Stephen Malkmus

Stephen Malkmus is in Dublin to play Tripod with his band The Jicks, and we show up mid-afternoon to try to scavenge an interview. After a period of uncertainty and a lengthy discussion, a tattooed motorcycle enthusiast/sound engineer agrees to do us a favour and leads us in. We follow him through a surprisingly elaborate labyrinth of corridors, stairs and lifts to the backstage area where Stephen Malkmus awaits. The quixotic build-up does not help to disperse the mythic aura he has developed in my imagination. Mostly because of this aura, I am too preoccupied with deciding whether it is okay to ask him questions about Pavement to notice him emerging from his dressing room. He is soaked in sweat and wearing a gaudily-coloured hoodie zipped halfway down with no t-shirt underneath. He could still easily pass for a burnt out skater or a hippie in his late twenties. He is in fact forty-two, and one of the most-revered figures in indie rock. You’d never guess, by looking at him. “Are you here for the chat?”

“Show me a word that rhymes with Pavement/And I won’t kill your parents, and roast them on a spit.”
Harness Your Hopes (2000)

“Back then, you feel sort of indestructible and you have all the time in the world. And also there was a feeling of anticipation, that there wasn’t much out there. People were really interested in what we were going to do next on a wide level. I also knew already after we made Slanted + Enchanted, which had a lot more success than what we’d already did, that I had this idea to make this completely different kind of album. So I felt pretty confident.”
“Maybe some groups do that, and they don’t even have any new songs. They’re just sort of blown away that it even happened. And Slanted + Enchanted was kind of like that for me. But I already knew that we were gonna use bass on the next album, and that it was going to sound big and melodic, and have a different colour and a different feeling. Now, it’s more like we have every two years to do this. And we feel often like we’re yelling into a cavern. People are still listening and connecting, but it’s not the same feeling.”
Stephen Malkmus reflects on the difference between making Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and new album Real Emotional Trash. It’s striking how at ease he is with talking about Pavement’s legacy. Chances are, he’s heard every question imaginable about Pavement in the ten or so years since they became defunct. And there are always going to be people shouting for ‘Here’ or ‘Gold Soundz’ at his solo gigs. You’d imagine he’d be tired of it by now. But there is no sense of reluctance whatsoever discernible in his face when I ask him about his old band. He’s aware that The Jicks are never going to make the best-of-all-time lists in music magazines. He’s comfortable with that fact. There is no “let’s talk about what I’m doing now”. In fact, there is a definite air of pride in the way he talks about Pavement.
“There was also less riding on it, in a certain way. Not in the fact that there was less people listening, but now the older you get, time gets a little more precious. It feels like everybody’s got a big life. Everyone in the band’s busy, so you have to say, oh we’ll practice this day. Whereas when you’re 24 or 5 with your friends and you’re all living in the same house, there’s nothing to do except watch TV and go to work and drink beer or whatever. I think that benefits the younger man”


“Of all my stoned digressions, some have mutated into the truth.”
Dragonfly Pie (2008)

Since turning solo, the focus of Malkmus’ expression has shifted away from his lyrics and into the long instrumental parts that characterise Real Emotional Trash. However, despite proggy time-signatures and non-standard tunings, the music still falls slightly short of being fully straight-faced. He is a master of being serious and tongue-in-cheek at the same time with his words, but it is important to recognise that he is witty with his fingers too. Even the devotees amongst the indie rock critics have had some difficulty with the aesthetic, but at this point in his career, he admits that he is really doing it for himself. I ask why he has adopted soloing.
“I like a lot of crazy guitar music from the 70s and the 80s too generally. I generally know my way around the 90s and I didn’t really want to know my way around the 80s. I feel like I know what I like from that time. So the 70s and the late 60s are still a point of discovery for me as a fan of music. There were a lot of records in the wake of albums by the Beatles and Hendrix and Cream and these big bands you never need to hear again, little guys getting it wrong and releasing albums that sank like a stone. I listen to that music more, and that’s led, for better or for worse, to more instrumental parts and more solos. That was kind of the name of the game back then.”
When I try to talk about his lyrics, he becomes almost imperceptibly uncomfortable. Is it worth trying to read deeper meanings into the words he sings? “I don’t know. Yeah, it’s alright. I try to leave it not so narratively… like my friend David Berman in the Silver Jews, his songs are kind of airtight in a certain way. I’m just not capable of that.”
“You can only do what you do, and I’m just kind of a California kid, you know, just a little bit hang loose. I’d like to be in that vague, but more than the sum of its parts sort of area. But sometimes I’ll just be funny. I just wanted to be original I guess. I don’t really care about the meaning. If no-one else is doing it, that’s a good start. Within reason.”

