Petal - Magic Gone

The "confessional" album is sought after, but the human desire for secondhand absorption of the artist's personal turmoil allows empty posturing to slip through the net. Formless angst became an aesthetic, an affectation, because we let it; we made it profitable. Still, we know the real deal when we hear it. We treat such an album like a cipher through which the artist's psyche can be decoded.

Kiley Lotz would save you the trouble. She's been upfront about her struggle with mental illness which intensified in between Petal's debut Shame in 2015 and Magic Gone. The lyrics don't sugarcoat it and it's not a stretch to say you can hear it in her performance. In "Comfort", Lotz details in real time the point when she realised a long term relationship was over, and when she wails "I don't fucking care anymore!", you believe her. And yet Magic Gone never feels like a confrontational exercise, staring at you to see who blinks first, because Lotz's melodic acuity won't allow it. It's more downbeat than Shame, - never dirge-like in a way that would make a line such as "I wished the truck on the overpass would tumble down upon me" relentlessly morose, but never trivialising it either.

The Breeders - All Nerve

The Breeders are not a band burdened by the idea of a legacy. All Nerve comes ten years after the middling Mountain Battles and is just the band's fifth album in 28 years. It also makes this lineup - the same that recorded 1993's Last Splash - the first to record more than one album (although, including The Amps, everyone involved has appeared in at least one other iteration). Last Splash was commercially successful in large part due to a confluence of factors such as how "Cannonball" fit in perfectly with MTV's alt-rock agenda at the time and British label 4AD doubling down on its decision to sign American artists, but it endures because of Kim Deal's songwriting and the band's musicianship. 25 years later, there's still so much to unpack in "Cannonball", not to mention the sublime power-pop of "Divine Hammer", the batshit dirge "Mad Lucas" and the alternately boiling and simmering "Roi" and its brief reprise, the latter ingeniously placed at the end of the album after a cover of Ed's Redeeming Qualities' country & western song "Drivin' on 9". But for all that, All Nerve is no attempt to replicate past glory.

Free from expectations and historical context, All Nerve is free to take its time. Opening track "Nervous Mary" uses the same slow-fast structure as Last Splash's opener "New Year", and could have been recorded the day after that album's last session, but the album soon carves out its own identity and indulges in slower tempos more than any other Breeders album, never more so than "Dawn: Making An Effort", which creates a wall of noise out of delayed guitar and cymbal splashes. Josephine Wiggs' bass is prominent without being overbearing, and supplies an intangible, nervous energy, but her standout performance is on "MetaGoth", which puts her in front of the mic and pairs her on guitar with Kelley Deal. Co-written by Wiggs and Kim Deal, it recalls Deal's Pixies contribution "Into the White" in tone, but transplanted into darker, plodding Breeders territory and replete with ominous guitar figures. Wiggs' untarnished English accent and deadpan delivery only amplify the effect. A cover of Krautrockers Amon Düül II's  "Archangel's Thunderbird" keeps the album's back half from slipping from languid to sonorous, and is perhaps the highlight for Jim MacPherson, whose raw, spirited drumming has truly been missed. In fact the interplay between these four musicians has been missed, and it's easy to point to them collectively as the proximate cause for All Nerve being the most vital Breeders album in 25 years.

Parquet Courts - Wide Awake!

A Parquet Courts album produced by Danger Mouse is a no-brainer on paper - the pairing of a band not content to release the same album twice and a producer who's a popular choice for artists looking to switch up their sound. The good news is that Wide Awake! is a triumph in practice. The album revels in previously untapped influences that the band leans into to the point where if, say, "Violence" was the first Parquet Courts song you ever heard, you might well assume that these four white guys were always this indebted to black artists of the past. That one is a rumination on numbness to violence as an unfortunate but necessary response to its prevalence in present day America. Andrew Savage sounds like James Murphy after 12 cups of coffee, while musically it recalls Funkadelic, both in its specifics (especially the pitch-shifted monologue in the final stretch) and the way it makes an inherently bitter pill palatable. Unfortunately the Talking Heads pastiche title track is a bridge too far, which is odd considering how well they sell the almost Jackson 5 bounce of "Tenderness". The idea of weighty themes appealingly packaged is not new to Parquet Courts, but with their most eclectic set of tunes and broadest emotional palette, Wake Up! is the band's most engaging album.

