Stephen Malkmus
Stephen Malkmus
Stephen Joseph Malkmus is an American musician best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the indie rock band Pavement. He currently performs with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth30 May 1966
CitySanta Monica, CA
CountryUnited States of America
mixing
We always did our own mixing.
sound albums should
There's no point that an album should sound like a watered down version of another album.
nice voice flow
If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.
space littles pixies
In the early '90s, it felt like there was space - there was like an empty feel. There was nobody really doing this. Maybe the Pixies were, a little bit. Their lyrics were also disjointed, more psychosexual or something. That's part of youth, too, maybe, that you just feel like you're doing something different.
engineers studios
Don't go to the same studio twice, or work with the same engineer twice.
goal different chance
There's always a chance, a goal to make something different and get it right, finally.
want
I don't want to be in Mötley Crüe or something.
flames long personality
George Oppen wasn't a larger than life personality, but I'm not either. And he lived a long time, so he was happy. Going down in flames is fine, too.
hero mean writing
With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.
nice self effort
Well, you know, it's a younger person, and it was maybe an effort to be a little more sincere and adult about the lyrics occasionally, which is a good thing. It's nice that it's not too self-conscious like some of our lyrics could be.
eye together narrative
I like a narrative, even if it's fractured, or kind of psychedelic. But my favorite thing is if I hear words and I close my eyes and the connotations or the image I get in my head, combine with the sound of them - sometimes phonetics. I'm just stringing those together.
imagery visuals visual-imagery
I like visual imagery in my head.
memorable guitar play
Yeah, on the records, the guitars are made melodic, and I try to make it memorable. There's not much just wanking, to be honest - it's mostly melodic parts. I try not to play too many notes. It's just more instrumental music. It's a totally valid criticism if you don't like that kind of thing. It also is maybe a little anachronistic or unnecessary in a certain way.
listening-to-others cds interesting
If someone's really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what's new and what's truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn't that interesting. To me it is, because I'm tuned into that and that's what I like, so it's interesting to me. It's all I can do.