During his 1990s heyday, former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus probably didn’t want to be levied with the ‘voice of a generation’ platitudes or ‘alt rock godfather’ designations that nerds like me have been spouting since Slanted and Enchanted. Deliberate or otherwise, Malkmus straddled the line between slacker apathy and literary hipness with more detached elegance than any of his peers, establishing a brand of ‘cool’ that continues to be relevant twenty-odd years down the line. And yet, while his inimitable attitude survived the turn of the century, Pavement did not; after they broke up in 1999, Malkmus quickly formed the Jicks. In the fourteen years since, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks have released more albums than their forebears, including their latest, 2014’s Wig Out at Jagbags.
To me, Malkmus’s efforts with the Jicks have always scanned as a prolonged attempt to quietly escape from Pavement’s shadow. Consequently, their songs have always seemed deliberately less meaningful. Although, in Pavement’s canon, truly transcendent moments were few and far between, every so often a song like “Jam Kids” would come by and triumphantly rouse you from your apathetic daze, calling you to a higher purpose than getting stoned in a basement with your friends, or perhaps illuminating the truth within such a mundane act. This was the genius of Pavement; they knew exactly how to cloak deeper meaning, and precisely when to unveil it.
Like previous Jicks albums, Wig Out at Jagbags rejects these moments. At forty-seven, Malkmus is in no place to be leading cultural movements, even in a symbolic or spiritual sense. But the onset of middle age does seem to have brought about a new, reflective side to the Jicks’ frontman, a tentative nostalgia that separates Jagbags from any of Malkmus’s prior efforts. Lead single “Lariat,” released at the tail end of last year, is perfectly exemplary of his new lyrical scope—amidst signature Malkmus-isms about “candy coats” and “Latin kisses,” he namedrops Tennyson, Mudhoney, and Sun City Girls’ 1990 LP Torch of the Mystics before closing with a rousing, one-off chorus: “We grew up listening to the music from the best decade ever.”
“Lariat” is a terrific song because through its reflective lens, it displays a side of Stephen Malkmus that the auteur of hipsterdom has never really let his listeners see before: a vulnerable, sincere, endearingly corny side. Elsewhere on Jagbags, the Jicks both double down on “Lariat’s” almost saccharine sweetness and also interpolate it into self-parody, as on the sub-2-minute pop punk gem “Rumble at the Rainbo.” Opening with appropriately gritty power chords and hilariously misplaced strings, Malkmus cheerily invites the listener to “come and join us in this punk rock tune / come slam-dancing with some ancient dudes.” It’s the record’s most humorously sardonic moment, but the chorus injects a tough dose of reality: “Come tonight you’ll see, no one here has changed and no one ever will.”
It’s clear from Wig Out at Jagbags that Malkmus understands his current position in the indie rock zeitgeist, but with the possible exception of Pavement’s brief reunion tour in 2010, Malkmus has never truly embraced his nearly unrivaled reputation as a progenitor of modern indie music. On Jagbags, Malkmus and his bandmates wrestle with this more overtly than on the Jicks’ other albums, but also come to peace with it through sincerity and reflection. From the bitter lyrical kiss-offs of “Cinnamon and Lesbians” to the touching trumpet solo on “J Smoov,” there is both tension and tenderness here, balanced with the grace and poise that only a master craftsman such as Malkmus could pull off.
Wig Out at Jagbags is out now via Matador.
