Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Wig Out At Jagbags

Berlin has long been one of the most iconic locations on the rock ‘n’ roll map. It’s a city whose dark history has influenced everyone from David Bowie and Lou Reed to Nick Cave and U2. Not so much Stephen Malkmus, though. Soon after the 2011 release of his fifth album with The Jicks, the Beck-produced Mirror Traffic, the former Pavement frontman relocated to Germany from his native Portland. Although the hilariously titled Wig Out At Jagbags was actually recorded in a farmhouse just outside Amsterdam, it was written during his Berlin sojourn.

Always one of the more surreal indie songwriters of the Nineties, Malkmus remains as witty, offbeat, irreverent and musically mischievous as ever on this sixth outing with The Jicks (he only made five with Pavement). It’s an album bursting with infectious riffs, stoned solos, noisy punk squalls and daft, stream of consciousness lyrics. He doesn’t sound like he’s grown up at all. The chorus of the album’s shortest track, ‘Rumble At The Rainbo’, goes, “Can you remember / The thrill and the rush / You’re not out of touch / Come tonight you’ll see / No one here has changed / And no one ever will.”

Although a lot more clever and talented than he lets on, Malkmus remains the crown prince of muso slackers. On ‘Cinnamon And Lesbians’, he admits, “I’ve been tripping my face off since breakfast.” On the joyously rhythmic ‘Lariat’, he manages to name-check Lord Tennyson and The Grateful Dead in the same line, and bamboozle with the memorable couplet, “You’re not what you aren’t/ You aren’t what you’re not.”

It’s been 20 years since the Pavement classic Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. This isn’t quite as strong, but it taps into the same anarchic, quirky, free-slowing spirit. Get Jicky with it.