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by Tomas Rumbaugh - Photography: Joshua Kessler | 00.00.0000

Stephen Malkmus—bored with boredom at last—discusses hero worship, the band vibe, and his annoying chapter in the “History of Rock and Roll”

avatar (av⁄e tär⁄), n. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.

It sometimes seems like Stephen Malkmus doesn’t exist at all. He’s your brother, your friend, (a ghost?), that guy down at the record store who peers ironically over the stacks of “neo-soul” and “alternative country” vinyl, clad (as such types always are) in the small, tattered t-shirts, which come advertised on the Google results page as "sponsored links" selling "Vintage T-Shirts" when you do a search on “stephen malkmus.” He’s a remnant of the unconscious soul that indie rock has wrought upon the public. The crowned prince of shoe-gazing slackers. The sort of figure whose liberal arts education, mid-level SAT scores, and utter indifference (genuine or contrived) towards the world, would land him as the symbol of so many disaffected dot-com accountants in a Douglas Coupland novel. Still, there is something genius about his songwriting and its ability to stealthily capture the essence of ideals held by such sorry figures—all self-doubt, boredom, and contemplation of the disaffected navel. Music on music—like poetry on poetry—is the hallmark of a generation of artists with way too much free time and not enough wars.

In his mid-30s, the former Pavement front man is now knee-deep in a solo career. Backed by an eclectic group of Portland-based ne’er-do-wells collectively known as the Jicks, his second album, Pig Lib, will be released this spring to a body of critics and fans who have already swallowed him whole and divested his essence of don’t-give-a-fuck cool among the various incarnations of younger, hipper, indie-fabulous bands currently crowding their way into the bloodstream of the mainstream. He is, sadly, the Pixies to their Nirvana. The superego to their id.

Which is why it’s all come full-circle for Stephen M. This is after his belittling of Blur (who ripped off Pavement’s sound once they heard it). This is before the forthcoming book on Pavement (by British rock critic Rob Jovanovic which chronicles the birth of slack). And don’t forget the mind-bending incarnation of Stephen-as-stud from his last record (replete with cover art photos portraying the once pasty Malkmus in a pretty-boy stance—not to mention the girlfriend, the cute girlfriend darnit, about whom Pavement fans have cried “Yoko!”). Now, it’s simply S.M.: a man alone with his music in a world that has finally turned its attention elsewhere. He has become at last, exactly like the odd protagonists he’s always written about—clever, vexed, and slightly sad.

It breaks my heart to say it. But that’s the truth. The tragedy of eternal youth is not that you become trapped in an unchanging world, it’s that you remain the same, while the rest of the world changes around you. You watch friends die. You watch the scenery change. And you return to the silent room where you began, alone with your genius. It happened to Lou Reed. It happened to Frank Black. And now, it seems, it’s happening to Stephen Malkmus.

Which is a compliment of sorts. Rock music is ephemeral at best and as sad as any of it might seem, there are 10,000 budding rock stars with strong jaws and doting girlfriends who would give absolutely anything to end up with a career in such company. In any case, Mr. Malkmus seems as oblivious to it as he always has been. It was after all, always just a joke to him.

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When you were with Pavement, so many of your songs were about disenchantment and boredom. But now that you’re a Jick or a soloist or whatever, it seems like you’re bored with all that boredom.

Well, yeah. I think it’s kinda bad for a guy in his thirties to be complaining about that stuff. You’ve gotta be a man a little bit. I guess you could still do a Leonard Cohen ennui thing. But you can’t go back to that well over and over. I mean, the last record was different from this one. On this one, I was trying to be a bit darker, less clever.

This one’s a lot more “classic rock.” With the last one, it was like you just wanted to tell a group of stories about some people.

Yeah, it was more fun in a way. Like the Kinks or something—songs that were ironic but telling in a way. Clever. This one’s not as clever. I was trying not to be too clever. I didn’t want to sing as much in general. It seems like the last one was really wordy. I just think I’m an OK singer. You’re kind of bored with your voice and you can’t really do anything about it. But voice lessons can only get you so far, Courtney Love.

Huh?

Never mind.

Did you ever want to be a guitarist in a classic rock band? You know, like that scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack is listing his all-time top five dream jobs, if time, money, or history didn’t matter. Was it ever “Guitarist, Led Zeppelin, 1976”?

