Stephen Malkmus told NPR’s All Songs Considered in a recent interview that the Steve Miller Band’s 1982 radio hit “Abracadabra” was a favorite song of his teenage years while growing up in Stockton, Calif. The show’s host, Bob Boilen, was incredulous, saying he couldn’t understand how Malkmus — the driving force behind 1990s Indie Rock stalwarts Pavement and a slew of slanted albums since then with and without his backing band The Jicks — could love such a schlocky song.
But Malkmus’ admission isn’t really a surprise to those in the know. The 52-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist has long wedded mainstream musical influences with more obscure outfits like The Swell Maps and The Groundhogs, a pair of long-gone art-smashed British bands. His latest album with the Jicks, Sparkle Hard, is yet another intriguing entry in the perpetually lanky frontman’s catalog. Counting his time in Pavement, it’s the 12th full-length in a career that has endured the heights of his first band’s opening salvos. Not known for overt social commentary, it’s something of a surprise to hear Malkmus delve into Black Lives Matter territory to tell the story of Freddie Gray — who died while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department in 2015 at age 25 — in a dirge-y, tempo-shifting song titled “Bike Lane.” Of course, he does it in his own idiosyncratic way by juxtaposing Gray’s demise with the repeated refrain, “Another beautiful bike lane,” and culminating in a beautifully winding, Psych-kissed guitar lead.
The very next song, “Middle America,” wouldn’t have been out of place on an early Pavement record — its mid-tempo guitar strumming, inscrutable lyrics and wistful mood recalls Slanted and Enchanted’s “Zurich Is Stained” — while the fuzzed-out rocker “Shiggy” seems conjured from the same bong that inspired Wowee Zowee, the most divisive of Pavement’s records.
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This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2018.