Stephen Malkmus - Traditional Techniques Stephen Malkmus

Take the name Traditional Techniques with as much salt as you’d like or dig the Adorno reference, Malkmus’s third solo LP without the Jicks (or Pavement) is as organic as they come. It’s packed with handmade arrangements, modern folklore, and 10 songs written and performed in Malkmus’s singular voice. An adventurous new album in an instantly familiar mode, Traditional Techniques creates a serendipitous trilogy with the loose fuzz of the Jicks’ Sparkle Hard (Matador, 2018) and the solo bedroom experiments of Groove Denied (Matador, 2019). Taken together, these three very different full-lengths in three years highlight an ever-curious songwriter committed to finding untouched territory. Perhaps some of these “folk” musicians could take a lesson or two.

Created in the spontaneous west coast style adopted so infectiously by young American musicians in this time of global turmoil, Malkmus took on Traditional Techniques as a kind of self-dare. Conceived while recording Sparkle Hard with the Jicks at Portland’s Halfling Studio, Malkmus had observed the variety of acoustic instruments available for use. The idea escalated within a matter of weeks into a full set of songs and shortly thereafter into a realized and fully committed album. When he returned to Halfling, Malkmus drew from a whole new musical palette–including a variety of Afghani instruments–to support an ache both quizzical and contemporary. Stephen Malkmus isn’t one of those “hung up” musicians one reads about so frequently these days, sequestered in a jungle room of the heart. The jukebox in Malkmus’s private grotto remains fully updated. Not only is the artist present, but he’s on Twitter.