With the release of the band’s sixth studio album Wig Out at Jagbags, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks has opted for short and sweet and laid down a collection of cleverly written pop songs with a rock guitar punch.
The band formed in 2000, shortly after Stephen Malkmus’ indie-rock band Pavement — one of the outfits at the forefront of early indie rock — went on hiatus.
The combination of the subtle quips in the lyrics and the alternations between soft ballads and jamming demonstrations has stamped a trademark on Malkmus projects. The band is currently touring the United States in support of its latest LP.
Dive staff writer Amanda Hayes spoke with Jicks bassist Joanna
Bolme about the band’s new album and its progression throughout the years.
DIVERSIONS: How’s the tour going so far?
JOANNA BOLME: It’s going great. We’ve been out for a couple weeks with a couple great bands – Tyvek and Disappears.
We’re meeting up with Endless Boogie, and Purling Hiss is finishing up the tour. The shows have been going great.
DIVE: When writing music, what is the process of collaboration like for the whole band?
JB: Steve writes the songs pretty much but when he bills them to the band they’re sort of in different stages of being done.
Sometimes he’s got the whole thing mapped out and sometimes he just came up with the riff that morning and he’s like, “Hey let me just play this for a while and see what happens.”
In that case then maybe we’ll add some ideas but for the most part Stephen’s the songwriter.
DIVE: The band has been together for about 13 or 14 years and has made six studio albums together. What has the band’s progression been like over the years?
JB: It’s sort of stayed the same, really. I think we’re more of a band now. When we first started we didn’t even know if we were actually going to be a real band or if we were just going to play on Steve’s record and call it a day.
I think the main progression is that we’ve become like a real band, a we’re-all-in-it-together sort of mentality. That’s the main thing.
DIVE: How is your new album, Wig Out at Jagbags, different from and similar to your previous work?
JB: It’s similar to Mirror Traffic in that the songs are a little bit more short and pop focused, whereas Real Emotional Trash was pretty jamming — although we still do a bit of that on this record.
I think it’s that the last record we got a producer, Beck.
We employed him to be the producer of the record so we sort of let him do his thing and then this record is us getting back to producing ourselves, really.
This is kind of more like us again, I guess.
DIVE: All of your albums have been a little different from each other.
I’ve listened to them and some incorporate more big band instruments and others have an elemental and jagged appeal.
As a band, do you have a direction you want your music to take or a particular sound you want to accomplish?
JB: I don’t think we really plan that far ahead, actually. We just sort of let the song sort of dictate what’s going to happen.
Then the brass and horns and stuff that were on this record, Steve added them when he was in Germany.
None of the rest of us even knew that it was going to happen so the brass was a complete surprise to the rest of the band.
It was a fun surprise but we didn’t really know it was going to happen. I think Steve just got an idea and went with it.
diversions@dailytarheel.com
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