Queens of the Stone Age - Villains

Queens of the Stone Age have carved out a comfortable position as elder statesmen of rock. Nobody expects them to flip their sound on its head at every turn. They could, if they wanted, give it just enough of a  perfunctory tweak to avoid being accused of repeating themselves, but of course they don't want to do that. Josh Homme is a songwriter's songwriter, always seeking new approaches even after having worked within his idiom with one band or another for nearly 30 years. The knee-jerk reaction is to call Villains QOTSA's pop album, given that Mark Ronson is producer, but if that's the case, they've arrived at it on their own terms. The album is full of the serpentine twists that have become the band's stock in trade, and the more floor-ready beats recontextualise familiar QOTSA tropes without compromising the muscularity of Homme's riffs. The result is less "Uptown Funk" than decadent disco. Villains forgoes the band's tradition of inviting high profile guests, which is not a decision that the first and so far only band to unite Trent Reznor and Elton John in the studio would make lightly. It shows they don't need a lot of help to pull off stylistic shifts such as this one - not that there's any reason to doubt it.

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn - Echo in the Valley

Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn's personal r elationship goes back a decade and their professional relationship almost as far, but they hadn't recorded as a duo until 2014's self-titled album. Strictly a dual banjo and voice affair, it was more a showcase of their musical interplay than songwriting as they navigated how to work in that context, and it settled the question of whether Washburn, an excellent banjoist and Fleck, a virtuoso, could work as a duo. That's not to diminish its value as a fine collection of songs, but the point was occasionally a bit laboured - I personally didn't need a four and a half minute rendition of "Railroad" ("I've been working on the railroad...)".

Echo in the Valley builds on what the duo learnt the first time around and brings their songwriting to the fore. The first time around, Fleck and Washburn both wrote the bulk of the album, but did so separately on all but two songs; on Echo in the Valley, it's a collaborative effort all over. There's less reliance on both traditional material and traditional influences in general, but the album evokes a bygone era in less tangible ways.

Slowdive - Slowdive

So there's a new Slowdive album in 2017; it almost seems too pure for this sinful Earth, but I'll take it.

Of course, you don't want a Slowdive album compromised by two decades of cynicism and the world generally going down the shitter, so it comes as a relief that Slowdive, though recorded last year, could have been from 1994, a missing link between Souvlaki and Pygmalion, perfectly preserved in amber and discovered just when we need it most. Slowdive shouldn't be penalised for sticking to what works, because it does work; there hasn't been a time between their formation and now when their simple yet layered and meticulous compositions wouldn't have seamlessly blended into the musical landscape aesthetically while standing out in quality. Though it's no mere nostalgia trip, Slowdive nonetheless serves as a reminder of a time when there was assumed to be preordained limits on human ego, hubris and stupidity - that if we weren't already as low as we could go, we'd at least know when we got there. It's the album we need right now, even if it's not the one we deserve.

Benjamin Booker - Witness

A recently posted Instagram photo of Benjamin Booker from Christmas 2005 shows Booker with a Stratocaster. "My first Fender! White for Jimi and Kurt. Smashed on stage at Lollapalooza in the summer of 2014." Booker believes music is eternal, but instruments are ephemeral. That, or he just likes smashing shit. In any case, Booker embodies Cobain's punk spirit while being a student of classic rock, soul and blues. The sound of his debut could be compared to that of Chuck Berry fronting Nirvana, although his voice defies easy comparison. On Witness, Booker tempers the garage-punk sound on which he built his name, favouring those older influences, especially on the gospel-infused title track.

