"Hey Mr. Malkmus, put a record on-I wanna dance with my baby." Will Stephen Malkmus be the next Madonna? The next John Lennon?
Nah. Truth is, going solo won't put former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus any farther down the road to true pop icondom. He has his niche, and he's sticking to it. And that's just fine.
By copping some attitude from underground legends like The Fall and melding it with the dispassionate cool of the Velvet Underground, Pavement charmed the pants off almost every scrabble-playing hipster in America during the '90s. Leading the charge was Malkmus, a UVA-educated ironic troubador, a high-cheekboned waif who scissored folks with sarcasm while he rocked them out with Creedence covers. Stephen's soul suffused every song by his old band-but was he really the only one at the party?
This self-titled debut-this band's real name is actually The Jicks, but the head honchos at Matador though the eponymous tagline would move more units-confirms that Malkmus' career is far from over. For lo-fi scoffers who bitched about Pavement's 1999 sayonara, Terror Twilight, this record is Malkmus' middle finger in their face-it's
No shock, then, that Stephen Malkmus launches with "Black Book," which reprises the heavy hooks of Terror Twilight's "Cream of Gold" with an added dash of rattlesnake sifting and a vicious outlaw groove. Not only does it kick things off in high style, but it could have been a fave in the days of Pave.
In fact, most of this album recalls the glory of the Pavement days. "Church On White" sizzles as Malkmus drops his science, offering lyrical carrots like, "You will always be too awake to be famous / too white to be saved / but all you ever wanted was everything," as the song strolls up to its wailing guitar solo. The first single, "Discretion Grove," doesn't boldly go anywhere, but it should hold its own at college radio.
The sub-2 minute slasher "Troubble" is the type of bad medicine the Malkster needs to make it in the solo world, with its defiant guitar skreeing over spacey dashes of synth. It's short, sweet and to its obtuse point-and it's the type of song that might have been out of bounds in Paveland. And the high-pitched squeal that crescendoes in the tidy piano-pounding "Jenny and the Ess-Dog," could even do Axl Rose proud.
Malkmus is also on point with "Pink India," which starts like a loopy cowboy tune before cold-kickin' it extended jam style. It's such bliss that you almost forget that The Jicks aren't the Malkmus band that topped many a "Best of the '90s" list. (For you historians, Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted hit number two on ours.)
Still, Malkmus has misses. "Phantasies" is too fluffy to be taken seriously-its "oh, oh, oh" falsetto chorus would be better left to the Pet Shop Boys. Blues-rocker "The Hook" serves up chunka-chunka Stones riffs that skate dangerously close to Sheryl Crow. Malkmus also tries to have fun with the whispery drifter, "Trojan Curfew," but it ends up going nowhere.
Thus, Stephen Malkmus is a typical solo album story-if you like the guy's old band, you'll probably like the solo effort. You might like the new twists, but you could find that not having a real band backing a guy up means that he occasionally drops the ball.
As for Stephen himself, the son of a gun might be more smug than a librarian with a purple dye job, but we can't help but show him the love.
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