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It's the afternoon before the Radio 2 Folk Awards, and Stephen Malkmus is
hustling for a ticket. “It would be nice to have the option to see those
English folk dudes, but I fear the jet lag may kick in at any minute.”
Malkmus does indeed look tired - although he slept long and soundly at his
Bloomsbury hotel. “They made me feel like a rock star. I got upgraded to one
of the roof suites. So I could see the top of the British Museum.”
Over time, you come to understand that everything Malkmus says sounds as if it
might be sarcastic. But usually, it isn't. He really does want to see those
English folk dudes. I know because his love of British folk music is well
documented. He even headlined the Green Man Festival last year. And yes, it
was much nicer to see the British Museum than the electronics store directly
across the road.
That Malkmus's new album - his fourth since leaving Pavement - is called Real
Emotional Trash will do little to allay that sense that the 42-year-old
Californian is coy about revealing his innermost thoughts in song. Sixteen
years after his old band put out their benchmark debut, Slanted &
Enchanted, it seems increasingly surreal that Malkmus was - after Kurt
Cobain - the most fêted songwriter of the slacker explosion. Surreal,
because Malkmus ticked few of the relevant boxes.
His lyrics were (and are) far too elliptical to reveal much about the human
condition. He was (and is) far too conventionally handsome to get beaten up
by sport-loving, grunge-hating jocks. He was too preppy for drugs, and his
boarding-school education suggested that Pavement was something he might do
before settling down to something more sustainable.
In a sense, it proved to be true. With the five members scattered between the
East and West coasts of America, Pavement's famously ramshackle sound was
based in part on the fact that rehearsing was a logistical nightmare. In
2000, Malkmus met his wife and moved to Portland, Oregon - where the various
members of his current band, the Jicks, also reside.
Also within walking distance of the Malkmus homestead is the director Todd
Haynes, who enlisted the singer to put his voice to three Bob Dylan songs in
his film I'm Not There. Ageing grunge fans may continue to mourn Pavement's
passing, but Malkmus puts his present-day priorities into perspective.
“There would have been some things we wouldn't have touched back then,” he
says of the songs on Real Emotional Trash. “Like what? Well, playing a
ten-minute song. But things have changed. You learn to do stuff. Janet would
say: ‘I didn't put 15 years into doing this for no reason.'”
There is, indeed, a ten-minute song on Real Emotional Trash that echoes
Malkmus's jest that “we're putting the ‘prog' into ‘progress'”. Once upon a
time Malkmus's music was a receptacle for his twin obsessions with Pixies
and the Fall. These days, he will take inspiration from wherever he finds
it. Seven minutes in and three to go, the title track of the new album
accelerates from bleary-eyed indie-rock to a pedal-slamming offspring of the
Doors' Californian blues-rock swan song L.A. Woman. “That's cool with me,”
he says, “To me, that's one of the high points of the Doors' canon.”
His love of folk also extends to the proggier extremes - acid-drenched
bastardisations of the form by cultish 1970s combos such as Mellow Candle
and Trees. You can hear as much on what might be the highlight of the new
album, Baltimore. The intention, Malkmus says, was to do a waltz-time
“shanty” with the energy of The Who Live at Leeds, “although,” he adds,
“some people find that to be the most disappointing song on the record”.
Far from being upset though, he displays an amusing empathy for his
dissenters. “I can see that the waltz tempo would turn people off almost
immediately at this point in rock history.”
He understands it, but he's not the acceding type. Had he been, he would
surely have changed to accommodate the one recurring criticism levelled at
his lyrics, since day one - that they are guarded and elliptical, and
therefore lacking in open-hearted candour. Which bit of Stephen Malkmus are
his songs leaving out? “Um, good question,” he says, “But it's not an easily
answered one without some therapy.”
Has he been to therapy? “I've been with the wife, you know. Got dragged in
there.” He's so uncomfortable at this point, yet sheer nosiness prompts a
further enquiry. Why did his wife drag him into therapy? “Well, because. You
know? You just gotta go? It's like...” Finally he laughs. “I don't wanna get
into it. In America, most city people go to therapists.” Referring to his
wife, Jessica, he says: “She's from New York, you know? I just have that
cranky old, ‘Therapy industry! $200 an hour! To talk about myself!
Bah!'-type thing.”
His songs have always managed very well without it. What was so bad, in any
case, about screwing up all your feelings into a bitter little ball and
secreting it in the pit of your stomach until you die?
“Well, if my wife was here, she would tear you down right now. But all I can
do is agree.” Going back to the issue that brought us to this strange
exchange - what's going on inside the Malkmus mind? - the singer finally
ventures an answer. “It's not like there's some kind of massive con going on
. Or some idealised picture of what I would want to be. It's a pretty real
reflection of what I think is funny or worthwhile. Maybe the nuts and bolts
of my family life are not on there.”
He may yield to the demands of his wife, but grunge vets mourning the demise
of his old band may not be so fortunate. A Pavement reunion? Don't hold your
breath. “I would think they would reform,” he begins, “if I was from the
outside. Because, well, they didn't hate each other and they're all alive.
They're still kind of popular. The Pixies did it and made a lot of money. It
probably doesn't seem like a big deal. Maybe we should do it, but on the
other hand, it would take a band meeting and who's going to organise that?”
I point out that, as the group’s de facto, organizer and money man, guitarist
Scott Kannberg would be the man. “Yeah,” says a momentarily crumbling
Malkmus, “He probably would actually. In a second.” Finally, he remembers
exactly why he wouldn’t reform Pavement. It has taken him all of two
minutes. If he succumbed, he says, “it would be all about giving.” Though he
stops short of saying it, the point is that for those demanding it, it would
be about taking. “And I give a lot,” adds Malkmus. He’s talking about his
family now – in particular, the hours that go into helping look after his
two young children, three year-old Lottie and three-month old Sunday.
Indeed, since Sunday was born, he has barely picked up his guitar. Not only
does Sunday have colic, but she is also suffering from the debilitating (if
treatable) effects of Epstein-Barr Syndrome. “She had a sore throat and she
wasn’t gaining weight, so it’s been stressful. She wasn’t taking to the
breast. We had [to try and use] the pump. We feed her by the bottle.”
Those pumps can take forever, I say. “They’re frustrating. They’re slow and
weird. I don’t know how long you can go on [pumping] if you’re the mother.
We’re going to try and reintroduce the breast later on, when she’s feeling
better.” Malkmus suddenly checks himself. “Not to get too personal with the
Times people.”
Seeking to lighten the mood, I tell Malkmus about the time when, in
desperation to appease my week-old daughter, I attempted to “feed” her with
one of my hairy moobs. Even at a week old, she was repulsed. Far from
batting an eyelash, deja vu descends upon Malkmus when told the story. Faced
with a screaming Sunday, he has resorted to similar extremes.
“It doesn’t work,” he confirms. At the end, I think, you just have to breathe
and think of England. I just don’t there’s any other way, apart from maybe
with ear plugs.” In his voice, trace elements of what sounds like sarcasm
still remain. But Stephen Malkmus has just revealed that, in the battle to
do right by his family, he has even attempted to breastfeed. Not even his
harshest critics would doubt that sort of open-hearted candour.
Real Emotional Trash is released by Domino on March 3