On his debut, Booker sang that "the future is slow coming", which recalled "A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke (who is evoked on Witness in the string intro to "Believe"). He wasn't contradicting Cooke's message, but adding "it's gonna take longer than we thought". Booker is the change he wishes to see in the world, and Witness is the sound of him settling in for the long haul.

Spoon - Hot Thoughts

A band that released its first album in 1996 shouldn't sound this vital in 2017. Hell, not in 2007. Having got this far with only one genuine aberration (2010's Transference), Spoon has earned the right not to be expected to still deliver era-defining albums and only needs to vary its sound just enough to avoid staleness.

Hot Thoughts incorporates synth elements that have existed in the Spooniverse (I'll see myself out) since Britt Daniel and Dan Boeckner's Divine Fits, but wisely doesn't mess with what's always worked about Spoon. Spoon's best songs are low key and moving in an esoteric way. "I Ain't the One" carries on this tradition with its simple keyboard chord sequence and swirling synth. Likewise, the centrepiece and the closing track, which are of a piece: "Pink Up", a slowly building composition of keys and thick percussion and "Us", a meditative brass jam on the former and a great finish to an album that consistently delivers and occasionally surprises.

Laura Cantrell - Laura Cantrell at the BBC

Anyone familiar with Laura Cantrell knows that John Peel endorsed her in a big way. She's developed a proportionally bigger following in the UK than the US and even released her last album over there first. Properly released on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously but available at her recent UK shows and as a Record Store Day exclusive, Laura Cantrell at the BBC does what it says on the tin, collecting 15 performances from 2000 to 2005, 10 of which are from Peel sessions.

Cantrell's typically sparse live setup suits intimate venues, and she is as much in her element in a radio studio as in a cafe, bar or recording studio. The four performances from 2005 sound the best, showing a surefooted Cantrell in the early days of her longtime collaboration with guitarist Mark Spencer. The mortality-focused, piano-based "Bees" is all stringed instruments here, and loses none of its power. "Old Downtown" undergoes a more pronounced transformation from a rocker worthy of Lucinda Williams to just Cantrell and her acoustic guitar, and somehow also works.

Laura Cantrell at the BBC is not a live or studio compilation in the traditional sense of either word, It's not an ephemeral novelty either, though it is a unique entry in the Cantrell catalogue, combining the quiet and fidelity of the studio with the directness of live performance.

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Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression

Iggy Pop doesn't sound depressed on Post Pop Depression, though he has every right to be. Most of the principal members of The Stooges have died, as well as Lou Reed and now David Bowie. As hard as it might be to imagine, Iggy won't be making music forever, and he's now said that he doesn't intend to try.

The opening track "I'm Gonna Break Into Your Heart" starts with Pop doubling Josh Homme's modal Eastern riff. It doesn't sound as though one is following the other, and it's a perfect microcosm of the album as a whole. Even the one misstep, the spaghetti western "Vulture", is made together. Homme's reputation as a meticulous tone chaser with a penchant for drop tunings can obscure his talent as a fluid and dynamic player, and in large part it's his adaptability that makes Post Pop Depression work. It seems as though he can complement just about anyone, while Pop can stamp his personality on just about anything. It makes for a great parting statement if he does intend to retire and a great avenue of inspiration if he doesn't.

Custard - Come Back, All is Forgiven

Custard didn't announce Come Back, All is Forgiven until it was recorded and a few months away from release, which was smart; enough time to adjust to the reality that 2015 will see a new Custard album, but not enough to build up unreasonable expectations.

