Catching Up with Stephen Malkmus

THE other day I spoke to the former leader of what may've been the greatest band of the '90s -- Stephen Malkmus of Pavement. Their mix of melody and noise electrified me during my misspent youth, and it was gratifying to see the band reunite a few years ago and actually play like they meant it.

Malkmus, who recently returned to Portland after a couple years in Berlin, has a fine new record out on Matador. He'll be touring soon. Here's my interview. Just don't expect straight answers from him. I've spoken to him several times over the years -- on each occasion he gets a bit friendlier and a bit more cryptic.

The Return of the Shins

WHEN I sat down with all four members of the Shins around the time their Chutes Too Narrow album came out, I was already a big fan of the band's gentle, indirect songs and slightly obscure production that made their music sound like it had been recovered from a '60s bootleg.

I was also struck, that afternoon at the Authentic Cafe near Fairfax and Beverly, how strong and natural the camaraderie between the band members was. That day I was sure, that a) they'd stick with this lineup, more or less, as long as they lasted, and b) that good as they were, they were about as big as they'd ever be.

So much for my powers of prediction. The Shins have now followed fellow Portlanders The Decemberists into the major-label bigtime: Their new record, Port of Morrow, is a big hit on Columbia Records. And singer James Mercer, who I recall as a bit shy and very sweet and literary has, after his work with Danger Mouse on Broken Bells, broken up the Shins and reassembled it around his own leadership.

HERE is my piece on the band, which has continued to make good music through all the changes.

Mercer, by the way, told me he spent much of his life indoors playing the Smiths and other British bands. 


"There's a certain weird melancholy to the melodies that I've always enjoyed," he says of English music. "I read in John Keats or someone, one of the romantic poets, that long ago they believed that the gall bladder created melancholy -- and that only the British had that organ."

Author Chuck Palahniuk

ODDLY, it was a very pleasant evening the night I met with Chuck Palahniuk in Portland a few years back to discuss his then-new novel, Snuff, over dinner. (The book is not as appetizing.)

The Fight Club author has a new novel, Damned. And HERE is my conversation with him.

Here's part of my profile:

Palahniuk's method is to sniff out such subjects, then pounce. "Things that last in the culture tend to be those unresolved issues," he said. "Like Ira Levin's 'The Stepford Wives' was a wonderful, entertaining way to discuss what Susan Faludi would later call backlash. Levin did that again with women's health and abortion with 'Rosemary's Baby.' He was always so ahead of the curve."

Wild Flag at the Troubadour

THERE was so much buzz about Wild Flag – the indie super group made up of members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi and the Minders – that the question going into Thursday night’s show at the Troubadour, the second of two packed Los Angeles shows, was whether this would be a good night of indie rock, or something transcendent.

The answer turned out to be, a little of both.

The Portland/DC four piece is a kind of back-to-basics girl-group garage band. There’s also a bit of jazz-damage to the guitar playing – Helium’s Mary Timony, who took up more space onstage than I expected and seemed to smile a lot more than I recall from the 1990s, has aways played chords that were harmonically strange and arrayed up and down the neck of the guitar. With Carrie Brownstein, in an outgrown Joey Ramone haircut unleashing rockstar kicks and Pete Townshend windmills, this was a band – despite a keyboard replacing the bass – harkening back to the great two-guitar groups of punk New York.

So it’s hard not to miss with this combination, and Brownstein was a killer frontwoman and oddly friendly host. A New York Times review from early in the tour described the band as having trouble syncing up – that was certainly not a problem last night.

When the show was only good, or perhaps really good, the songs were simple three-chord stomps, with some great guitar freakouts near songs' end. But they were a little straightforward and easy to predict.  Of two new songs, one was not quite ready despite a cool bridge.

The very best stuff – the two opening songs ("Black Tiles" and "Electric Band," both from the very fine debut LP on Merge) and few tracks across the middle of the set, and the triumphant encore – made clear why we're all so excited about this band. These songs saw one of the best drummers in the business, Quasi's Janet Weiss, kicking it hard, and a weirdly affectionate combat between the two guitars evoking memories of Verlaine and Lloyd.

The encore made these roots explicit: Television’s See No Evil (above), the Stones’ Beast of Burden, and a Ramones-inspired Do You Wanna Dance. The Fiery Furnaces' Eleanor Friedberger (who I seem to be running into a lot recently – she hangs at my coffee shop when she is in town) came up to sing the last two songs.

