« Was (Not Was) | Main | Chatham County Line »

STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS
Real Emotional Trash
(Matador)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Stephen Malkmus is essentially a litterateur who fell into rock music, but he's made the best of regularly putting down a book and picking up a guitar. The knowledge of a smart reader has found its way into his music, from the earliest shambles of Pavement to his fourth album under his own name, Real Emotional Trash.

Like his second post-Pavement disc, 2003's Pig Lib, this one is more of a band effort with the Jicks, which, as on the previous effort, results in a narrowing of focus. At the same time, it also refracts the looseness and freedom that marked 2005's Face The Truth. His band -- bassist Joanna Bolme, guitarist/keyboardist Mike Clark, and former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss (an invaluable addition) -- seems to have loosened up as well, and has no problem keeping pace. Thus encouraged, Malkmus expands the title-track opener into a ten-minute epic, complete with a languid, then speedily intense, middle section featuring solos that wouldn't shame either Ron Asheton or Gregg Allmann.

The album is full of such incongruously listenable combinations: "Wicked Wanda" locates common ground between Abbey Road and magical medieval lanes; "Hopscotch Willie" transplants a dimestore-novel mystery plot into a frenzied indie-rock jam; "We Can't Help You" swaddles its stark lyrics in roots-rock keyboards and a loping, foursquare beat. As ever, Malkmus sings with a modicum of self-aware detachment, yet even he can't help but be carried along by his own music and words -- by the different kind of literature he's writing.

-- JON M. GILBERTSON
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Jon M. Gilbertson.