The first thing that struck me about Come Back, All is Forgiven was how much like Custard it sounds like, which wasn't a given after 16 years away from the studio. It's an older Custard, obviously, and sounds like it. While the familiar wit lingers in the lyrics, a certain world weariness has crept in, while musically, a lot of the immediacy has been traded in for a more slow burning approach. It's a trade-off, but a worthwhile one. A younger Custard simply couldn't have conceived "We Are the Parents (Our Parents Warned Us About") and "Get In Your Car" among others. More than one song on Come Back, All is Forgiven addresses 90s nostalgia, but the album is far from an exercise in it.

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Kurt Cobain - Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings

If you have to ask yourself if you need this, you don't.  What was I supposed to do, not buy it? Not bloody likely.

For only two more dollars than the regular version would have cost me, I bought the deluxe edition - that's 31 tracks instead of 13. With 8 minutes of running time left, it's a wonder they didn't include a recording of Cobain scraping the bottom of a barrel with a guitar pick. It's natural to want a window into Cobain's mind - the global audience Nevermind gave him, whether he wanted it or not, had only two and a half years to get to know him, and many of his lyrics, even under the inevitable intense scrutiny following his death, remain oblique and elliptical. Home Recordings, however, is no magic cipher that will suddenly cast everything in a whole new light. It will not, as the fictitious Blaine DeBeers of iZombie claimed, fill gaps between Fecal Matter and Nirvana you didn't even know existed. While some of it is of academic interest, to claim to be able to draw a straight line between it and even Bleach would be like watching heretofore unseen footage of Jackson Pollock squeeze sauce onto a hotdog and claim the pattern to be a precursor to Blue Poles.

A good percentage of the tracks on Home Recordings are montages (duh) and monologues that don't bear repeated listens. "Aberdeen" is an anecdote about an abortive sexual encounter, one that Buzz Osbourne insists is spurious, along with most of the rest of the Montage of Heck documentary. Presented out of context, there's nothing to suggest it purports to be true. Little of the actual music is especially portentous either. The oft-released "Been a Son" gets yet another go-round in a version that makes the With the Lights Out recording sound polished and meticulous by comparison. Surprisingly, there's no version of "Polly", the most ubiquitous song in the Nirvana catalogue, to be had here, although there are plenty of four chord wonders that could have become a "Drain You" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had Cobain revisited them. There are a couple that did grow into something more substantial - the aforementioned "Been a Son" and a similarly inauspicious-sounding "Sappy". The With the Lights Out curio "Clean Up Before She Comes" appears here - a demo of a demo. Minus the pithy lyrics, harmonies and counter-melodies that form the song's hooks (I think there are four Cobains duking it out in there at one point in the better known version), it just doesn't connect. Some of the more abstract sketches might have had potential as well, such as "She Only Lies", which is just Cobain and a surprisingly clear-sounding bass. Perhaps the phone call that interrupted the dirgey "Burn the Rain" robbed us of a classic. One of the few songs I've revisited so far is the instrumental "The Happy Guitar". Known erroneously on bootlegs as "Black and White Blues" for years, it may be a tribute to Leadbelly, but it's closer to Lonnie Johnson, whose name you normally wouldn't associate with Cobain - therein lies the appeal.

I won't be the only one to quote that prescient line from "Aero Zeppelin" (from the genuinely valuable odds and ends collection Incesticide). "all the kids will eat it up if it's packaged properly". Just don't expect them to keep it down.

Motherfucker - Confetti

It would have been enough for Motherfucker to merely wake you from the pathetic stupor that most music seems determined to keep you in. Hell, if it was just good for a giggle because its name is a naughty word, that would have been better than nothing. Motherfucker's name is not an exercise in puerility or superficiality, however, but a portent of Confetti's unrelenting post-whatever-noise-rock-something-something - think the blunt assault of METZ delivered with the laser focus of Erase Errata. Confetti packs a lot into its 30 minutes, but has no time for moroseness, self-indulgence or half-assed bullshit.