Let’s hope this band has a long and rich career. They’re not enough to save indie rock, but they might save a few souls, one night at a time.

Colin Meloy on Gillian Welch

YESTERDAY I had this story on country/folk duo Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, who perform in LA Thursday night.

One thing I did not have room for that in that article was a long quote given to me by Colin Meloy, who employed the two on The King is Dead, his latest record by the Decemberists. Meloy turns out to be a longtime fan -- here's his entire thought. Thanks to Meloy, whose last Decemberists show for several years we caught in Portland a few weeks back.

I was introduced to Gillian at Rockin' Rudy's, a very fine record store in Missoula, MT. I think a friend turned me on to her first record right after it came out. I was immediately smitten. It happens that I also spent the summer of '97 working in the vineyards of the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the song "One More Dollar" felt particularly auspicious. Tucker Martine and I were wanting to create a kind of vibe on The King is Dead that we had always loved in old country records -- the idea of pairing a male and female vocal really hot in the mix, like every song was a duet. I'd always loved Neil Young's record, Comes a Time, and was really taken by the fact that the late, great Nicolette Larson sang on nearly every song, lending a tone and tenor to the record that just wouldn't exist without her voice. We wanted to do something similar with The King is Dead. Gill and Dave very clearly work in a completely different way than many people I know. I get the feeling for all their love of simplicity and clarity comes from a kind of insanely finicky place. Which is funny; so many of her songs feel so off the cuff, so underthought. But there's a lot of thinking that goes on, I think, to get to that place. Like all great artists and musicians, she and Dave, as far as I can tell, are just great lovers of music -- of all sorts. Their collective voice tends toward the Americana/country side of things, but their hearts don't necessarily hew to just one thing. And it all makes perfect sense to me -- they are the bridge between Robyn Hitchcock and the Louvin Brothers. And if you think about it, that bridge isn't necessarily that long.

Trouble in Portlandia

ONE of our favorite places, here at The Misread City, is Portland, Ore., and as much as we love the walkable neighborhoods, the groovy coffee shops, and the excellent local cuisine and Oregon Pinots, we find ourselves trapped helplessly in Powell’s bookstore every time we’re up there. (You may also have heard about the show Portlandia starring a member of one or favorite bands.)

So the troubles at the four-decades-old Portland institution, which has both a strong Internet presence and several locations in and around the city, saddens us. The company recently announced 31 layoffs due to the economy and new technology.

When I went to visit Powell’s a few years ago for an LA Times story, I was struck by a contrast: Every morning, at least a dozen people seemed to be waiting outside the main 68,000 sq. ft. store for its 9 am opening, and even on week days the place was full of people buying books.

But Michael Powell, the company founder, glowered through out interview, worried about the book market, changes in the Internet, and passing over power to his daughter Emily.

"Businesses don't transition very well," Powell said. "Most of them fail." But he didn't think twice when his daughter, Emily, told him she wanted to come back to Portland and take over. "I didn't have another option," he said.

To the naked eye, things did not seem nearly as dark as Powell described them, and Emily was charming, smart and optimistic. Still, maybe he was onto something.

HERE is my full story, which describes much of what Powell's -- both like and unlike other American independent bookstores -- is up against.

Remembering the Go-Betweens

The Believer's Music Issue, out this summer, has a substantial interview with Robert Forster, co-founder of one of my all-time favorite bands, The Go-Betweens. Robert Christgau's Q&A, while offering no major surprises, captures one of the most literate men in rock music with all his aloofness intact.

This is a band I think about a lot -- they were part of my childhood in the '80s before breaking up in '89, I saw them on three appearances in LA after they reformed around 2000, and I can render the guitar chords from "Love Goes On" reasonably well. (Though not quite as well as Nada Surf does on its recent covers record.)

But the interview -- and the enduring quality of their songs -- has made me hear them in my head more than ever lately. They were an Australian group who lived in England some of the time, but I actually hear them when I travel to Oregon: When the band reformed, Portland band Sleater-Kinney backed them up with a rhythm section and sublime vocal harmonies, and they recorded the wonderful The Friends of Rachel Worth there. (For reasons having largely but not entirely to do with production, I may prefer the reunited band to the original. This puts me very much in the minority on these guys.)

Grant McLennan, the warmer and more pop-oriented ("Magic in Here," "Going Blind") of the band's lead duo, told me about how he was looking forward to returning to "my beloved Pacific Northwest," and described how he much he loved the deep green countryside there.

