Stephen Malkmus - Jo Jo's Jacket - Video - streams

Pavement frontman solo debut

After a decade working the streets with Pavement, lo-fi pin-up king Stephen Malkmus has cut himself free from the band to wander free. On Stephen Malkmus, his solo debut (for Domino in the UK, Matador in the US), the consciously unheroic avatar of semi-present whimsy walks a familiar path: lyrical, covertly biting non-sequiturs put to use on idiosyncratic songs that seem to entertain themselves.
Faster and less polished than Terror Twilight, the final Pavement album, Stephen Malkmus nonetheless features its creator's strange brand of suburban romanticism on songs like ‘Trojan Curfew' and `Jennifer and the Ess-Dog.' Malkmus, who has decamped Brooklyn to live among raccoons and other urban pests in semi-rural Oregon, may not be a bearded backwoods Grandaddy but he's way more adventurous, literally and intellectually, than your average room-service rock star.