New Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - "Baltimore"

Download: Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks - "Baltimore"

Real Emotional Trash, the forthcoming album fro Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, arrives via Matador in March. While that's a whole season away, Matablog was so kind as to post the first single from the Jicks' fourth album, a track called "Baltimore".

The song starts out waltzing rocker with a folk-flavored melody with some ethereal effects on the vocals and keyboards, before engaging in style and tempo changes that suggest someone developed a little musical crush on the Fiery Furnaces. When people described band who play music with extended instrumental interplay (that's a pretentious way of saying "lots of jamming") as being "jam-band-for-people-who-don't-like-jam-bands", they could probably point to this track as defense Exhibit A. The end of "Baltimore" actually has some unironic dual guitar harmonies, though they obviously filtered through the indie-rock aesthetic. Which is to say, the harmonies are not screaming. Based on "Baltimore", maybe Real Emotional Trash will be more like Pig Lib, in the sense that Malkmus will show off his underrated guitar chops.

Listen to "Baltimore" at the top of the post.

(Jonathan Graef)