![]() It could just be a little bit or a feeling and you’re like, “Oh, that’s grunge.” Then it’s just fitting it. I guess it’s just messing around with sounds. ![]() Do you approach songwriting with an idea in mind like, “I’d like to write this kind of song,” or do you end up writing songs and then fitting a concept to whatever you’ve done? ![]() Your last few albums have been concept-oriented, whether it’s positioning Groove Denied as an electronic experiment or Traditional Techniques as a folk record. To actually come through and do all that, that takes a certain amount of will and willingness to travel and to work. Second base is making a demo, third base is recording it, and fourth is actually releasing it. It’s just whether or not you want it to go all the way, to go past first base. I think I’m always kind of trying to conjure something up. You seem to be in the midst of an especially prolific period. I’m also a Steven with a “J” middle initial, though I spell my first name with a “v” instead of a “ph.” When it’s just a “J,” you don’t really have to know that it’s Joseph, the “J” is the whole supper. My middle name is Joseph, for better or worse. Yeah, I can do a fun little Stevie Malkmus eventually. When Billy Joel made his classical album, he billed himself as William Joel. Sometimes artists formalize their names when they make a big career transition. “Other things I force, but a lot is you just kind of bump in to people or opportunities arise.” “I have in my life a lot things that have happened, positive and negative, that’s fate or just bumping into things,” he says. At the moment, Malkmus seems content to let the winds take him where it will. (Ahead of our interview, his publicist asked that I not bring up the recent death of his long-time friend and collaborator, David Berman.) But you don’t get to make this many records - including work that can stand with your best output - by staying still. If this is a reflection of Malkmus’ current state of mind, he will neither confirm nor deny. (One fan has even assembled compilations of his live work under the Grateful Dead-inspired moniker “Jicks Picks.” A simple Google search will provide more background.) But on Techniques, backed sparingly by trusted compatriots like Funk and Matt Sweeney of Chavez fame, he sounds as tender as he ever has on record, singing softly and openly about the value of romantic love and friendship. With the Jicks, Malkmus favors muscular arrangements and guitar heroics that take on a whole new jammy life on stage. When it comes to Traditional Techniques, a sensitive and ravishing LP that stands as the strongest collection of tunes he’s put together in years, he is characteristically nonchalant about the album’s genesis. He’s more likely to go on a tangent about Fleabag or Nick Nolte’s filmography than indulge an in-depth breakdown of his own work. Still as rakishly handsome and slyly witty in middle age as he was in the ’90s, Malkmus is friendly but guarded when talking about his art, casually but firmly deflecting any attempt to nudge him toward self-analysis. But the designation makes sense when you speak to him. When Malkmus was in Pavement, he was frequently described as a “slacker,” which must’ve been annoying considering how long he’s been steadily putting out records and touring. “He had shit lying around, like banjos and acoustic guitars.” “He’s been doing some stuff in Portland and he was like, ‘Yeah, dude, let’s make a folk record,'” Malkmus continues. Assisting him in the process was Sparkle Hard producer Chris Funk, one of the founding members of The Decemberists. In time, he would create his version of a ’60s-style British folk LP, in which shambling acoustic guitars and spooky pedal-steel riffs evoke lonely, haunted inward journeys. He wanted it to be quieter, more stripped down. He suddenly felt an urge to make a much different kind of record from the one he was making. The idea came to Malkmus while in the midst of making 2018’s Sparkle Hard with his backing band, the Jicks. Traditional Techniques might very well be the soundtrack for that kind of solitary, reflective existence. Though he could be one of the dozens of guys I know around his age, who all engage in some form of self-imposed isolation that’s pleasurable and melancholic in equal (and sometimes unequal) doses. ![]() The 53-year-old singer-songwriter - you might know him as a Gen-X icon from his years fronting Pavement in the 1990s, or from the steady stream of consistently great solo records he’s been putting out in the decades since then - has just explained the impetus of Traditional Techniques, his third LP in two years, due out Friday. We text and we’re on the internet with our friends, but we don’t go out every night.” “I’m kind of hidden from view, like a lot of people my age. “I’m at the age where I don’t reach out,” Stephen Malkmus says. ![]()
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