Stephen Malkmus

Stephen Malkmus gave a great interview with the AV Club the other day. He is the man who inspired the name of this very blog. I admire his humor, insight, and total lack of pretension. He's critical of modern indie rock without sounding like a crotchety old man.

Here are some highlights:

On writing lyrics: I write with a filter of trying to avoid the completely obvious. Trying to avoid Lenny Kravitz-style rhymes.

On the evolution of indie rock: The indie moniker has obviously grown with movies like Juno and The Arcade Fire or whatever. U2 wants to hang around with Arcade Fire. U2 didn't want to hang around with Pavement. It's too different, you know? Maybe they're better or something. Or maybe we were, you know, not a threat. The difference between U2 and Pavement was quite vast. It's grown narrower—closer, I guess. Radiohead being the biggest band in the world.

On indie-ification of genres: Country music has even been [turned indie]—Drive-By Truckers and these bands like that that I read about recently, they're part of it. It doesn't really matter, you know. They're just nervous and don't want the same influences as other people. They want to name-check different things.

On Portland: It used to feel like it was a little off the grid. Not so much now. But if you're in Williamsburg, you feel like there's 40 other bands, and your influences are out getting cosmopolitan, and everyone is trying to be cool or something. And you really don't have to be cool here. I think that's a good thing—that you can feel sort of isolated here. [...] It's a safe, comfortable place. And those kinds of service-economy jobs—like, waitstaff jobs and stuff—they have some pride here. You can be a coffee-slinger and have some pride and be kind of cool here, whereas in New York City, you're going to work on Broadway at Au Bon Pain.