Artist

Stephen Malkmus

Santa Monica, United States · b. 1966

Stephen Malkmus is a musician from Santa Monica, United States, active since 1966. Their discography on Gatefold includes 7 records. They also recorded with Pavement, Silver Jews, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and The Hard Quartet.

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Albums tracked

529

In collections

1966

Since

5 projects · 529 records in Gatefold collections

Biography

Stephen Malkmus spent the nineties hiding behind a wall of hiss and ironic detachment. When Pavement collapsed under the weight of their own mythology, he didn't try to build another monument. He went to a basement in Portland with a bunch of cheap drum machines and tracked the self-titled debut in 2001. That record was supposed to be a solo electronic experiment, but Matador got nervous and convinced him to form a band. The Jicks were born out of a corporate safety net, yet they became the longest-running vehicle of his career. He is the patron saint of the slacker guitar solo, but the laziness was always a front. The guy is a technical snob who hides his virtuosic classic rock tendencies under a coat of dust and weird tunings. When he got bored of the indie rock cycle, he started taking weird detours like covering Can's entire Ege Bamyasi album live in Cologne or recording German kraut-pop in his attic. He is the only guy who can sound completely checked out while playing a guitar line that would make Richard Thompson sweat.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Stephen Malkmus

The pivots — what forced Stephen Malkmus to reinvent.

The Post-Pavement Rebound
The transition from Pavement to the Jicks was supposed to be a solo bedroom pop experiment, but Malkmus ended up hiring local Portland players like Joanna Bolme to salvage the tunes for the road. The 2001 self-titled debut and Pig Lib in 2003 traded the scrap-metal noise of his old band for clean, interlocking prog-rock jams. You can hear him rediscovering the joy of clean guitar tones and Grateful Dead-style improvisation without having to play the indie spokesperson. It saved him from becoming a nineties museum piece.
The Beck Intervention
By 2011, the Jicks were spinning their wheels in comfortable mid-tempo indie rock, so Malkmus brought in Beck Hansen to produce Mirror Traffic. Beck forced the band to cut the endless jam sessions and focus on tight, three-minute pop songs with dry, radio-ready drum sounds. Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney played her final drum tracks with the band here, hitting with a clinical precision that anchored Malkmus's loosest vocals in years. The result was their most focused record since the debut, proving he could still write a hook when someone kept him on a leash.
The Attic Synthesis
After moving to Berlin and getting obsessed with European electronic music, Malkmus bypassed his band entirely to record Groove Denied in 2019. Armed with vintage synthesizers, a drum machine, and a copy of Ableton, he made a weird synth-pop record that horrified Matador so much they delayed its release for a year. You can hear the isolation in the tracks, which sound like a middle-aged dad playing around with techno loops in a freezing cold attic. It broke his creative logjam, leading directly to the acoustic, 12-string psych-folk of Traditional Techniques a year later.

Influences

The Fall — Malkmus has openly admitted to stealing his early vocal delivery directly from Mark E. Smith, a debt paid back when Pavement covered the band's 'The Classical'. You hear it in the dry, spoken-word rants and the repetitive, two-chord structures of early solo tracks like 'Jo Jo's Jacket'.
Groundhogs — Malkmus frequently championed Tony McPhee's underappreciated British blues-prog trio in early aughts interviews, even covering them with his side project The Crust Brothers. The frantic, highly technical blues-metal soloing on 'Dragonfly Pie' is a direct lift of McPhee's heavy seventies style.
Can — The obsession is documented by Malkmus performing the entirety of their 1972 album Ege Bamyasi live with Cologne band Von Spar in 2012. The repetitive, hypnotic krautrock groove on '1% of One' is a direct translation of Jaki Liebezeit's metronomic drumming.
The Grateful Dead — Malkmus and the Jicks played a series of shows covering Jerry Garcia solo material and have routinely jammed out 'China Cat Sunflower' during soundchecks. You hear the influence in the loose, clean, dual-guitar soloing on 'Real Emotional Trash'.
Faust — Malkmus has cited the German avant-garde band as a primary influence on his collage-style editing process in the studio. The jarring tape cuts and electronic noise bursts on 'Face the Truth' mimic the structural disruptions found on Faust IV.