We’ve talked about one of our favourites from Pavement, so we’ll talk about one of our favourites from Malkmus.
After the big-pop rollercoaster of his eponymous debut - released just a couple of years after Pavement's last studio set, Terror Twilight - Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks took the deliciously odd magic of the Stephen Malkmus album and extended it out into free-flowing exploratory jams on 2003’s Pig Lib.
The Jicks - Joanna Bolme and John Moen, with the additional inclusion of Mike Clark - had been the band for Malkmus’ debut, which he in fact even intended it to be credited to The Jicks, but on the second studio album, Pig Lib, they enabled the songs much more space, stretching out musically often into darker areas. Although they had been recording and touring for a few years, the album really marked the point where they moved away from a strictly solo vision and incorporated more collaboration. One of the album's greatest strengths is the interplay between the players, absolutely a defining moment of Malkmus’s post-Pavement output.
Pig Lib is a tricky one to succinctly describe, as none of the songs really hold that much similarity to one another, although they do all sit together fantastically. Lyrically it is often abstract, and it feels like many of the more witty and direct lines might well be layers-deep in-jokes, but there are so many brilliantly askew lines it’s an easy one to get stuck in your ear. Many of the songs utilise off-kilter timekeeping, from pastoral weirdness to fuzzed-out workouts. The lead guitar is also the adventurous central spirit of the album, not only leading the songs, but also turning them entirely on their head mid-way through. Album opener, Water and a Seat, is a knotty and buoyant lick that you wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out was some century-old traditional (I don’t think it is), but the way it slowly rumbles into a pedal-crunched raga is wild. Likewise, (Do Not Feed The) Oyster is the album’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, from hypnotic to hallucinogenic and back. The album’s penultimate (ten-minute) cut, 1% Of One is a genuine opus, full of Marquee Moon decadence. The kind of guitar heroics that blows your mind and warrants an immediate rewind.
With Pavement seemingly becoming more and more adored, studied and evangelised as the years roll by, Stephen Malkmus could really have put out anything in 2003 and enjoyed audiences at well-received venues and a ready-made fanbase, but Pig Lib felt like a bold, focused and reinvigorated step away from his recent glories, and instead set on embracing the creative unknown. Technically spectacular, but deliberately unpolished. Accessible, but full of complex structures like sleights of hand. The perfect balance of sweet balladry and euphoric payoffs at the end of groove-laden trips.
If we do ever do an all time top ten, this one will be in there somewhere. It is quite magnificent and a proper Sunday Classic.
