more on the jicks: a bit of a rant

i'm at a loss here. real confusion over stephen malkmus and whatnot. it seems that, for the most part, people either like pavement or they like sm+jicks; they seem unable to like both bodies of work.

sm gets a lot of hate. i can only assume it is because people are still mourning the death of pavement and cannot understand that if pavement had continued, with the artistic differences between malkmus and spiral stairs, that the band probably would have gone to shit and turned into one of those bands that used to be good and whose albums you only buy out of loyalty, but end up sitting on shelves never listened to because they are crap. on the flip side, pavement gets hate from people who listen to the jicks but could never get into the 'ment.

aye!

i stand in both camps. i like 'em both. lots. and lots and lots, even. pavement is my all-time favorite band. ever. ever. i've loved them since 1994 when i stole my brother's copy of crooked rain, crooked rain (which, incidentally, i still have. sorry drew!)(i did make it up to him by buying him the reissue of CRCR upon its release last october). i mourned the death of pavement something badly upon hearing news of their break-up; or, rather, hearing rumors and eventually noting that pavement ceased to exist as a band. i was living in a dorm at the time, and even wrote an epitaph on my marker board for the band. oh so very sad...

malkmus was the primary reason i loved that band. his lyrics are clever, his melodies are catchy, and he's awfully cute. i could do without spiral stairs (and have never, for this reason, been too huge of a fan of "preston school of industry") and when i heard that malkmus was putting out a new album with a band called the jicks (sm's definition, according to stephenmalkmus.com bios and thus probably not entirely true since i'm never sure what to believe with him, "J from Jagger plus Mick minus M"), i was delighted. i downloaded it as soon as possible and listened to it and liked it. didn't love it. his jicks work will never hold for me the charms of those first three pavement albums, but, overall, it was good. and definitely better than terror twilight, which, as a last album, is a bit of a letdown, though there are some amazing songs on there.

pig lib, too, gets a lot of hate, which i also do not understand. malkmus is progressing as an artist and shouldn't his sound progress, too? face the truth is yet another step in new directions and i love it. i don't understand why people are so quick to dismiss the jicks albums as being "sub-par" just as i don't understand people who like the jicks and dismiss pavement as being too weird or something.

artists change.
sounds change.
people change.

is it so odd to think that after, what, fifteen years or whatever, recording albums, that possibly, stephen malkmus does not want to sound the same? i don't think so. in fact, i'd hate it if a jicks album sounded exactly like wowee zowee, because that, to me, would signal that malkmus was no longer growing as a musician and was afraid of branching out to unexplored territory. this is not to say that every single album he puts out i am automatically going to love, but i will have way more respect for him for trying new things (think bob dylan - not all his albums are gems now, are they?) than i would were he to regress to his pavement days. (okay, i'm actually lying a little bit here, since i probably would love one more "wowee zowee" type album, but if he KEPT doing that and all his albums started to sound like that, then i'd be pissed.)

this is a bit ranty. nonsensical. typical me type rant on the music industry at large, so apologies if it is not as coherent as a real music writer's opinions would be. but still, overall, malkmus is just movin' on, doing his thing, and staying true to himself, and i completely and totally respect that.

plus, i really love face the truth. it's great.


and, my friends, that is all she wrote.
for now....