There might be a clever way to describe “Face The Truth,” but for now I’m gonna go with "Stephen Malkmus just don't give a fuck!"
Only someone who has fallen off their rocker could come up with such a jagged and yet complete...errr...rocker! This is the first post-Pavement work where we don't miss Bob Nastanovich because we still get to laugh. “Stephen Malkmus” (2001) tried too much faux-Bob where there was no Bob, and “Pig Lib” (his 2003 effort with The Jigs) needed Nastanovich's antics to break up the psych-tight jamming. But on “Face The Truth,” Malkmus balances humor and weight, with some satisfying results.
And did I mention about the not giving a fuck? "I've Hardly Been" sounds like a hungry Marc Bolan wolfing down a Tom Waits dinner special at a filthy diner, where the only thing on the jukebox is The Groundhogs’ “Live at Leeds ‘71.” Malkmus shoves a fuzzy synth line into a basic acoustic guitar verse, making hum-ability the new dance-ability. He bellows "You tower over everything / The rest are dog tits." The chorus explodes into a bluesy fist pumper, slamming and twisting with catchy undulations, crazier than a mess of delta mosquitoes. This song alone proves that Malkmus has honed his talents for weirdo timing and elastic composition, but not just cause. He extracts the most amount of pop from the least amount of culture.
But it's not all wild variations on earlier sounds. Some of these gems sound straight from a Pavement B-side mix tape your friend Craig made you in college. If the production on "Post-Paint Boy," the album's first single, wasn't quite so crisp, it'd be hard to believe
that it wasn't a “Wowee Zowee” outtake. And in his famous erudite Pavement flair, Malkmus quite accurately muses on the contemporary artist. Plenty has been said about what an artist' gets from the modern hipster, but never quite as eloquently as "scraps of acceptance from coked-up quasi-urbane kids." This isn’t some post-emo sincerity, and he's certainly not counting himself out of the equation. It's just the ten years later version of the feeling behind "Range Life."
When it comes to Malkmus's guitar playing, less has become so much more. On "Pencil Rot," rhythmic, point of sale rifting has replaced noodling, and been filled out wisely with some antiquated keyboards. He uses his guitar sparingly, forcing us to hear his arranging genius. At one point the fury drops out almost all together, and Malkmus delivers his best neo-caucasian indie rap. This kind of innovation might previously have been fighting traffic on feedback highway, but now it speeds through without tapping the brakes. I guess there is a clever way to describe “Face The Truth”: Malkmus has rediscovered his own weirdness, and is able to mold it objectively and without caution.
The only downside here is that by the time we get to the last song, things have quieted down a bit too much. While "Malediction" ends the album with canorous simplicity, there's no "Fillmore Jive" moment at the end, to make you question pop music itself. You end up wanting one more jangled rocker like “Mama,” but the record falls out with a whimper. It’s disappointing, but don’t let that distract you from the real truth here – this is Malkmus’s best solo work. |