Real Emotional Trash

We Say...

Review by Yancey Strickler

Stephen Malkmus is indie rock's North Star: he is constant; he is omnipresent; he is full of hot gases. Pacing the entire genre with clever verbosity, loosey-goosey melodies and so much style that it's wasted, Malk has been indie's mainstay ever since "Box Elder" bowled folks over in '89, all the while remaining detached and aloof from what he has wrought, popping in to occasionally chastise when warranted ("Range Life") or to uncork a real beaut when we least expected it ("Church on White"). No one can claim Malkmus — not Pavement, not Portland, not you.

Real Emotional Trash is Malkmus' fourth solo record and maybe his best. My Pavement fandom began to wane with Brighten the Corners (too goofy for me) and kaputted with Terror Twilight, and Malkmus' solo stuff hasn't done much to change my mind. But Real Emotional Trash is solid through and through (peep the title track, "Gardenia" and "Dragonfly Pie"), with one song in particular, "Out of Reaches," rivaling anything on the beloved Wowee Zowee, including its inspirational cousin "AT&T," which was as good a song as any Pavement ever wrote.

"Out of Reaches" is Malkmus melancholy, punches pulled. He's straight bumming, cracking on "gale-force intimacy" (great phrase!) while a sustained guitar note shadows his melody (shades of "Pueblo"). All of which is well and great, but it's the Billy Preston middle-eight that brings this thing home: fuzzed-out keys grooving along early-'70s coke-rock style to Malkmus' guitar wheelies. It's not terribly different from what he's done over the past decade, but, for me at least, it clicks in a way that his previous solo stuff has not.