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Stephen MalkmusFace The Truth Spunk!/Inertia On first impression it seems that something just isn't...right here. Stephen Malkmus' career has pretty much been built on a talent for bringing great songs to life through the joyfully unsubtle subversion of rock convention. And things certainly get off to a flying start with the delightfully flatulent synthesiser intro of Pencil Rot, which with its punchy new wave chorus (imagine the Cars with the sticks up their arses pulled out half an inch) gets up there with Silence Kit and Stereo in the exceptionally strong album-opener stakes. After this, however, things get a bit weird. Or, to be more accurate, they don't. In fact, what is unsettling about 'Face The Truth' is its unabashed subtlety and ostensible straightforwardness. Of course, to put in perspective, this isn't to say that if Jack Johnson delivered a record a tenth as playfully inventive as this, his record company wouldn't have him committed, but, rather, that for someone like Malkmus, it seems like a move into a more (for want of a better description) mature eclecticism. I've Hardly Been juxtaposes strident, almost middle-eastern verses with a rock-out chorus. Loud Cloud Crowd, on the other hand, is a beautifully phrased understatement that could have been penned by XTC. Malediction is a simple, melodic gem featuring a string crescendo that sounds almost like it's been sampled from Van Dyke Parks' coda to U2's All I Want Is You. And speaking of strange borrowings, breezy 70s SoCal soft rocker It Kills appropriates a keyboard line from, of all things, Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy. Even Pencil Rot lifts its 'da da da' rhythm directly from Hey Hey My My. Mama is a whimsical mid-tempo number that may or may not be about a family with an army son in Iraq and mercifully shares nothing further than its title with the Genesis song. Overall, what stands out here is a sense of a strong record by a musician who seems to have become less inclined to embrace the shambolic. Who knows, perhaps after 15+ years doing this whole music thing he's realised that it is, in fact, a career and something he is very good at and consequently feels less need to dress it up in the accoutrements of eccentricity.  |
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