Stephen Malkmus

Malkmus' remark about nothing happening in the nineties is an example of the kind of stupid rock star narcissism of which careers are made.

Since this doesn't even get physically released until Tuesday BlackIronPrison, not sure anybody's able to compare just yet. Jealous that you found a copy already, or did you do a preorder?

streaming this now, it's pretty great!

srtephen malkmomus

Jon - Permanent Records on Chicago Ave. had it out Saturday - maybe someone made a boo-boo ... It really is such a leap in a different direction than R.E.T. ... I like it and I think I really place Malkmus and Pavement in different camps ...

Nice. Yeah, I try to avoid comparing Pavement and Malkmus' solo stuff, different beasts completely imho. I've only listened to the stream once, but it sounded really good. Excited to dig in more later this week.

Different but the same. A lot of these tunes sound like Pavement songs to me- why pretend anything different? I don't think this is a surprise or that there is anything wrong with this- he was the main songwriter in Pavement after all. I think the last couple of records the difference was more marked but on this one not so much.

why pretend anything different?

Completely different backing musicians, for one. I really don't think most of his solo stuff sounds Pavement-y, tbh. I mean, yeah sure, in that he's the same vocalist playing vaguely indie-rock driven music.

Ok then guess we must be hearing different things. Sounds pretty similar sort of songs to my ears. Sure the rest of the group is different but the composition, melodies, lead guitar, lyrics etc all sound close enough to (middle/late era Pavement) be almost interchangeable to a lost Pavement album to me. Not worth having a bath over though.

and whoa @ Beck producing Dwight Yoakam!

― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, August 21, 2011 7:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

omg

also what is this record called so i can pirate it reliably

l.a. gunz

lol

>:[

mirror traffic

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/08/10/malkmus2_wide.jpg

"am i really in a band with these pricks?"

malkmus interviewed by dean wareham (!)

http://www.salon.com/news/music/index.html?story=/ent/tv/feature/2011/08/22/malkmus_wareham

This is another Pretty Good Record.

nycers, playing two in-stores on thursday, one at other music and one at academy in brooklyn..

I like the way the new album starts off but I got a bit bored halfway in (that's on my first listen to the NPR stream that was available) says this Slanted and Crooked Rain fan. This is getting great reviews so far(here and everywhere), so maybe I need to give it more time.

more or less what others said already:

1. i like it after the first listen.
2. it definitely has a pavement feel to it, more later than early pavement of course.
3. during the second half i got bored a little as well, it gets a little jammy at some point.

The two songs over five minutes are the worst.

why do you guys hate to rock

the question is why does Malkmus.

love when malkmus gets jammy, six minutes, eight minutes, more!

^^ (xp ian)

i like "brain gallop"

i prefer light & wispy malk actually

'Share the Red' is a decent synthesis of these types I think.

The reason I like this record so much is that it does a nice job of both the playful Malkmus and the jammy, hippie Malkmus. I like both.

Again, this is another decent record which happens to be at least 20 minutes and five tracks too long; and the opening line in "Tigers" about the girl in the Birkenstocks almost made me hurl.

this record is great, cool and breezy, not too long at all!

For me I reach a point with a former guitar/weirdo hero (David Byrne, Verlaine, Dean Wareham) or band when the decent craftsmanship doesn't compensate for the blahs.

dunno, with those artists you mention (throw in robyn hitchcock there too), they've got styles i love so much that i generally enjoy everything they put out. some albums might be more inconsequential than others, but i still get a buzz from hearing "this guy". i probably have low expectations.

There's so much music to listen to that I've reached the ate at which thinking, "Cool, another B+ Malkmus record" is almost a waste of time .

*age

line up for the comfort ate

i mean, it's basically comfort music for me, but sometimes a cheeseburger is all i want. i'm a simple guy.

man don't talk about cheeseburgers when I ate lunch more than two hours ago.

alfred how old are you??

I've seen a third of a century elapse.

ha you always make yourself seem older than you are

i'm up at school a week before classes start doing nothing but play basketball, read, watch tv, and golf; i'm realizing how much i am going to love retirement

I've seen a third of a century elapse.

Yeah, I was all like "lol u old", oh, wait, so have I. Dammit.

i'm up at school a week before classes start doing nothing but play basketball, read, watch tv, and golf; i'm realizing how much i am going to love retirement

Malkmus material.

I thought you were older too, kev!

We wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled.

i'm 22

Why you whippersnapper you, you aren't even out of goddamn short pants yet! What do you know about old man rock n roll?

and he holds his own so well on the politics thread!

since when do old people know about politics

I've pretty much gone through the same cycle with each Malkmus solo album:

1st phase - "Hey, this is pretty good! This might be his best solo album yet!"
2nd phase - "Yep, still pretty good. I should play this more often."
3rd phase - "It's been a while since I've listened to that. Should I put it on... Nah."

I feel the same as O Nate up there. Heres A review that sums it up for me too. From Collapse Board.

