Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Wigout at Jagbags

Back in 2010, Stephen Malkmus was quoted in Spin magazine saying, “Music is about nostalgia. From the minute you hear a song for the second time, you’re reliving it.” 

The article is worth reading, if only as a primer to the release of Wigout at Jagbags, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks sixth album. 

The album is the band’s first since Malkmus completed his reunion tour with Pavement, the 90s indie-alternative legends. In it, Malkmus seems to be taking his own quote at face value. Many of lyrics sound like middle-aged introspection for the now 47-year-old Malkmus, no doubt sparked by his reunion with his former bandmates. It’s his standard fare: guitar-driven songs paired with ironic lyrics and a laissez-faire delivery. Lamentations on the silly and mundane in one’s life, work and music, coupled with a bit of good humor. And the album is good. It’s not great because I don’t know if he is the type of musician to ever want a great album. Not because he can’t, but because it’s not inherent in his style. Pavement was often characterized as “slacker-rock.” A bunch of Generation X poets. I don’t know about that, but I can hear the desire for nostalgia here. 

“Rumble at the Rainbo” begins starts with a sample of a man yelling, “This one’s for you, Granddad!” In what’s seems like a jape about his reunion tour, Malkmus asks the listener to “Come slam dancing with some ancient dudes,” while he sings of returning to his roots with “No new material / Just cowboy boots.” As if to nail the point home, later he adds “No one here’s changed and no one ever will.”

On their single “Lariat,” Malkmus recalls living on, “Tennyson and venison and The Grateful Dead,” before proclaiming, “We grew up listening to the music from the best decade ever/Talking about the A-D-D’s.” Most of Malkmus’s lyrics can be taken with a wink and a nod, but it’s not a stretch to hear an emo-like, heart-on-your-sleeve quiver in the lyric. They’ve been places. They’ve seen things. And they’re planting their flag. 

“Houston Hades” is a fun jaunt about “everyday people” needing love. Malkmus even throws in shoutouts to “slim shadies” along with “truck huggers” and “gun muggers.” It makes some sense, but I wouldn’t try to think about it too hard. The chorus is a series of “doo-doo-doos,” and it works. 

Get a beer brewer drunk enough and some will drop their pretension long enough to tell you how Budweiser, Miller, and the rest of the big-name bottlers are some of the best brewers on the planet. “Now, their product is shit,” they’ll say, “but they are consistent.” 

Consistency is hard. Doing one thing the same each time is difficult, especially when it comes to brewing. I would argue it’s the same with music — different people, different tastes, different times. Malkmus does that, consistently, and he’s way more original than Bud Light. Is Wig out at Jagbags worth your time? Absolutely. Will new listeners love it? Probably not. It pushes no boundaries and it sounds a little dated. Is it good? Yes.