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When a CV is stuffed with indie credentials as
bright as Pavement and The Silver Jews,
not to mention providing the voice of Bob Dylan
for Cate Blanchett in the movie I'm Not There,
you have a right to expect something more from Stephen
Malkmus than an album sounding as if he's overdosed on
the Led Zep comeback.
This is not to say that Real Emotional Trash isn't
a good record. It is, but it's also overly riff heavy
and just a bit stuck in the worst excesses of the
mid-1970s blues-folk-pop-prog nexus, the antithesis of
the direction in which his former collaborator David
Berman has moved. And this is a shame.
It's been three years since his previous offering,
2005's Face The Truth. Take a trip back and you'll
note that reviews at the time were guarded - perhaps
anticipating what was to come. Yet it was generally
considered that he was still moving forward, despite
the (justified) comparisons to Moby Grape.
The journey has continued, but en route he's lost
something of himself. Dragonfly Pie, with its
progressive riffs, earnest vocals and dips into
poppier bridges is polished and accomplished in a way
that belongs on an album by Fairport Convention
or Fleetwood Mac. The nod to the avant garde
we'd expect from Malkmus is sadly missing.
Stretch reality a little and you could point to
leftfield similarities with Flaming Lips if you
dig hard, but he's not pushing boundaries in the way
that bands such as, for example, The Mars Volta
or Wolfmother are if you have to go down that
route at all. Guitar solos that go on too long and are
too proud to be called axe raise their head far too
often throughout. It's not a good thing that the title
track is more than ten minutes long.
All of this means, of course, that hardcore Malkmus
fans will probably love Real Emotional Trash. It's
certainly unlikely to upset anyone who's enjoyed his
work before. The lyrics are still a cut above the
average, the addition of Janet Weiss, ex of Sleater
Kinney, on drums and backing vocals adds a nice
new dimension but there's nothing here that shines in
the way you'd hope a man of Malkmus's talents should.
Ironically, the best moments come when he steps
back from the prog godhead and strips things back to
basics - the pared back vocal section of Hopscotch
Willie, the dreaminess of Cold Son, the comedown
paranoid of We Can't Help You.
In the end, it's an album too mired in the past.
Progressive rock was, by definition, meant to push
boundaries and to move forward. You can't do that by
recreating the past and so, ultimately, Real Emotional
Trash fails - beautifully and melodically, yes, but it
fails nonetheless.
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