The Exoticism Of Australia And Why The Jicks Are "Still Into It"

These days, Stephen Malkmus is pretty much considered an elder statesman of the global indie rock community, and with good reason. He’s been at the vanguard of the movement for 25 years now, first out front of seminal outfit Pavement, who served between 1989 and 1999 – releasing five acclaimed albums – and then following their split in his solo guise, which usually transpires in the form of his band Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks.

It’s somehow strange to contemplate that this solo enterprise has not only been around for significantly longer than his alma mater, but has now also been more prolific – The Jicks record that came out at the start of 2014, Wigout At Jagbags, being Malkmus’ sixth long-player of the post-Pavement phase. It’s a substantial body of work in both quality and quantity, but one which still exists to a degree in the massive shadow left behind by Pavement at the end of the ‘90s.

Yet the lackadaisical Malkmus seems to not care a jot about such trivialities, sagely focusing on the things that he can actually control and leaving the rest of the stuff – nebulous concepts like legacies and what have you – to sort itself out. The Jicks have been keeping a relatively low profile of late, and he’s been happily chilling out in his adopted Portland – where he returned to live recently after a couple of years ensconced in Berlin – and just enjoying whatever travails life throws his way.

“I guess you could call it [downtime],” he smiles. “The holiday season passed – it came and went – and there’s been a lot of birthdays, just real-life stuff. I went to visit my parents and went skiing. Not too much. There’s been some gigs and music stuff here in town – lightweight stuff – but I guess we haven’t been playing much in the last few months. Now and then, some little gigs here and there.”

Which seems like a well-earned break, given that The Jicks toured pretty extensively throughout 2014 in support of the new record.

“Yeah we did, we went pretty much everywhere,” Malkmus continues. “Not Australia and not Asia, but we covered a lot of ground. We hadn’t played the east coast much in the last few years so we hit that pretty hard, and some European stuff. That was good – we went to Sweden and Scandinavia last October, that was pretty fun.”

If it’s good and everything’s lined up then it doesn’t really matter what we’re playing.

Was it fun touring the new material from Wigout At Jagbags?

“Yeah, it was fine,” the singer chuckles. “It was good I think – I’m looking back and it all kind of blurs, I can’t even remember what the album was like. It’s kinda like at the start it’s fun because you’re doing the new stuff and you’re kinda psyched, then as it goes on if you’re on a bit of a haul it becomes just music – it’s not even about that anymore. It becomes more about the shows, which is good because you know the songs more and you can kind of play around with them, and it’s more about just the venue or the people and not even the music, you know what I mean? It’s ‘Is the band in a good mood?’ and ‘Does it sound good in here?’, and if that’s the case then it’s probably going to be a good show. And if it’s good and everything’s lined up then it doesn’t really matter what we’re playing.

“That’s the point where I’m at now – I don’t always hear all the new records and stuff but I’ll go and see the new bands, so even though I don’t hear everything if I go see ‘em and they’re ‘on’ you can tell. It’s, like, ‘These guys are good and they’re on!’ They can be playing their first album at half-speed or something and I’ll be into it. That’s kinda where it’s at, if it’s life-affirming sounding. And we don’t always sound like that – sometimes we’re burned out or someone has a cold or I don’t know – but the show must go on.”

There must be a certain bond in The Jicks camp these days, given that they’ve been an entity now for so long; there have been a few line-up changes over the journey, but the band’s core – bassist Joanna Bolme and guitarist/keyboardist Mike Clarke – have been with Malkmus pretty much from the get-go.

“They’re solid, and we have a band dynamic and a sound which is ‘us’ now, which is kinda cool. That’s what you want if you’re playing rock’n’roll still at this point in time – you want to have some kind of chemistry, and I’m grateful to have them and they’re dedicated to the cause, you know? We’ve all given our 30s and part of our 40s to this band, and we’re still into it, so it’s cool.

“The level that we play at, it has to be [fun] – it’s not like going to Kuwait on a furlough: ‘I’m going to make a lot of money but it sucks here – there’s no alcohol or chicks but I’m making a lot of money and I can’t wait to get home and spend it all’,” he laughs. “It’s not like that. We’re in the moment and on that level we’re doing what we love to do. People who stick around in bands like we do, it has to be that you’re really into it because it’s a fair amount of work and it’s not always glamorous unfortunately so you’d better be, like, ‘This is what I wanna do because I love it’ or whatever. It’s probably not as hard as being a chef or whatever, but it’s still hard.”

Even after more than two decades on the road, Malkmus still enjoys the itinerant life of the touring musician, partly because these days the schedule is a bit less demanding than it used to be but also because he feels he can’t afford to not enjoy that part of his vocation.