Maybe not them, but like the Faces or something. To be Ronnie Wood. Because I feel I’m kind of a nerd, for want of a better term. I’m more on the geeky side. It’s not like I’m a poet playing rock, but like the Faces or some of these bands. They really get it. They really know how to cook. They know what rock and roll is about. It sounds corny. It’d be fun to be in a band like that. Where you have Rod Stewart and you could be the guitarist and play some riffs. And everyone was loose and drank too much. That’d be great. I mean, I loved Led Zeppelin’s albums and all, but I’d rather be a faceless Face.

You’ve been quoted as saying that the Jicks is Pavement with a new rhythm section, which may be true from a songwriting standpoint. But Pavement was as much about the presentation of these five different guys doing five different things at once, as it was about songwriting. The Jicks are much more focused, which is not a term anyone would have ever used to describe Pavement.

I don’t know if we’re more focused. I guess we are. We sound more like a band now. The first album we did, I threw together a backing band in the Drag City [Records] fashion of Smog or Will Oldham—just getting some local people to play on the record. We got along really well. We rehearse in my basement. We live in the same town. It’s more like a band than Pavement ever was. You have to be a really obsessive person to be a solo guy and call all the shots. It’s not made for me. I like it to be more of a group sound and not so much somebody twisting my balls at every moment.

What exactly is a Jick?

A Jick is a name we made up when we were really late in the studio during the first album and we didn’t have a name for the band. So we were calling each other names, just making up names to call people like, “bruster.” Just meaningless names that come out of your head when you’re tired. And I called John a Jick or something. I think I meant it to be like a “jerk” and a “prick” mixed together. Like, “You’re such a jick.”

Where do the Jicks fit in the scene up there in Portland? What’s it like?

I think a lot of bands feel like there is no scene. They don’t feel a part of anything there. Most people don’t feel part of something, unless you’re a scene maker. There’s Glass Candy. They’re good. Sleater-Kinney and Quasi and that whole scene. Everclear. Plus, there’s lots of small bands. The Shins are there now. They’re pretty successful. There’s No-Wave stuff. The Planet The. It’s all pretty obscure at this point. There’s lots of young people and tons of places to play. When we play there, I don’t really know where we fit in either. Maybe we’re a bit older than most people.

Well, the Dandy Warhols…

Yeah, they’re old. I’ll out them. They’re probably old too. We go out and see bands all the time. I don’t know who’s going to come when we play.

I'm sure you’ve been asked a hundred times who your influences are and all that, but I’m sort of more curious who you think maybe you’ve influenced?

Us? That’s really hard to say. Modest Mouse, I guess. I saw Isaac [Brock], their lead singer, and he said, you know, “Thanks for having Pavement. You made my life brighter.” And maybe it’s just that general school of people five or six years younger than me, playing that kind of music. Let’s see, who else have we influenced? Coldplay, Radiohead, Oasis—just kidding. Blur, for that album that “Song #2” was on. And that song by Coldplay. So, maybe some of those collegiate English guys.

Do you ever hear a song on the radio and think, “Hey, that sounds like me”?

Not really, just that song “Yellow” by Coldplay.

What do you think the typical Jicks fan looks like?

I don’t know. It’s hard to say. It’s different in different places. In New York City, it’s going to be Pavement fans, and hopefully some young people. There’s going to be some people who look like me.

What do they say to you when they meet you?

“Can you sign this?”

Do you get a lot of hero-worship and all that? I mean, a lot of people see you as some sort of god.

Not really. Generally, it’s really nice stuff. You know, like, “You’ve been an inspiration. Thanks.” Generally it’s more Pavement than Jicks. Nobody comes up and says, “You know, that first Jicks record changed my life.” Normally, it’s like a 31-year-old guy, who at 24, had a Pavement epiphany. It’s always good to hear.

Through the years, you’ve definitely had sort of a rabid, cult following—Web sites and people who wrote songs about you, that sort of thing. What do you think you symbolize to them? I mean, you can imagine Leo DiCaprio running through the streets of Tokyo being chased by hoards of frantic young girls. But with you, it’s like you’re surmised through the corner of the eye of some awkward guy in a record store like, “Dude, that’s Stephen Malkmus.”

