Stephen Malkmus

Martha Wainwright

El Rey - June 14, 2005

Live Review by Adam McKibbin

Every music fan has a list of pipe dream reunions, impossible reconciliations that can only be brought about by missions to end poverty (see: Floyd, Pink).  Pavement didn’t have the sort of acrimonious, “I’m going to sue your ass off” breakup that often lands bands on that list, so a fan could be forgiven for holding on to the hope of seeing Stephen Malkmus and Spiral Stairs taking a joint bow at next year’s Coachella.  They were, after all, a great band.

Three albums into his career as a solo artist (a term that is meant as no offense to the omnipresent Jicks), it’s turning out that Malkmus is pretty great on his own, too.  His latest, Face The Truth, adds another handful of classics to his well-stocked catalog, and finds the songwriter still exploring some unseen territory in indie quirk-rock while also often sounding as accessible as ever.  On stage, he’s every bit as sardonic and self-assured as he sounds on record, and his famously languid persona is offset by the animation of his band.  Clearly, his loyal constituents have already had plenty of time to digest Face The Truth, and they were usually spot-on in their verdicts of enthusiasm (the rollicking “Baby C’mon,” the wistful “It Kills,” and the splendidly showy “No More Shoes”) and occasional respectful distance (“Malediction”). 

Despite a long-standing reputation for catering to the music world’s equivalent of intellectual elites, Malkmus was plagued by a scattering of requisite dumb asses who shouted things like “Cut Your Hair,” and, worse, “Anything by Pavement,” and, most distressingly, “Free Bird!”  After an apology for an excessively lengthy tuning session in between songs, one fellow in the audience offered up a heartfelt cry of “It’s worth it, Malkmus!”  Now that guy gets it.

Opener Martha Wainwright seized the attention of much of the early crowd with selections from her arresting self-titled debut and Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole EP.  Martha sticks closer to the folk realm of Mom (Kate McGarrigle) and Dad (Loudon Wainwright III) than brother Rufus, and yet this isn’t your parents’ folkie, hippy-dippy music, even if she does sometimes channel feisty spirits past like Emmylou Harris.  Sometimes uncomfortably intimate (in a good way), Wainwright never shies from the most confessional of lyrics, and while perfectly capable of sounding lovely (“When The Day Is Short”), she also likes to reveal raw nerves by pushing her voice to the near-breaking point (“I Will Internalize”). 

Even if relationships of every nature have been chronicled a billion times, Wainwright is proof that story number one billion and one can be captivating if told correctly.  When she seethed “I will not pretend / I will not put on a smile / I will not say I’m alright for you,” the audience felt both the venom and the vulnerability—the spit and the tears.