Motherfucker on Bandcamp

Blur - The Magic Whip

Blur flip-flopped on whether or not it would continue to exist and in what capacity enough times over the 12 years since Think Tank that The Magic Whip was anything but inevitable. However, there's reason to believe it isn't intended as a one off. The album was produced by Stephen Street, the band's longest serving producer who worked with them from their stately Britpop era through to 1997's transitional self-titled album, suggesting another ongoing partnership might be in the works. More significantly, though, The Magic Whip has neither a sense of urgency nor finality to it. It neither bolsters nor tarnishes their legacy, but opens the door for the band to do either or both in the future.

No Blur album ever sounded like another, but Damon Albarn has been exploring new sounds with Gorillaz and as a solo artist, so carving out a distinct identity for The Magic Whip was never going to be easy. It's happy enough to revisit the past, but it's frustrating when some of its attempts to move forward have antecedents in the Gorillaz canon. But of course Albarn's world-weary sensibility ensures that the throwbacks are not mere exercises in nostalgia, and the more forward-looking material really resonates when it does work. The MVP "There Are Too Many of Us" starts with minor synth chords over a marching beat and some subtle, ominous bass work from Alex James and was inspired by the Lindt hostage crisis in Sydney. It's about the muted, impersonal reaction often inspired by watching a tragedy on TV; Albarn wrote the lyrics while switching between watching it that way and directly from a hotel room.

Sitting somewhere above Faith No More's new album and far below Swans' recent output, The Magic Whip has plenty to like about it. Whether there's Blur in our future is impossible to know, but the evidence presented suggests it's not a foolish thing to want.

Torres- Sprinter

Torres' self-titled debut, released at the start of 2013, announced Mackenzie Scott as one of the breakout songwriters of the decade. The stock phrase is "confessional singer-songwriter", but the then 22 year-old's songs were sophisticated and three dimensional enough that she'd already outgrown that term.

Scott's improved songcraft and her experiences since Torres give Sprinter a character the first album didn't really hint at, and couldn't have, as it is the product of two years' worth of emotional upheaval that included personal betrayals and a redefinition of her religious faith. It starts at its most intense with "Strange Hellos", which recalls Nirvana, and I mean that reverently, not reductively; here, Scott channels Cobain better than anyone else I've ever heard as she excoriates a former friend. The song casts a shadow long enough to obscure the rest of the album, at least at first. Other highlights "Ferris Wheel" and "The Exchange" burn more slowly, but no less brightly than "Waterfall" from the first album. Sprinter doesn't hide its influences (90s rock in particular), yet defies easy categorisation throughout and presents multiple doors for Mackenzie Scott to kick down in the future.

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Lady Lamb - After

After is Lady Lamb (formerly Lady Lamb the Beekeeper)'s second studio album, following 2013's Ripely Pine and a string of lo-fi self-released recordings dating back to 2007. Ripely Pine, along with Torres' self-titled debut and Danish punks Iceage's second album You're Nothing, was an album by a promising young artist in my end of year list that was littered with the likes of Polvo, My Bloody Valentine and Richard Thompson. Iceage released a superb third album last year, Torres' second album is due in May, and here, of course, is After.

After very quickly answers the question of whether or not Aly Spaltro was willing to ride the crest of a wave and write twelve more songs in the particularly manic folk-rock style of Ripely Pine. This is one case in which I would have been fine with that, but to her credit, she's pushing herself in different directions already. It's not as if After is a radical reinvention - the tricks and tropes of Ripely Pine are all over it, in fact - but Spaltro's approach is more measured and her lyrics are broader in scope while still loaded with personal frames of reference. She's also more confident than before, which is really fucking saying something. She got a lot of mileage out of quiet-loud dynamics on Ripely Pine, building tension with the former and providing release with the latter. This carries over to After, but flourishes such as the way the opener "Vena Cava" stretches her voice and the stuttering rhythm of the penultimate "Batter" show she knows how to tread the line between exploiting an approach works and simply repeating herself. Elsewhere, songs such as "Ten" disperse her energy more evenly, and the contrast informs much of After's character. It keeps the listener on their toes, and in that sense, it's a microcosm for the career of an artist for whom complacency is not an option.

