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News
Street Roots • May 18-24, 2018
The former Pavement frontman
and Jicks member talks bike
lanes, baseball and his band’s
new release, “Sparkle Hard”
JASON COHEN
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
obody was trying to keep
Californians out of Oregon back
when Stephen Malkmus got here (or
at least, no more than usual). The Stockton
native and former Pavement frontman has
called Portland home since before the turn
of the century, and his very local band the
Jicks - Malkmus, bassist Joanna Bolme,
guitarist/keyboardist Mike Clark and
drummer Jake Morris - has been together
almost as long (give or take a drummer:
Morris was preceded by Sleater-Kinney’s
Janet Weiss, as well as the Decemberists’
John Moen).
“Sparkle Hard,” the band’s seventh
record (and first since 2014), came out May
18. Produced in Portland by first-time
collaborator (and Decemberist) Chris Funk,
its 11 tracks offer everything you want from
Malkmus and the Jicks: glib sincerity, guitar
jams, seemingly effortless turns of both
phrase and melody, more guitar jams. And
also a bunch of things you didn’t know you
wanted: auto-tune, a country-tinged duet
with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, a surfy
anthem inspired by both Portland bike
culture and the death of Freddie Gray.
Street Roots caught up with Malkmus
during a busy day of national media
interviews (one ran long when the subject
of fantasy baseball came up) and shuttling
his kids (he and his wife, artist/sculptor
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, have two) around
Portland’s East Side.
N
Jason Cohen: What brought you to
Portland originally?
Stephen Malkmus: I don’t know. I’m
from the West Coast, as you know. I lived in
New York. All I had was a futon and some
paperback books and whatever clothes I had
amassed. And free CDs from Matador. I was
working pretty hard those first six years,
and was just having fun being a
20-something. But then my parents - they
live in Idaho - they were like, ‘We don’t
have room for your stuff. Come get it.’”
So I drove across the country in this
Acura Legend I inherited from my
grandmother. Loaded it up with what I had,
and thought, I’m just going to go to
P H O T O B Y G IO V A N N I D U C A :
Stephen Malkmus on his horse for the video, “Sparkle Hard: The Movie.'
Portland. I didn’t know anybody. I played
some shows here (with Pavement). They
were cool. I liked the bookstore Powell’s,
and uh, that’s all I really knew. I guess. I
liked the coffee and the rain. That’s novel to
like, a Los Angeles person, to have this kind
of industrial-looking, bricky, rainy, black
coffee and cloudy skies and pine trees town.
I didn’t expect to stay here that long. That
happens to a lot of people.
J.C.: Do you think you’d be able to move
here now?
S.M.: I don’t know. It’s becoming a place
a little like Los Angeles and New York.
When you’re in your 20s you don’t mind
doing service jobs that have kind of a low
ceiling. You can survive, but then when you
get up into your 30s, you start to get
crushed by the city. Maybe you want some
stability, maybe you want a family. You get
crunched out of the town. Portland didn’t
seem to be that way when I first moved
here. But then again, neither did
Greenpoint. It’s a different kind of crisis
than homelessness, but people do get
pushed out in the same way.
J.C.: Family is one reason why you’re still
here, but also the band, right? It seems like
there is something about the Jicks that thrives
on being a steady group.
S.M.: Well, when we do play, yeah. I
mean, they’re good at music. That’s why I
stick with them. And they stick with me, so
they must like my songs. It’s not like a 24-7
job, so there’s room for them to do (other
projects). Mike s actually been doing some
accounting work lately. He got his degree
just at the time when I think accounting is
going to become irrelevant, because of
automation and AI. But he says you still
need that human touch.
This is a thing I’m always interested in
SEE M A LK M U S, page 5