Matador Records
2008
Real Emotional Trash
About This Album
Stephen Malkmus' solo career seems to be settling into a pattern of alternating between skewed, spiky pop albums bearing his lone credit and long, languid collections of jams with the Jicks -- as 2005's Face the Truth belonged to the former category and its 2008 follow-up, Real Emotional Trash, fits neatly into the latter. That's not to say that this is a retread of the lazily intriguing, formless Pig Lib. Where Pig Lib wandered aimlessly, adrift on its insular guitars, Real Emotional Trash is focused and propulsive, even if the band invariably circles around a point instead of tackling it directly. Perhaps some of this precision is due to the presence of former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss as the Jicks' new anchor -- she grounds them and pushes them harder, giving Malkmus a solid foundation he's never quite had either in Pavement or on his own -- but Malkmus also sounds clear-headed here, as any new father of two should be. He's shed the haziness that plagued Pig Lib, yet he's still intoxicated by the sounds he can make, usually with his guitar but also with his mouth, as his words have never sounded so much like a fanciful collection of sounds, each syllable bouncing off the next in the melody.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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