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Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Richard Thompson - Acoustic Classics

Nobody leaves me in awe with their mastery of the electric guitar quite like Richard Thompson. He pre-empted Television with "A Sailor's Life" when he was barely 20 and has never grown complacent since. Like fellow Stratocaster pioneer Hendrix, he speaks through the instrument; some players are better, many more are worse, but nobody sounds quite like him.

How such a guitarist sounds on an acoustic guitar is a test that many fail. I've heard what happens when Tom Morello picks up an acoustic, but I wish I hadn't. An electric guitar gives you presence; an acoustic makes you work for it.

Thompson, of course, has nothing to prove when it comes to playing acoustically. His best known song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is already acoustic (making its inclusion here somewhat redundant), he recorded acoustic studio versions of almost every song on his live album of new material Dream Attic and he even runs an acoustic guitar camp. "1952..." aside, Acoustic Classics puts a mostly electric set of songs spanning most of Thompson's solo career to the MTV Unplugged test of whether they can cut it acoustically when they weren't necessarily designed to do so; even this is nothing new, as Thompson plays acoustic shows regularly; he wanted to release something that sounded like those shows, but couldn't find a live recording that cut it in terms of fidelity. An acoustic "Shoot Out the Lights" is a bridge too far, but elsewhere Acoustic Classics reveals the intrinsic beauty Thompson's compositions. In particular, "Walking on a Wire" and "Wall of Death" from 1982's Shoot Out the Lights, one of his slicker sounding albums, sound great with the greater sense of space offered here, while the Eastern modality of "One Door Opens" works just as well acoustically as electrically.

Acoustic Classics is a welcome release just a year after the well received Electric. Instead of an effortless cash-in, Thompson has issued a reminder of his greatness that merely sounds effortless.

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Pixies - Indie Cindy

Evaluating Indie Cindy as if it were recorded in a vacuum might be the fairest thing to do, but while I might be capable of that kind of objectivity, I'm not inclined towards it. I can and will judge it on its own merits, but not without first addressing the obvious concerns that almost always accompany a "comeback" album. Resurrecting the Pixies name opens the door for people to question the wisdom of adding to an arguably flawless catalogue that was sealed off over twenty years ago. I don't begrudge middle-aged musicians for doing what they love, but I've looked in vain for what is so Pixies-like about Indie Cindy that it had to be released under that portentous name. There are people young enough for this album to serve as their introduction to the band, but I'm not one of them.

Many people will point to the absence of Kim Deal in their criticism of Indie Cindy, so I'll start there. Though technically average, Deal is an intuitive player. She is modest and restrained and she knew it rarely took more than four notes to set the stage for Black Francis and Joe Santiago's histrionics. Her approach to songwriting is nothing like that of Francis, yet her few (but noticeable) songwriting contributions always complemented his. Indie Cindy isn't the only Pixies album without a Deal-penned song on it, but it is the only one from which she is absent altogether, and it shows.

Deal's absence wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the other original members as we knew them aren't all present either. Twenty-three years and a million solo albums later, Frank Black has filed off most of what he and Black Francis had in common. Joey Santiago was a student of Neil Young's "learn it and forget it" approach, but now he's learnt it again. David Lovering's drumming is the one element that hasn't been streamlined in his middle age.

