Wig Out at Jagbags – Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
It is unsettlingly easy to make a case that, popularity be
damned, Pavement belong prominently in any discussion of the five best bands in
the history of American rock music.
Unsettling because 1) 99% of randomly-polled folks are going to have no
idea who Pavement were, nor ever heard a note of their music, and 2) of that
99%, probably way more than half would make a funny face and reach for the Off
button if they spent 15 minutes listening to the band’s songs.
Songs from both the original band and the subsequent solo
career of erstwhile head honcho Stephen Malkmus have been frequently jarring,
or erratically wandered over any reasonably-drawn border of indulgence. Lyrics have regularly planted flags atop
mountains of snarky non sequitur. It is
therefore arch cliché for music critics everywhere to genuflect toward the
nidus from which reasonable ears recoil.
But so be it. For
Pavement and Malkmus have built careers and legacies atop, or straddling, an
improbable nexus of goals and realities.
At the intersection of melody, and melody-spurning intellectualism; at
the intersection of slacker chic and career-minded industriousness; at the
intersection of virtuosity and perfection-skewering authenticity: it is a good thing Malkmus is a lanky guy,
because the balance required to keep pulling this off must be staggering.
Arriving as a shock to absolutely no one, leadoff track of
latest album Wig Out at Jagbags—credited
to Malkmus and the Jicks—is titled “Planetary Motion” and notably lacks the
earworm tendencies of a typical album intro.
The song disguises any tendency toward bubblegum pleasantry behind a
stuttering beat and vocal—an effect, coincidentally, which feels completely
removed from that of a smooth orbit through space. There are a few choruses that flirt with
something sweeter, but the track really doesn’t hit its stride until the
halfway point, when a feedback-buttressed solo pushes glowing to the fore. And lest it all end in shiny happy notes, it
is back to the jarring verse and syrupy chorus for a final revolution.
An overarching theme of Wig
Out is that of band, or front man, in thoughtful retrospective repose. There is quite a bit of layered referencing
to: a fun career in Rock, or a career
forsaking or failing the better angels of Rock, or the foreshadowed end of a
career in Rock. As such, Wig Out is kind of an old man’s album, a
work from the rocker’s rocker. Which is
not necessarily a criticism. To wit,
from second track “The Janitor Revealed:”
We were put on this world to shine:
Destined for greatness by design;
The mental speed bumps you must
navigate;
The frigid shoulders interrupting
fate;
I often jump-cut to my future days:
Palpable wealth is on display.
One of the more unexpected realities of these first two
songs is how closely both at times veer to the mellow pleasant of
Phish-dom. Neither would have sounded
out of place on Rift. This represents virgin forest in the Malkmus
oeuvre: typically the jammy-er tracks on
his albums are more spastic than mellow or groovy. The chill herein, combined with the loft of
some of the lyrics, would seem to warn the listener that Wig Out is not only misnamed but unprecedented: these softened proceedings can tend to border
upon solemnity.
And then, improbably but inevitably, we arrive at glittering
third track “Lariat.” Although the
impulse toward retrospection persists (this time with a focus upon the 1980s,)
the melody is sing-song-y and delicious, the lyrics hopelessly goofy. “We lived on Tennyson and venison and the
Grateful Dead.” And later, another
lyric welded successfully, forever, into the same line of melody: “We grew up listening to the music of the best
decade ev-ah.” The song is
simultaneously pretty and shamelessly awkward—a bullseye in the Malkmus
wheelhouse.
That wheelhouse does not circumscribe all of the goings on,
on Wig Out at Jagbags. Existing most glaringly beyond said perimeter
is un-subtlely-named eighth track “Chartjunk.”
The rolling guitars and generously-applied brass of the first few bars
recall Phish-effect again, perhaps Hoist-era,
but those comparisons quickly wash away in a tide of, well, Billy Joel. The chorus melody may or may not contain
intentional nods to, or nicks from, “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”—and it is
spooky how similar Malkmus’ singing voice on this track sounds to mid-era
Joel. While the link is pretty much
unprecedented, it does fit snugly with the theme of corny remembrance. Hot funk, cool punk, even if it’s old junk…well,
you know.
From the red sportjacket of 1980s Billy Joel, Wig Out lurches stunningly and
successfully to what might be the best Ryan Adams song of the past five years,
in “Independence Street.” The guitar
here absolutely smokes with a boozy nighttime drawl; the song would need only
Adams’ wounded croon to take a place on every last Alt-Country Best-of playlist
of 2014. As it stands, even with Malkmus
singing it, “Independence Street” is still a triumph.
No one, as it turns out, is actually wigging out on Wig Out at Jagbags. The muse this time around seems erratic, for
sure, but the playing consistently settles in as both relaxed and pleasing to
the ear. A good thing, that: happy retrospection is ultimately not a good
fit with jagged guitar work or song structures rent completely asunder. Moreover, and reassuringly, the apparent
softening of approach does not indicate the departure of clever lyricism or
happily slipshod guitar work from the Malkmus paradigm.
Does any of this over-the-shoulder grinning amount to fault,
or wasted opportunity for greatness? Yes
and no. Wig Out at Jagbags, from title on down, doesn’t ever seem to reach
for the greatest heights of its mastermind’s inborn potential. Malkmus is a national treasure, now assuming
historical stature; Wigout is not,
really, and will not be in the future.
But it is lovely to listen to, and rewarding to listen to closely. It is a step in the journey unlike all of the
others, and therefore a rebuttal to one of the album’s rare remarks about the
present, and also one of its rare lamentations:
“No one here is changing, and no one ever will.”
Keepers 1-15
January 2014
