the “guilty pleasure” – singable choruses, good hooks, quirky little stories for lyrics, and really impressive playing. He’s finally got a really good drummer in Janet Weiss from the sadly broken up Sleater-Kinney to match his guitar playing.
A quick word about Malkmus as a guitar player: I hate guitar gods. Wanking show-offs on any instrument have always bored me to tears. The Joe Satrianis and Stevie Ray Vaughns of the world have always seemed to be enjoying themselves way more than anyone listening to them ever could. Malkmus is growing into a guitar god and there is a huge amount of wankery here – but it’s good. The difference is that with the Satriani, Vaughn type of guitar god stuff, you get the feeling that they’d like to accompany their solos by ripping their shirts off. It’s self aggrandizing and show-offy. At no point would Malkmus rip his shirt off. He usually wears a lovely collared shirt beneath a v-neck sweater for god’s sake. He’s from the good guy guitar god camp along with Doug Martsch from Built to Spill (we’ll talk about them soon.)
It’s a good album, and a grower so give it time. Listen to the song Cold Sun from the album here:
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