April 5 2008: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, John Vanderslice - Mass MoCA Hunter Center, North Adams MA

Caitlin and I headed up to North Adams to see Malkmus and his Jicks play in an airplane hangar. Or what seemed like one. I wonder what they used to manufacture in that space.

Vanderslice played first, mostly songs from his new album, mostly uneventfully. And he did throw "Time Travel is Lonely" in there near the end, but even that lacked any real captivating qualities. Too bad, that's such a great song. He's got a violin/bassist now who wears skinny jeans, instead of Broecker, so that made for some interesting arrangements. And for their last song the band got off stage with acoustic instruments and played "Nikki Oh Nikki" in the middle of the crowd with a lot of floor tom and harmony vocals. Which I thought was pretty great. Always did like that song.

The Jicks were pretty good, but pretty boring sometimes, and pretty full of stupid guitar solos. I used to adore the way Malkmus plays guitar. And I think he's the one who's changed here. Lots of boring wanking. And lots of the songs were long and dull. None of those atonal lines that always blew my mind. It occurrs to me that this is the only time I've seen Malkmus outside of Portland or Seattle, and maybe he just really makes a point to not play boring solos for minutes at a time in the Northwest. Maybe.

On the plus side, I hadn't heard "Dark Wave" in a while, and "It Kills" was lots of fun, with the backing vocals getting sung like they were before the album came out, and I hadn't heard "Vanessa from Queens" in a really long time. And Janet Weiss was playing drums, after all. Really can't complain about things when you've got Janet on drums.