By Scott Creney

Stephen Malkmus’s new album is simply brilliant. Mirror Traffic is boiling over with ideas about 21st Century life. Most of the lyrics examine the collapse of global capitalism through a range of emotions comparable to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal. It’s a rollicking soundtrack for the economic Armageddon exploding all around us.
Just kidding. Mirror Traffic isn’t about any of those things. As far as I can tell, it isn’t about anything at all. It’s just one more congested mess of whimsy from the former boy genius.

Oh how we loved Stephen Malkmus in our youth! One of the few indie rock Prime Ministers to ever be elected to a second term. Oh how you dominated the 90s with your style and wit, your passion and melody. But those days are over. Your riddles have run dry. Your mystery is no longer engaging. Your sense of abandon morphed along the way from ‘not giving a fuck’ into ‘not giving a shit’. Even your high-faluting, scrabble-playing, crossword-solving intellect seems to have deserted you (using ‘bourgeoisie’ as an adjective, really Stephen).

Mirror Traffic is stuffed with ideas, but nearly all of them feel half-baked. Songs are crammed with lyrics upon lyrics, multiple chord changes, key changes, varied instrumentation, tempo changes, etc., but for no discernible reason, to no real effect. Only a fool would ask what the songs on Mirror Traffic are about. It’s a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that upon completion reveals a brown wooden duck. ‘Brain Gallop’ has a nice melodic hook, but it’s attached to a lyric — “There’s not that much left inside my tank today/There’s just enough to go and blow you away” — that, in its unearned simplicity, undercuts whatever momentum the song might be building. Then Malkmus shifts into that mocking, half-assed falsetto that suggests he thinks the whole thing is a god-damned joke and you just have to throw your hands up in the air. If you’re smart, you’ll skip ahead before the goofy/silly/tongue-in-cheek guitar solo comes along.

What about that sardonic wit Malkmus is so famous for? Well, I’ve always thought the word ‘witty’ was a word people use to describe someone who isn’t actually funny — the funny person makes you laugh where the witty person makes you smile. I don’t know. Does this make you laugh?
SENATOR VIDEO
I know what the senator wants. What the senator wants is a blowjob.
I know what everyone wants. What everyone wants is a blowjob.

Yowsa! Zing! I mean, as comedy goes, SM was always more Jerry Seinfeld than Bill Hicks, more David Sedaris than Richard Pryor. But ‘Senator’ is probably the high point of this album. You can decide for yourself whether that’s high enough. By the way, How the fuck does something “fade away like a stone”?

It’s hard not to shake the feeling of pointlessness hanging over the album. The songs are stuffed with chords because the songs are stuffed with chords, not because they take the song anywhere. All the fussiness feels like an attempt on SM’s part to try and keep things interesting — not for us, he could care less — but to try and keep things interesting for himself. A heavy weight of obligation hangs all over this album. One pictures SM shrugging his shoulders before mumbling, ‘That’s OK, right? It’s got some okay moments, doesn’t it?’

And one pictures Beck, the (all but invisible, inconsequential) producer of Mirror Traffic, nodding his support.

Here’s a link to the first video, courtesy of The New York Times. Take the time to read some Paul Krugman while you’re over there, and try not to think too hard about Bobbie Gentry.
The list of songwriters who did their best work after leaving their original band is a short one. There’s Peter Gabriel. [You crazy fool! - Genesis-hating Ed] There’s, um … George Michael? Joe Walsh? There’s probably a reason for this. As long as Paul McCartney was in The Beatles, he had to live up to being a Beatle. But as Paul McCartney? Well shit, anything he recorded would live up to being Paul McCartney. And the same thing’s probably true with Stephen Malkmus. Not to say that a Pavement reunion would produce anything better, I just think an artist’s ‘solo career’ is always going to be underwhelming to some extent.

‘Tune Grief’ has some good energy; in some places it’s almost fun. But it doesn’t move me. Is it my fault? The album goes on for over 50 minutes, most of it wandering from one place to another without ever really accomplishing anything. You need Mirror Traffic the way the ocean needs more salt. It’s about as necessary as a manual typewriter, and every bit as interesting to listen to. It has the same vigor, the same sense of purpose, the missionary zeal, of a grey turd floating in a bathtub.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with ambiguity. I keep listening to Mirror Traffic (decent title, by the way — giving credit where credit is due), but I hear vagueness instead of mystery. Instead of a beguiling labyrinth, I’m simply trapped in a room with too much furniture and not enough art. There’s moments every so often — they last for 15 seconds or so — that make me think Malkmus may have something (ahem) left in the tank, that he may still possess some of the genius he once flung around so casually and endlessly in his youth. Hell, maybe he just needs to go back and listen to The Fall instead of Smog or The Sea And Cake, or whatever the fuck he listens to these days. But this album isn’t even close to genius. Not by a long shot. At its best, the album is pleasant. And there’s too much goddamn great music out there for us to waste our time on things that are merely pleasant.