Real Emotional Trash
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Stephen Malkmus, king of the slacker-rock giants of the ‘90s, has come a long way from Brighten the Corners, only to end up awfully close to where he started. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. The first post-Pavement album went in a different direction, with carefully crafted pop songs and absurd lyrics. Pig Lib established a new/old sound, with extended jams and snippets of weird and sometimes profound vocals. Here we are again with Real Emotional Trash. But he does it so well that you’re glad your back.
The guitar tones on this record are brilliant, opening with a tight, nasal fuzz in duel guitar bluesy sweeps. The opening track, “Dragonfly Pie,” clearly demonstrated this album’s MO: big guitar parts with dark verses cut with bright, poppy choruses. Then, of course, there’s the 11/4 time signature for much of “Dragonfly,” and the really interesting use of keyboards, and you have a microcosm of the album as a whole.
The whole album has a nice live sound quality. “Hopscotch Willie” builds its jam up to a mountainous crescendo, and then pulls it immediately down to just the drums at five minutes in. You can practically hear the crowd cheering for their guitar hero (not the video game). When the vocals come back in, you can hear the pops and puffs in the mic. This is good stuff. The leys here sound eerily like The Chronic, only over a bassanova pop song. But Malkmus pulls off this blend of 60s pop drum and bass with 90s rap keys and rolls it into an extendo-stoner-jam with a pretty slide solo, and it works.
The absurd lyrics of Pavement are definitely here, but they give way to some clear statements this time. On “We Can’t Help You,” near the end of the album, Mr. Malkmus sings that, “There’s no common goal/There’s no moral action…There’s no sky above/For you to cry into.” The song is truly a self help anthem. That seems to be the philosophy of the album: live for yourself, and help yourself.
However, Steve et al definitely wander off the mark from time to time. Those Chronic sounding keyboards sometimes shift to a 70s Styx sound., as on “Elmo Delmo.” Then, of course, there’s the ridiculous call-and-answer bit in “Baltimore” with the Trans-Siberian guitar tone. It’s just unnecessary. Then there’s the consistent “fall-apart” ending. It happens at least four times on a ten track album. And of course, the gratuitous lengths of some of these songs get in the way of a casual listen. However, the skill of Steve’s guitar work and the inventiveness of the jams saves the album from wandering into Moe territory – a dark place indeed.
The title track, a 10:09 multi-directional jam, shows the range of this band. The song itself – the actual melody, lyrics, verses and chorus – is more or less boring. But, the guitar work is consistently inventive, leading to a instrumental jam. But this jam, like all the others on the album, is obviously planned. The guitars play in unison or intricate harmony with such frequency that at the very least they’ve been shaped. But they sound sloppy and improvised, which is a neat trick. This particular jam takes a turn at around 5:10. There, it starts a “Free Bird” style accelerando that takes over a minute, then opens into a faster, traditional rock n’ roll, infinitely more exciting song articulated by some really intense guitar blurbs (perhaps a tremelo with adjustable speed?). And Malkmus gives us probably the most honest line of lyric on the record, “It’s the old fruit that makes wine.” He’s certainly older than your average indie rocker, but he’s still crankin’ out the wine.
In “Cold Son,” Steve sings that he feels, “like a nympho stuck in a cloister.” I feel quite certain that he just liked the way that phrase sounded. But perhaps he has been just that: a guitar wanky jammer stuck in indie rock playing Fall style parodies. If so, then he’s definitely come out into the rest of the world. But, then again, “Poor is the man who would sully my youth.” Malkmus blends that old indie apathy with some real guitar skill and hidden hard work.
+6
