Album Focus: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – 'Real Emotional Trash'

Hi, I'm Nate Lanxon and this is the Encoded Album Focus show.

It's not often that people achieve legend status these days while their career shows no sign of winding down. Nick Cave springs to mind, but you'd be hard pushed to find anyone held in as much revere, and placed on such a pedestal by the indie and underground masses, as the subject of this week's focus.

Stephen Malkmus made his name is the early to mid 90s with the band Pavement, regarded as one of the most influential bands of their era, whose second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain elevated them to an iconic status which is yet to wane. In fact, you could argue that the band have more imitators today than at any point since their inception.

Real Emotional Trash is Malkmus' fourth solo album since leaving the band, and came out last week. Like Pavement albums before, no two Malkmus albums are the same, and where on his last solo outing he delivered a collection of short, sweet, catchy pop songs à la Pavement's Wowee Zowee, Real Emotional Trash sees him return to the stoner retrospection of Crooked Rain.

Album opener 'Dragonfly Pie' kicks off like 'Dead Meadow', a dirgy drone of psychedelic guitar building through the intro, though when the familiar cracked tone of Malkmus kicks in, it's business as usual.

The obvious single on the album is 'Baltimore', which is almost folky in its vocal melody, but retains the trippy throb of guitar that colours the entire album, which in parts sounds as much Flaming Lips as it does Sleater-Kinney.

'Baltimore' and 'Cold Son' are available to download for free from the Matador Records website, which you'll find in the links on this page. There you'll also find the video for the single 'Mama', taken from his last album Face The Truth.

Video-wise, none have been made so far for this album, though if you head over to YouTube and search for Malkmus videos, you'll find an amazing three minutes posted by his record label of him soundchecking 'Out Of Reaches' before a show at the Great American Music Hall.

Malkmus and his band The Jicks are currently on tour in the US, and have just announced a four-date UK tour in June. And if you head over to their MySpace page you can listen to the album, as it's up there in full.

Next week we'll be looking at retro greasers Vincent Vincent and the Villians, whose debut album finally sees the light of day next Monday.

Until then, don't fall down any wells, as Lassie is on holiday in Tunisia.