If you’re like The Rolling Stones or whatever, you don’t care because you just go in your limousine to each show and it doesn’t really matter.

“This way that we do it, we do work hard but it’s just every couple of years that if people are interested we just go out and we play our stuff – we have to do it that way so it’s like a vacation with benefits when we tour,” he explains. “Ostensibly when bands go to Australia it’s a long way, and while it’s a Western culture it’s a different environment and it’s a little different, so it’s kinda exotic. The amount of flying that you do and the amount of travel getting to each show means that you want to have some time so you can wander around the town or go to a restaurant that’s interesting and see stuff and meet some people, but there’s not always time for that, which is sometimes frustrating. Because at the level that we tour, you don’t want it be total work, given the amount of money that we make. It should be like fun and work.

"If you’re like The Rolling Stones or whatever, you don’t care because you just go in your limousine to each show and it doesn’t really matter, so we try to have fun. We can’t have as much fun as we’d like, we can’t go out to bars all night long – not that that’s necessarily fun, but I used to think that was fun. I can’t do that anymore.”

But he still gets to have adventures and see the world playing music with his friends, which even for someone who’s achieved so much over the years is still a pretty great way to get by. On this current Australasian jaunt, The Jicks are playing two shows in Dunedin, the city at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island, which is not only one of the most far-flung places on the planet to play but also the place that back in the day spawned so much music which proved so influential on bands like Pavement and their ilk.

“Yeah, that’s great – I haven’t been there in a really long time,” Malkmus enthuses. “Pavement went there once in like 1991, and I remember because there was this band called The 3Ds that we were playing with and we were big fans of theirs, and we were kind of excited to go there, and then we played and we were alright – we were a little shoddy – but some of the guys from this band The Dead C were there, and the drummer was like, ‘You guys are shit! I can’t believe it – you’re shit!’ And we kinda were, but you know – usually after the show you don’t say that when you’re back drinking our beers or whatever. But they didn’t care – he called a spade a spade.”

Obviously The Clean were another Dunedin band who played a big role in shaping the ‘90s indie movement, and Malkmus is pleased to discover that at least one of the Kilgour brothers still calls the city home.

“That’s cool [that David Kilgour still lives in Dunedin],” he offers. “I’ve seen Hamish before in New York, when he lived there. He was in this yoga place called Jivamukti – it’s like a hipster yoga place – and I had a free pass to go there, and then he was right by me. He’s taking care of himself. Either that or he was perving out on the girls that were there, I don’t know – yoga seems to be a mix of that, and you can never know why the guys are in there for sure.”

One of the shows on the Australian leg of The Jicks’ tour is the much-loved Golden Plains festival in rural Victoria, an experience that Malkmus already went through once during the Pavement reformation tour in 2010 when their set – and much of the weekend – was marred by particularly severe storms. Plus they nearly missed their slot anyway.

“Yeah, I remember that,” he smiles. “I remember being there and the storm, and one of the guys in Pavement’s amp didn’t work. Also we almost got lost somewhere on the way there, which was pretty ridiculous. This hipster girl was driving – not in a bad way, but she was kinda like deigning to take us to this uncool thing in her mind – but she was driving and just got way off track, she drove us so far off that we eventually arrived just before the show, it was kinda funny. We were, like, ‘We’ll make it, we’ll make it’, and then all of a sudden it was, like, ‘We better get there. We’re not going to make it!’ But it’s a great festival, I’m psyched.”

What about looking forwards, has Malkmus had much chance to work on new material since Wigout… hit the shelves?

I wouldn’t mind just singing, but I know that unfortunately sometimes you can fall in love with the sound of your own voice.

“Yeah, I’m totally ready to go on that side of the coin – I just need to get at it,” he tells. “I might start before we come there, I’m not sure. But I’m ready – I’m gonna fuck things up, change things up, it’s gonna be good. I’ve got more songs that I wrote on piano, and some different kinda sounds for some of the songs. We can’t really play ‘em live yet, but we can record ‘em and then figure out to do after that. Because I’m a basic piano player, but I figured that something could be interesting to check out. I’ve been playing a little bit more drums too, so there might be a little more of that coming on, which has its own sloppy charm. We’ll have to see what happens with that.”

And if you think that the idea of Malkmus playing instruments other than guitar seems foreign, in a recent interview he even espoused that he’d love to give up playing instruments onstage altogether and let his inner frontman come to the fore.

“Yeah man, at least live,” he laughs. “In the live environment I wouldn’t mind just singing, but I know that unfortunately sometimes you can fall in love with the sound of your own voice even as bad as it is. Whenever I imply that I might do that, everyone in the band is like, ‘No, you have to play guitar – you’re actually good at that so you’ve got to stay with that!’ So sadly I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. I trust those guys.”