Stephen Malkmus has been an incredibly influential figure in music since his legendary band Pavement's first album, Slanted and Enchanted, released in 1991. Five Pavement albums and three solo LPs later, he is still going strong with his band the Jicks. recess' Kevin Lincoln recently took part in a conference call with Malkmus, where they discussed fatherhood, covering Bob Dylan and his latest release, Real Emotional Trash.
Can you tell us anything about the direction you took on the new album?
Well, we've got a new drummer. Her name is Janet Weiss, and some of you might be familiar with her from Sleater-Kinney. Drummer's are really instrumental to how bands sound, especially our kind of music. Of course, you can just put a quick track on there and the drummer can sound exactly like you want them to sound, if you're going for a controlled sound, but we are more into, I would call it, performance-oriented rock music, which means it sort of happens in the moment and you play what you play and it can't exactly be repeated ever again. That's kind of where we're going. Of course we have some strong structures to play within that realm. So it's going pretty far out in that direction, but with some structures, so it's not completely like the space section of a Grateful Dead show or something.
You consider yourself a pretty big Bob Dylan fan. What was it like working on the soundtrack for I'm Not There, and do you think your experience is going to have any significant influence on your own music?
The experience of singing on that song was after we made this album, but in the future, I suppose it could make me think a little more after having this Bob Dylan, everyone talking about it, and after singing on the song I listened to him again a little closer, and maybe it will rub off on me. But the thing that I sang on it was just vocals on a song that was already recorded so it wasn't... I didn't have that much investment spiritually in the project, but I was really glad to be a part of something that was with all these A-list movie stars and stuff. It was kind of funny to be vaguely associated with them.
How do you think that illegal downloading has affected the music industry?
(Laughs) Well, I don't know, sales are down for compact discs on the retail side due to people burning CDs and not paying for them, so in that way then illegal downloading or otherwise, if we could just talk about downloading, I think it's interesting in that it makes music more available for people to just stick their feet in without committing their money, and maybe they can hear about a band that they wouldn't have heard about otherwise. So there's more opportunity to hear different stuff that you maybe wouldn't have paid attention to, so I guess that's a good thing... and that's all I can say about that.
Has being a father changed your approach to the band or your approach to songwriting?
Not too much. Lately I've been making an analogy about sports stars, you know, and if people ask if... not that this is like athletics because lyrics, I suppose, you're supposed to have your personal life leaking into your songs, but, you know, nobody asks... who knows how many children that (laughs) some professional sports guys have and they seem to just go about their business fine, you know what I mean? They're still catching touchdowns, they're still hitting people just as hard. It's not like when you have a child you soften up, and if you're a cornerback you don't want to take somebody's head off still because you have a new sense of calm, you know? And that's pretty much how it is. I mean, the music to me, I like kind of shredding rock 'n' roll more or less. I like some singer-songwriter things too when I'm cooking or in the morning, but what I like to play live is hard music, so it's not really gonna change, and the lyrics don't. You're not going to have some soft message about breast-feeding or something over the top of that. But those time constraints that come along with it, life becomes more, as you get older you'll see, it becomes a little more regimented. That's for the good generally because, and you know you slow down a little bit. When you're pushing 40 you don't want to be out until 3 a.m. taking drugs or whatever, you know, that's kind of desperate. In college, maybe you want to experiment. Anyway, that's changed a little bit.
Your songs often feature really great, really weird characters, and I was wondering how you come up with them and their stories.
Well, I think it usually starts with a name and then and the way the sound of the song is, if it's kind of spooky or if it's funny. It's going to be a little bit absurd, it's going to be not too dramatic or really super-serious, mainly because my singing voice is somewhat limited and I don't feel like I can really command a certain range of lyrics, a certain kind of story. It will just come off a little bit pretentious or something, based on my voice and the songs I write. If I had a real deep voice, like Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen or something, I might get something more serious, I guess you would say. So it's going to be farcical. I don't know why. It just is.
You've lived and worked in Stockton, and now you've moved on to Portland. How would you compare the vibe of the two places and just the atmosphere for creating music?
I haven't been in Stockton in a long time, but I went to high school there and I didn't really work except for painting curbs or something. I worked at a country club flipping burgers or whatever, you know. Stockton is very flat, it's like Sacramento, I don't know how to really explain these towns, Fresno, they're more related to Los Angeles in spirit but they're closer to San Francisco. People wear Quicksilver shorts and skateboard and they're into the Offspring, bands like that. When I was there it was more heavy metal. There's football players-they drink Coors Light and Aggies. There's some farm guys with chewing tobacco in their back pockets and stuff. That's the kind of place it is (laughs). From the white perspective, there's also a lot of immigrants though, it's diverse. There's a lot of refugees from Cambodia, not a lot but some, and the Hispanic population and Asian population is quite large. So it's diverse in that way, to give you a long answer. And then Portland, on the other hand, that's where I live now, it's very, very white. It's very liberal, kind of... Whole Foods wannabe, Volvo, recycling. I mean these are all good things but when they add up together it is a little bit lacking in counterpoint, I guess you would say (laughs). You know, it's obviously better than living in Gary, Indiana or something, so don't get me wrong. But it gets to be a little... it's slightly claustrophobic compared to a town like Chicago. It's small, you know, in a way. And so you end up staying inside a lot (laughs).
It's no Nuevo Chicago?
No, it's not. But we do get a lot of people moving here from Chicago. It's quite common that people from the North, the Midwest, Minnesota and Chicago are big feeding grounds. A lot of people from Chicago move out west because they're tired of the weather. Many people want to leave where they're from at least once, and so if you decide to go to New York or something that's one move. But I find it's more common for a Chicago person to want to go to Los Angeles or Chicago or even Portland.
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