In '05 I was lucky enough to speak to both of the Forster and Grant McLennan about their new record and what turned out to be their last appearance in Los Angeles. Here is my piece, in which Grant describes the duo's original meeting:

"We were doing the same theater course at university," McLennan says, "and I noticed this tall fellow carrying a Talking Heads record, '77.' I didn't think anybody else in Australia was listening to it. It was great to meet someone you felt wasn't going to beat you up, and who was as bad an actor as you were."

About a year later, I came to work to find that McLennan had died suddenly, at 48. I've always thought of myself -- just as I am more a John guy than a Paul guy -- as more of a Robert type than a Grant type. I like Forster's detachment, darkness ("Danger in the Past"), biting ironies. But much of the flowing melodies and sense of regret of the band's best songs came from Grant. He is also one of the sweetest musicians I've ever spoken to -- I wish this had not been my only encounter.

I was both upset and honored to be able to write Grant's obit, which is Here . As they say, the music lives on.

Congratulating Spoon -- Alas

FIRST of all, I'm awfully pleased that one of my favorite working bands -- the Austin/ Portland combo Spoon -- has been voted the decade's best indie rock band, American division, by the readers of The Misread City. More proof that my Steve McQueen/ '59 Miles Davis/ Audrey Hepburn- digging followers have great taste. (And an incredibly retro sensibility, but maybe that is my fault.)

For this indie list, I tried to concentrate on groups that were of the 21st century rather than '90s bands that held on. I included Sleater-Kinney, because of a very strong Indian summer, but left off some of my favorites, like Built to Spill and Yo La Tengo. And while Spoon began in the '90s, and put out at least one good record before the turn of the century, the winning streak that began with 2001's "Girls Can Tell" has made them the most consistently exciting indie band of the period. They're also a sharp, focussed, driven live band, and they no longer remind me unduly of their influences -- Pixies, Wire, Revolver-era Beatles.

Some of their best songs: "Rhythm and Soul," "Don't Make Me a Target," "Sister Jack." Here is the atypical tune "I Turn My Camera On," which still has their characteristic mix of minimalism and rhythm. And here is the sly, funky "Don't You Evah," with a more typical nasal Britt Daniel vocal.

So I've already said I love this band., and I can't wait to hear their next LP, "Transference," which comes out in mid-January. (Here is Sunday's NYT piece, not by me.)

But there's also something a bit deflating about Spoon being the decade's winner. This is a modest group that does something very specific and often low-key. Compared to the greatest Amerindie bands of the 90s -- Pavement, Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo, etc. -- they are stylistically conservative. Compare them to 80s indie -- Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Replacements -- they seem unambitious.

I won't blame Spoon for this -- they are a kickass group and keep getting better. But it makes me wonder if indie has lost its ability to innovate, to surprise us. Another of decade's most celebrated bands, The Strokes, sounds to me like a pedestrian pastiche, and groups that I was once excited about -- Interpol, for instance, the Shins, the Decemberists -- haven't really gone anywhere.

We're a long way from indie rock being a dead language, but it has certainly become a constricting one. Here's hoping that the 2010s show a group or movement arriving to open it up a bit. Two of my runners up -- TV on the Radio, with their baffling blend of Eno, dub and hip hop -- and Wilco, with a commitment to a personal vision -- may show the way forward.

Until then, I"ll be blasting "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga."

Photo credit: Merge Records

Los Angeles vs. the Gastropub

We seem to be in the grip of a full-scale beer renaissance here in LA. It's taken a while to get here -- as beer expert Hallie Beaune has pointed out, Southern California's proximity to wine country and the (often mistaken) impression that beer has more calories than cocktails or wine has held back beer's progress in this slimness-obsessed town. (Even as a wine-lover, I cannot help but think that the nouveau-riche association of wine with "classy" has helped wine and again, hurt beer.)

In any case, beer is here, and places like the Verdugo Bar in Glassell Park, the York in nearby Highland Park, and Father's Office in Santa Monica and Culver City remind me why I like the stuff so much. (And why Budweiser and most American lagers are so meager by comparison with, say, a Craftsman real ale or Scotland's Bellhaven.)

