Watch Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – “Sparkle Hard: The Movie”

This post has been half-written, only to be scrapped, at least twice now.  Both previous versions began with me explaining how much of a fan of Stephen Malkmus I am.  I state that I’m a lifer and that it goes beyond his incredibly influential work as principle songwriter and frontman behind indie rock royals, Pavement.  I argue that, 18 years into his tenure leading The Jicks, they are still criminally overlooked and underappreciated, while remaining one of the most consistent bands working today.  As a live act, they can pretty much go up against anybody.  I probably referenced how content Stephen seems in his role.  I probably hinted at the idea that, while Jicks concerts yield only a fraction of the audience that the 2010 Pavement reunion stops pulled in, the ratio of genuine fans in the room to those there on a nostalgia trip often translates into there being an energy in those smaller crowds that’s to the benefit of everybody.  I rambled on about a bunch of shit, most of which I will trash, while some might get peppered into a future piece that requires a little more heft, volume, and in-depth examination than a simple video post like this one, where it would just be wasted.  All that it was really intended to do, anyway, is make a fairly simple statement.  The Jicks have a brand new album titled Sparkle Hard coming out next week, and I’m pretty fucking hyped to finally hear it.

Little samples of the project have peeked out here and there, including a recent single featuring Kim Gordon.  The odd part is that these are, primarily, just popping up on Spotify, whereas their last album, Wig Out At Jagbags, followed their typical M.O. of rolling out the singles one at a time as music videos,.  We’ve seen clips, such as that of Stephen riding a horse, or standing atop a castle-like tower, to announce the release of the first of these singles, “Middle America,” and later a video of SM seated by a window and casually performing an acoustic version, but it’s remained just that unorthodox.  The latest promotional offering isn’t presented in the usual music video format, either.  Instead, we get Sparkle Hard: The Movie, a short film that actually includes behind the scenes footage of the previous horse footage and that acoustic guitar session.  Are we catching moments during the production of a music video that’s on the way?  A promotional photo shoot, maybe?  There’s a moment within the short that cuts to a discussion with the frontman about the nature of who he is and what’s the most effective method to try and promote anything with him in it — specifically, how it doesn’t work to try and dress him up, or put him in costumes — an interlude which reads as a meta-reference to the creation of the film itself.  But rather than discuss what this short isn’t, or doesn’t accomplish, I feel like it’s much more rewarding to discuss what this minor endeavor successfully achieves.

I had the great fortune to be able to conduct a phone interview with Stephen a week before Wig Out hit the shelves 4-years ago and, after doing so, it changed my perspective about who the man is, to a certain degree.  Actually… maybe, that isn’t entirely true.  What it did do, however, was confirm certain concepts that I may have already suspected, while officially eliminating any other potential notions.  In my research leading up to the conversation, one of my favorite things that I discovered was how often people approached him with these preconceived notions about his intentions, revering him for the cartoonish stereotype of the ultimate slacker that fought the system and eschewed mainstream success.  It’s not that I enjoyed how he was consistently minimized and trivialized, as an accomplished artist with such a consistent and prolific output, but I was fascinated by how he had to keep explaining to these people that their perceptions weren’t true, and that it wasn’t a situation where Pavement simply didn’t want to achieve any financial or mainstream successes in their career, but that it just wasn’t working out.  He’s stated that he really believed that “Rattled By The Rush” was going to be a hit when he picked that as the single, but the rest of the world just wasn’t with him on that decision.

As Malkmus spoke to me on his wife’s cell phone, before heading back home to Portland from his family’s winter vacation, I didn’t encounter an aloof, distant class clown-type who couldn’t be bothered to deal with some “music journalist.”  What I found was someone that was interested in asking me about my own life, and having a genuine conversation with someone else that didn’t revolve around hyperbole and artificial industry bullshit.  There were several questions that I had for him, which I quickly realized that I might need to let go of getting to, if I honestly wanted to allow the conversation to progress uncontrolled and unfold organically — you know, like the type of conversation that you might have with anyone else that you were meeting for the first time.  Because of this, I didn’t necessarily come away with a transcript from a conversation about numbers and details.  What I had was something different, it was the very basic essence of his personality.  Since that’s what I wound up with, that’s where the value was and the element that I needed to try and retain.  The one issue is that I was conducting this interview for a print magazine, which didn’t immediately grasp what I was attempting to turn in to them, or hoping to accomplish.

