The former Pavement frontman reflects on how his taste in music has changed over the years, and how he made his excellent new album Wig Out At Jagbags .
Leah Nash
Stephen Malkmus is best known as the leader and primary songwriter of Pavement, one of the most beloved indie rock bands of the '90s. But he's actually spent a longer portion of his career with The Jicks, the band he formed after he ostensibly went "solo" in 2000. Wig Out At Jagbags, out on January 8th, is one of his best records with that band: It's just as playful and melodic as ever, but full of musical ideas – brass arrangements, soulful falsetto – that have never turned up on a Malkmus record before. BuzzFeed talked to Malkmus just before the holidays to talk about the new record, becoming a better singer, and how he's changed – or has not changed – over the past two decades.
Is there anything that's important to you now that maybe wasn't so important to you in the early years of your career?
As things go there's some things that I leave more to others and I'm grateful to do it, and I think it's better for everything. Whereas before I might've thought either that by doing that I was making a compromise or I was lazy. But now my sense of collaborating with the people I do stuff with, I just enjoy it more and I need it more. I feel good about it or something, I don't know. That's one thing. I always like to share the wealth somewhat, but now I think it's just getting older you notice more what other people are doing, or notice their feelings, or why they're doing things.
What are some things on the new album that wouldn't have happened if you didn't delegate more to the other Jicks?
Overall, it's more like the vibe of the band, and the recording of it by Remko [Schouten], some of his sonic choices. I can't say specifically. A lot of stuff I did on my own too. Most of the strings – the fake strings, the horn ideas. Overdubs and stuff. I run it by people, but I did that mostly, me and Remko. But it still feels more like a group thing. The last record we did with Beck, and Beck was focused more on me, like producers tend to be. He just sees the rhythm section as a "get it done" type thing and blew them out of the way. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily. It's an L.A. thing.
What inspired you to bring the horns in?
I just kinda heard it in my head. The one called "J. Smoov," the demo I did some fake saxophone and it was more loungey sounding, more like Long Beach lite jazz. It didn't have singing yet, it was just instrumental. When we played it as a group, it became a little more muscular, a Southern, or sort of countrypolitan Southern feel to it. There was a space there, and I got these horn samples from the internet that were better than the other ones. Before it was just Roland ones and they're real cheesy, but these are actual horn players. It's free, it's called the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra and you can download it. Some guy in Iowa made it and everyone can use it. When we got the horns – the real horns – it just gave it a classy Nashville production feeling to it that I wanted. Some people would say it's more Memphis, more soul, but I was edging towards a slightly paler version of that.
Your voice goes a bit "soul" on that.
When I did the rough draft, I was actually singing through the microphone on my computer, but it has this sorta Al Green sound to it naturally, but digitally distorted and cheap-sounding. Then I thought, maybe I can do that if I actually got the right microphone, but in the end we didn't get the right microphone or EQ it, and I just sang it that way anyway. But that gave me the idea to play with a little bit more soul, but not into a minstrel show variety of that.
Do you feel more confident as a singer now?
In the studio I feel like I can do some stuff more, but it has to be my stuff. I do think I'm better. Over the years I've listened to some of my mistakes or things that were even more out of tune, and I'll sing that differently and bring that to a more reasonable place so the average person won't cringe. But the superior person who liked Pavement didn't mind [laughs], we all understood that was part of the charm and the secret language. But yeah, I think I'm getting better at it. I don't yell as much.
Is it a conscious thing, have you been pushing yourself towards it?
Not really, but I would say that I sort of like the idea of not playing the guitar and just singing now. It's an alpha move to just be the singer, instead of a beta, guitar and singing. I could be like Nick Cave and be like I don't need to dilly-dally with this coarse instrument, you know? And someone can just play my music for me. But there's the other side of just being instrumental and letting other people sing. The fact is when you get out on the road and you have to sing it's somewhat cathartic and it's good exercise and I don't think someone else could necessarily do it better for this music. But it is tiring and you have to remember words, you can lose your voice. You're expending a lot more of yourself than if you're just kicking back on the bass.