This long awaited "new album" is really neither of those things - it is in fact a consolidation of the two EPs released last year and the earlier standalone "Bag Boy", padded out with three new songs, but however lazy its assembly, Indie Cindy is not entirely without merit. "Bag Boy" is the oldest song of the lot, and to anyone who had already heard it, an unfortunate red herring. With its synth bass and drum machine that give way to the tactile thud of Lovering's kick and snare, Francis' spoken rant and the dead simple, appealingly loud guitar work from Francis and Santiago, it would not have been cause to despair if the song had been more indicative of what was to come. Other attempts at straight up rock such as "Blue Eyed Hexe" are more prosaic, but welcome nonetheless. "Magdelena 318" is the album's most Pixies-sounding song and could almost be slotted into Bossanova. Unfortunately, though, Indie Cindy lacks the lively production of Bossanova or any other Pixies album and spends too much of its time on emotionally inert pop-rock that feels simultaneously under and overcooked. It's sad when a band so bereft of what codified them as that band in the first place fails to recreate the intangible magic they once possessed - sad, but unsurprising.

Johnny Cash - Out Among the Stars

 Johnny Cash wasn't the only veteran artist who had trouble with the transition into the 80s, but his case was one of the worst. Cash blamed Columbia, and infamously, his biggest hit of the decade was "Chicken in Black", an attempt to bite the hand that fed him. It's understandable that Cash would be inclined to shelve an entire album if he thought Columbia had no interest in promoting it.

I'm equally partial to the Tennessee Two/Three and American Recordings eras that bookend Cash's long career; Out Among the Stars was recorded just after the dissolution of the Tennessee Three. Cash might have had trouble selling albums in the 80s, but it wasn't as if he didn't try, and although three decades stand between the album's recording and release, it isn't a timeless album. I recently listened to Cash's last interview in which he made it clear that he embraced pragmatism over traditionalism when it came to recording (he even mentioned Pro Tools), and in light of that, it doesn't surprise me that he would have availed himself of the latest technology of the day and intentionally made an album steeped in the slick sound that immediately dates it in the early 80s.

Slick or not, it's not as if Out Among the Stars is Cash's "sellout" album. With his new band came a new sound that didn't owe a whole lot to his past and he took the opportunity to test out the band with various styles and tempos. It's a sound that Cash obsessives and country aficionados are likely to appreciate more than me. John Cash jr started going through his father's vaults shortly after his death and it took ten years to find Out Among the Stars, so it's likely we'll see more releases in the future. It's also likely that Cash's best music was released while he was alive. Out Among the Stars is a decent addition to Cash's catalogue without being a boost to his legacy.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Wig Out at Jagbags

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks at the Transit Bar was the kind of intimate show you don't see very often from someone that recognisable. Performance wise, the Pavement reunion show I'd seen a couple of years earlier was leagues ahead, but although the Jicks can't boast anything approaching Pavement's legendary canon, it was great to stand a few feet away from Malkmus in a venue the size of a shoe box, request "Discretion Grove" and have him say "we can sort of play that one. If it sounds bad, blame this guy."

"Discretion Grove" didn't sound bad, and going by the fact that I didn't get lynched on the way back to my car, the rest of the audience agreed. But then that song, from Malkmus's first album with the Jicks back in 2001, is a pretty straight forward rocker and not indicative of the rhythmic flourishes and circuitous guitar playing he favors now. Those things were in abundance that night, 2011's Mirror Traffic comprising most of the set along with at least three songs destined for Jagbags. Malkmus rightly disliked Pavement's slacker reputation, as the often unhurried nature of their songs and Malkmus's ability to "project uncaring", as David Berman put it, obscured the meticulousness of their construction. Jicks songs are even more meticulous, yet sound even more free spirited in spite of it.

Wig Out at Jagbags is Malkmus's sixth solo/Jicks/whatever you want to call it album, making it one more album than he recorded with Pavement. It's taken almost twice as long to record those six as Pavement their five, but it's understandable that Malkmus is not in a hurry at this point in his career. This is turning out to be more concert review than album review, but listening to Wig Out at Jagbags drives home the point that the Jicks are better live than on record. If you haven't seen a Jicks show, listening to it will make you wish you had. If you have, it'll make you wish you were at one. At just over 40 minutes, the album does its thing and fucks off before it has a chance for redundancy. It's low stakes fun and not unwelcome, even if it's not what I used to associate with its principle creator.