Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: "Senator"

In Bryan Charles’ (amazing) 33 1/3 entry on Wowee Zowee (1995), Stephen Malkmus admits he can’t write songs the way he used to. He says, “You know if I go through those lyrics back then and how I wrote them it’s really impossible for me to evoke what I was thinking. It was some kind of roll that I was on… Doing things without overthinking it too much and if it sounded cool that was good. I couldn’t do that anymore.”

It’s clear in Malkmus’s solo work (save for his incredible debut): he’s changed. Simple as that. And if there was some sort of perfect storm of genius swelling in Pavement in the mid ’90s, that’s over, Malkmus can’t go back. So Malkmus’s lyrics, for better or worse—OK, for worse—have gotten more literal. And he’s still, of course, a good (sometimes great) songwriter, but because I’m a curmudgeon and can’t just, y’know, move on already, I am sometimes bothered by this. Thus, what annoyed me briefly, initially about “Senator,” the first track from the forthcoming Mirror Traffic, was its clunky and topical refrain: “I know what the senator wants / What the senator wants is a blow job.”

It just seems sort of…lame. And un-Malkmus-like, really. I was a bit deflated by it on first listen, as I have high hopes for Mirror Traffic, produced as it is by that other sexy musical genius from the ’90s, Beck. They’re so perfect for each other, it’s astounding: Beck also used to do crazy-awesome things he can’t do anymore (I want him to forever be long-haired and loose-limbed, white-suited and breakdancing in the dirt). Beck’s presence is not obvious here, but the differences between “Senator” and 2008’s Real Emotional Trash indicate that he’s maybe helped steer things away from jam-heavy, ’70s prog territory and back into clever indie rock.

The good news: “Senator” is actually not the disappointment I briefly feared it was. In fact, after about the first quarter of the song (which features the aforementioned refrain and an uncharacteristically exuberant Malkmus vocal), it establishes itself as one of the best Malkmus tracks since his solo debut, unpredictably structured, melodic, languid, and stuttering. From the moment of its first breakdown, when Malkmus talk-sings a story about a man in Ocean City (“Little Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky…”), “Senator” feels familiar, like a musician re-finding his groove. His lyrics may be more concrete than they’ve ever been, but the fact that I still don’t have a clue what’s he’s talking about is a favorable sign. And that’s enough when it comes time to accept what we’ll never have again.