Stephen Malkmus is many things: Pavement poet laureate, 12-string wizard, low-key generational philosopher, and maybe, maybe, a Led Zeppelin troll. “When the Levee Breaks?” Not his favorite track on IV. “Sounds like autopilot,” he shrugs. Misty Mountain Hop, however? “I can’t wait for that fill by Bonham at the very end. It’s just gonna make me lose it.”
It’s not trolling, he insists, just fresh ears. “I hadn’t really listened to that album all the way through before,” he says, which is exactly the kind of thing that will get you hate-clicked by Rolling Stone and ratio’d on Twitter. He’s fine with it.
His new album, Traditional Techniques, lands somewhere between dusty canyon folk and psychedelic raga, pulling sonic influences from Gordon Lightfoot, Tony Joe White, and the sleepy side of Led Zeppelin. “The boring side,” he jokes. “The stuff you like when you’re a kid but also sounds good now.” There’s a looseness to it all, a kind of scrappy sonic campfire that stretches from Oregon to Afghanistan.
That’s not hyperbole. Malkmus brought in musicians playing the rubab and no-hole flutes, whose names he modestly claims not to remember but whose playing shaped the album’s otherworldly, oddly grounded feel. “The flute player would just rip insane solos,” he says. “He had a bag of them, like choosing a wand in Harry Potter.”
It all started with a 12-string and some rough ideas. Malkmus intentionally kept his demos bare: voice and guitar, no drums, no bass, no overthinking. “I wanted to let everyone else interpret the songs,” he says. “Kind of like jazz.” Half the vocals were recorded live in the room — no second takes, no meticulous comping. If he flubbed a lyric? “Doesn’t matter. Sometimes you say cliché things. That’s life.”
There’s a free-flowing, patchwork vibe throughout, from the Afghani instrumentation to the way lyrics meander like overheard conversations. He namechecks Tim Buckley’s scat-era improv and Miles Davis, then immediately laughs, “I mean, I say I’m Miles Davis better than you — that was just fun with words.”
But then there’s “Flowin’ Robes,” which doubles as a generational roast. “My daughter uses the word ‘boomer’ on me, and I’m not even one,” he says. “I mean, you can still exhibit boomer characteristics even if you’re not technically one, right?”
The pandemic and its ensuing fallout creep into his musings as well, if not directly into his lyrics. “There’s been some generational friction,” he notes. “It’s like the younger generation paying the bill again.” He stops short of making it a rallying cry — “It’s not like boomers caused corona” — but the frustration lingers.
“Christian Man,” the album’s lead single, taps into this ambiguity. Is it satire? A character sketch? A vibe? “He’s got morals, he’s old school, he’s into chivalry,” Malkmus explains, before veering off into an impressionistic summary that ends in a joke about missionaries. “I listened to the music and saw where it led me.”
And it led him into the studio with Spooner Oldham, Muscle Shoals legend and mellotron whisperer. “He jammed two takes, we picked the one we liked, and a thousand bucks later — boom.” Malkmus laughs, like a man who still can’t believe he talked a living legend into joining his alt-folk fever dream.
This is Malkmus’ third album in as many years, following the warped electronic musings of Groove Denied and the guitar-forward Sparkle Hard. “I gave myself more leeway to not have something to say,” he confesses. “Just riff. Let the players take it somewhere.”
As for the inevitable Pavement 30th anniversary questions? “I’m not so keen on it right now,” he says. His plate is full, his mind elsewhere, and his kids need his attention more than the indie rock nostalgia circuit does. Still, the love is there. “I’m totally proud of Pavement,” he says. “It’s a great record. And this one’s cool too.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