HERE is a piece I wrote for Portland's Oregonian (it comes out on Sunday) that looks at five gastropubs from the Eastside to the ocean. Where's Golden State, with its delectable sweet potato fries? Where's Ford's Filling Station, with its handsome celebrity chef? Sorry guys, I only had five. In my list I was looking for places with strong, unusual beer lists and good-to-excellent food, which I define -- for most of these spots -- as requiring a very fine burger as well as a range of less conventional offerings.

Those with strong opinions should vent them here or hold them for an upcoming poll on the city's best burger.

Eight Decades of Ursula K. Le Guin

TODAY one of the most innovative and intriguing writers in the english language marks her 80th birthday. there aren't many novelists who i enjoy as much today as i did when i was in elementary school; ursula le guin is one of them.

here is the recent LA Times piece i wrote on her after visiting her in portland and re-immersing myself in her body of work and the debates around it. she was a very sharp, wide-ranging conversationalist i wish i could have spent more time with.

and here is a guardian piece in which i discuss her role (alongside berkeley high classmate philip k. dick, among others) in leading my generation of novelists away from realism.

le guin is best known for her "earthsea" books, which are inspired by tolkien and carl jung and in turn inspired the harry potter novels. her two consensus science-fiction masterpieces are "the left hand of darkness" and "the dispossessed," which grow in rereading. but her last novel, "lavinia," which pursues a minor character from virgil's "aeniad," is wonderful as well.

(here is a birthday note from the SFWA, and a characteristically wry note from sf writer robert silverberg.)

looking forward to many more years of productivity from this american original.

The Late, Great Elliott Smith

YESTERDAY would have been the 40st birthday of elliott smith, perhaps the finest songwriter of my generation, and a musician who killed himself six years ago. my wife -- a longtime music journalist who considers him the deepest artist she's ever interviewed -- and i remember that dark day well.

smith, of course, came up through the portland band heatmiser, and released some powerful and very spare solo records up there before moving to LA... he came to the southland a few years after i did, and i was lucky enough to see him perform several times, as well as to sit next to him at the bar at the troubadour, where he was nursing a guinness and clearly did not want to be disturbed. (i also recall, maybe a year before he died, smith waiting in line behind me in line at amoeba music, with a basket full of vinyl. his girlfriend had to lead him to the register like he was an overmedicated old man.)

HERE is my piece from 2004, in which i interviewed his girlfriend, producer, biographer, and musical friends, and look back at his life and then-controversial death. as sad as i still am to have him gone, he's one of the people who reminds me of how emotionally direct and inventive the music of the indie-rock movement can be. also: as influenced as he was by indie and by the british invasion (especially george harrison), smith was, musically, every bit his own man.

Ursula Le Guin Vs. Oliver Cromwell

SOMEHOW, without quite knowing it, i wrote two brief pieces on ursula le guin, and both have recently gone up.

the first is mostly an extended intro to my LATimes profile, which adds some excised lines from author/ essayist/ cosmopolitan pico iyer as well as sci-fi scholar/ critic annalee newitz.

the second, here, is the seed of what i hope is a bigger project some day on the transition away from dogmatic realism in american (and to a lesser extent, british) literature. i begin with david mitchell's enchanting "black swan green" before ending up with jonathan lethem, oliver cromwell, and others. (it ran on the Guardian's books blog and is my first piece in an english paper since i was a student in brighton almost 20 years ago.)

as for the movement to genre/fantasy, etc. michael chabon has written quite well on the issue, of course, and i recommend his recent essay/criticism collection "maps and legends" to all.

The Wonderful Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin

ONE of the greatest thrills of my professional life was the chance to interview the novelist ursula le guin last summer at her home in portland. HERE is my piece, which runs sunday in the LAT.

le guin is one of the few writers from my childhood -- 5th or 6th grade i think, for the "earthsea" books -- who gives me the same pleasure, if in a different key, as an adult.

in person, i found her  -- at nearly 80 -- to be intellectually and physically tough, like a frontierswoman. which fits a dedicated westerner who has fought to redraw the boundaries between serious and genre fiction. 

her latest novel, "lavinia," which takes off from virgil's "aeniad" and just came out in paperback, is fantastic. its puts some in mind of robert graves' delicious "i, claudius."

my only regret is that the idea of a "long" LATimes piece has changed drastically since i started the story, and the result is too short to really capture the full sweep of a half-century long career, and a writer who has been acclaimed, controversial, and in and out of fashion over those years. either way, her accomplishment is profound.

Photo credit: ursulakleguin.com