I created this site to be able to control such things, but worked with that magazine because I like collaborating; it was nice to have something physical to hold onto; and, for the most part, we were generally on the same page with things.  This interview would be the first time that they really ever tried to edit my work, at all, explaining that the readers weren’t interested in my side of he conversation, only the answers by the subject.  The important part is that they also mentioned that they couldn’t publish it without my approval, and we were quickly able to come to a compromise, but I can’t recall if they ever really understood why it was so important to me to maintain the structure of that piece.  Throughout our conversation, Stephen and I… well, we had a conversation.  That means that each side maintained a certain amount of weight.  If my personality was cut from that exchange, all that the reader would have been left with is what would seem like an artist offering light off-handed responses to a very serious interviewers questions.  He would read as dismissive, reinforcing that continued impression of him as an aloof subject disinterested in answering a reporter’s questions, which he believed that he was too good to wast his time with.  In reality, nothing could have been further from the truth.  Malkmus doesn’t only have too much respect to play the rockstar card, he really just doesn’t have any belief in it.  So much of the time, a writer already has a piece written in their minds, ahead of time, so all they are really looking for is a way to easily jam their subject into it.  If that’s your aim, then you might hit a barrier, and find some difficulty with someone less one-dimensional.  You can definitely try to shove Stephen Malkmus into that box as the “indie rock hero,” or the ultimate fuck off “cool guy,” but when his lanky frame is spilling out over the edges preventing the lid from fitting comfortably back on, the only person that you can really blame for that awkward fiasco is yourself.

Sparkle Hard: The Movie might not achieve what you want it to within its limited 10-minute time frame, but I’m not convinced that it’s really attempting to achieve much more than existing.  I guess it’s one of those things where it could be claimed that it’s really “for the fans.”  It’s definitely proving successful in getting me excited for the release, while it might not be the sort of content to draw in new fans.  The Jicks are a group that I almost feel like I know what to expect from, but never quite exactly, or entirely.  I expect a variety of sounds and elements from different genres; strong songwriting; and both melodies and solos that are so effortless, they are easy to let slip by without noticing how remarkable they truly are.  New Jicks material always feels fresh and new, yet incredibly authentic and never forced.  The songwriting feels effortless.  Wherein the nature of radio pop songs is to run their course potently, before burning out like a sugar high, Malkmus‘s catchiest melodies tend to grow on me more and more, over time, eroding down to reveal the solid foundations that support them.

In that sense, Sparkle Hard: The Movie delivers by presenting that range.  At one moment, the band is unleashing their indie rock chops in a room with a Grateful Dead “Steal Your Face“ banner on the wall.  In another, we are treated to a western-tinged love song.   All of his influences of the past from krautrock-like synth and beyond all appear to remain in tact, as well as his ability to incorporate and mutate them through his own unique voice.  He still delivers otherwise innocuous phrases like “Another beautiful bike lane” as effectively as he sang about obtaining a”Range Life” or “Shady Lane” back in the 90s, exhibiting an appreciation that isn’t always shown for the subtle beauties and achievable goals in songwriting at large.  But my favorite bit in this little film is seeing Malkmus sitting on his couch with his guitar and playing a song while a family cat scurries around in the background shadows.  It’s a crystallized version of what he does and, on a broader level, is, as an artist.  There are no big secrets here, but that’s the charm.  That’s the magic.  He does this, because that’s what he does.  When an album comes out, it’s because he’s picked through the rubble and offered up the pieces that he believes are worth sharing.  He’s creating anyway, and the final product is sculpted through editing.

I don’t see the Stephen as someone that’s fucking off or holding something back from his fans by refusing to provide them with a rock god to worship, and I don’t see this short movie as some masturbatory waste of time, half-heartedly tossed out in lieu of giving us a legitimate music video.  My impression is that Stephen Malkmus recognizes the fanbase that has stuck through him as the reason that he can continue to do what he loves, while remaining who he is, and he has too much respect for that relationship to be or do anything else.  The fact that this little throwaway promo film embodies that on any level — and it does for me — is also the reason that I can’t view it as completely insignificant.  But, then again, maybe that’s just my way of rationalizing to myself that I’ve stumbled back into my own nature, yet again, and wasted all this rambling on a simple video post by convincing myself that it’s more significant than it really is.  But hey, since we’re both now here, at this point… might as well check it out below.

Click HERE to pre-order Sparkle Hard ahead of it’s May 18th release date