Bleep

It’s Stephen Malkmus, but not as you know him. The former Pavement frontman’s latest LP with the Jicks seems, at first glance, to be business as usual. Songs have titles like ‘Middle America’ and ‘Bike Lane’, and most of them are breezy indie chugs of the kind that Malkmus can turn out at the drop of a hat. But scratch the surface and you’ll see that there is evolution on Sparkle Hard. Examples include the guest vocals of one Kim Gordon on ‘Refute’, Malkmus’s use of auto-tune for ‘Rattler’, and the epic seven-minute closer which moves from impressionistic ambient pop to a triumphant post-punk climax reminiscent of Deerhunter’s ‘Nothing Ever Happened’.