“After the glow, the scene, the stage, the set/Talk becomes slow, but there’s one thing I’ll never forget/Hey, you’ve gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent.”
Range Life (1994)

We get to talking about bands reforming. On My Bloody Valentine: “That’d be fun to see. One of Pavement’s first big shows was with My Bloody Valentine, at this thing called the New Music Seminar in New York, which still goes on. They were great. They were famous for being real loud, of course. And they were. But you had ear-plugs in, of course, which you should at 90% of shows if you’re going to be up the front. So it wasn’t too bad.” He wouldn’t mind seeing the Sex Pistols either. “I think I would go, just because I don’t mind a certain kind of nostalgia. And from reading about it in Mojo, it seems like a genuine thing compared to some reunions. I mean, they genuinely want the money, but they also genuinely love the band and want to play the songs.”
Would a Pavement reunion be good in a nostalgic sense then? “Yeah, I think it would if we did it right. I think if I was going to do something like that, I would just do hit after hit. Whatever a hit is for Pavement. Because you’re going to be playing at some festival with today’s chart-topper, or somebody with at least four hits. So I would just want to play songs that people liked.”
His approach to reforming is not exactly hard-line, and he has no problem conceptualising for conversational purposes, but there is probably no need to start saving for the tickets yet. “I don’t really see it happening for Pavement any time soon. There’s gotta be somebody who doesn’t do it. Besides us, and The Smiths.” I propose that Morrissey is much more fundamentally opposed to the idea than him. “People would love it, but even though it’s a hard ass approach, you gotta hand it to him for sticking to his guns and saying “no amount of money is going to turn me around”. He’s inherited so many Smiths fans, he’s got enough fans for his own thing. He’s not at want for love and attention. ”

“Nine times out of ten, I’m not the guidance type/I’ve been sitting on a fencepost for the brunt of my life”
It Kills (2005)

It doesn’t take very long talking to Stephen Malkmus to notice his encyclopaedic knowledge of music. He loves to talk about it, new bands and forgotten scenes from the 60s alike. He has two or three examples of bands for every point he makes in general conversation. For example, discussing his 2005 album Face The Truth, which is credited just to ‘Stephen Malkmus’, with no mention of the Jicks: “I was hoping that it would have a different feel to it, hopefully a good feel, sort of an improvisational, temporal thing, like a DIY record from the 80s, bands like the Desperate Bicycles or the Homosexuals. These are British bands that were kinda on the outside of punk rock and post-punk, they just said ‘we’ll do everything ourselves, we’ll record ourselves, we’ll do it really cheap and make a 7″ with a black and white cover. Everyone can do it.’ So that was kind of the spirit of that record, not to make it too perfect, and I really didn’t think anyone else deserved to have their name on it.”

Prompted to name some recent favourites, he takes a second to think, and then lists a ream of them. Sebadoh, Polvo, Pissed Jeans, The Cows, Devo, The Cribs (!), Blitzentrapper. He read about Fleet Foxes on Pitchfork, which seems a little weird but makes sense. When pressed as to whether he is ever surprised to find that bands he’s into are citing his music as their biggest influence, he is dismissive. “Generally not. It seems to be with guitar bands, there’s a divide. There’s the angular, Gang of Four ‘dance-punk is cool’ thing. And then there are more song-based guitar bands, who still like it loud, but sing melodically and aren’t too retro. And they like Pavement.”

“It’s surprising with how well known we are that we’ve never had one superstar say they like us. Like Pete Townshend, or like how David Bowie is always coming out for bands, saying the Arcade Fire is great. I guess Radiohead. But they’re like our age. They said they liked it. But not these old geezers. I don’t know why. It’s probably a good thing really. Those geezers, they’re not gonna go out to a gig really unless they’re especially asked and they have a nice air-conditioned place to sit, and it’s private. That’s kinda disappointing. Well, it wouldn’t really make me feel that much better if Neil Young came out and said ‘that’s alright’.”