We were fans of cultish bands growing up. Even R.E.M. were a cultish band and I liked them. In the end, it’s all just in the cover art or something. And we made it that way on purpose, because we liked that kind of music.

Well, let me give you an example. I’ve done this exercise with friends where we have to choose one song that expresses who we are to the world. No other explanation besides the song itself. No liner notes. Just this one song and somebody would have to know who you were once they heard it. So the song I chose was “Shady Lane” from Pavement’s Brighten the Corners. And I remember getting in this long discussion with my girlfriend about it. And she’s like, “What is it with this song?” And I’m like, “You have to understand, it’s about unlikely protagonists and these odd corners of the world where life happens, and the song is this half-slung joke on life—like we’re all going to die anyway.” But then, if you look at those ideas, that’s Kafka and that’s Camus who, if alive today, might say something like you did in that song: “You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life.” So, I guess, what I’m asking—I’m sure you get this sort of analysis a lot—is this just projection on my part, or is there something to this?

Ummmm…no, there’s something to that. But it’s not all worked out. It comes from somewhere. I don’t know where. Probably reading stuff like that and having those same influences that you relate to. But then also, when making lyrics and stuff, I look it over once or twice. I don’t think about it too much. I don’t get to how deep it is, or how meaningful. I’m just like, “That’s my personality on there.” And it comes across, what I think will be cool for a song.

Just because you aren’t aware of it, does that make it any more or less true? I mean, I know you don’t sit down and try to work these themes of existentialism or post-modernism into a song about an over-friendly concierge…

That makes sense. That’s good, because it’s just like modern art that’s too didactic, or explains too much, or doesn’t leave the listener with too much work to do. That’s just boring. I mean, there’s some flat-out political art that’s in your face, but I think it’s up to you to do a little work. I don’t want it to be too clear. I don’t want to know. I want something sort of magical to happen when I’m making lyrics. I don’t ever want it to be all perfect or all tidy, because then you’re dealing with somebody who’s really anal.

I remember going to a show at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Bob Nastanovich, who was tour managing for you, got up to sing during “Jennifer and the Ess-Dog” and the crowd went fucking ballistic. You got the sense that the audience was ultimately like, “Alright Stephen, we’re here for you. We like the songs. We’ll indulge you for a while.” But what they really wanted was Pavement. Do you ever resent that?

I don’t really resent it. I wouldn’t expect them not to have that feeling. I’ve been at Pavement shows that were really good—especially in San Francisco—and, you know, I was there, man. People were going crazy for “Gold Sounds” and songs like that. The place was rocking. There were good moments. But then, I’ve also seen some videos of those Pavement shows and they were really boring. And I was there then too. It wasn’t always rosy for Pavement. So, I could see how it would be difficult to want to rediscover something that’s shifted the paradigm slightly, but not that much. Like, “It’s the same voice, but it doesn’t sound like Pavement. I might as well listen to Pavement. And anyway, I like this new fucking band Modest Mouse.” That’s probably going to happen. It’s inevitable. In a concert, I guess I would feel bad about that. I mean, I would feel bad for the other Jicks. I think at the start, it was a bigger issue for everybody in the band. They were just nervous that people wouldn’t accept them.

I don’t think that’s the issue. I think the issue is that if you had to write some huge dusty volume--some 2,000 page O.E.D.-style book called “The History of Rock and Roll”--that there would have to be at least a few pages devoted to the importance of Pavement.

Yeah, we’re going to make it somewhere. David Berman from the Silver Jews, he’s like, “You’ll be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame someday. From the 90s, you’ll make it in like 30 or 40 years, because there weren’t that many good bands in the 90s. You’re going to make it.” It’s never even crossed my mind, but I don’t think he was joking.

I think he’s right actually. You’re consistently on that list of “Most Influential Songwriters of the Last 20 Years” or whatever…

Really? Above Frank Black?

Uh, maybe on par with Frank Black. I’m wondering, if there was a book like that—a big dusty, overwrought “History of Rock and Roll”—what do you think the section about you would say?

It would be pretty irritating probably, because those things can never be just right. Like, it’s your projection of how cool or nuanced you think you are, or whatever. When it gets in those books, it’s always really simplistic like “they were ironic,” or “smarty-pants,” or “they were sloppy and lo-fi.” It’s always these things that make you cringe, because in the end, it’s just how Time magazine would write about you. In that book, it won’t be good.