Face The Truth, Don’t Believe The Truth? What is it with bands and their less than courteous request to consider some clear and inalienable certainty at the moment? First Oasis, now Stephen Malkmus. Next thing we know we’ll have both Whigfield and the Cheeky Girls instruct us to ‘Regard With No Small Degree of Mortal Dread The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. In a cheeky styleé of course, and with enough bottom cleavage to conceal the entire population of a small Peruvian village. And why, when faced with such a hectoring appeal to ditch the deal and cut the crap do journalists like those of the Village Voice continue to confound that same truth with verbosity and obscurity?
‘the man has an uncanny ability to transliterate the sounds only record collectors can hear…’
Is Malkmus stealing? Is that what they’re trying to say? Who knows. Who cares, quite frankly. One thing is certain, three albums in and Stephen Malkmus has finally found the form he last had in his slippery grasp with Pavement and Silver Jews. True, there are influences aplenty, but that kind of residual energy is what makes music so entertaining. Not just to us, but to the artist too, surely. But as regards transliterating the sounds only record collectors can hear – hell, I don’t know. If you ask me, ‘Pencil Rot’ sounds a little like Beck, ‘It Kills’ sounds a little like John Squire, Cockney Rebel and Hunky Dory period Bowie, ‘I’ve Hardly’ – Tom Waits, ‘Mama’ – Here Come The Warm Jets period Eno and ‘Kindling For The Master’ – Stereo MCs and Kermit The Frog. You see, if you look hard enough, you can find just about anything in it. That’s the TRUTH. The TRUTH is whatever you make it and for me it’s assembled here in one perfectly potted musical history of pop.
Delight in the sexual revolution and glam-tidings of ‘Baby C’ Mon’, bask in the mellow simplicity of ‘Freeze The Saints’ and ‘Light Cloud Loud’ and the delightful slacker-wisdom of ‘Post Paint Baby’. The object of the apostrophe and the reality check on this occasion is one to simply enjoy.