{"id":803355,"date":"2020-01-23T08:23:32","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T15:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=941274"},"modified":"2020-01-23T08:23:32","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T15:23:32","slug":"song-you-need-to-know-stephen-malkmus-xian-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/song-you-need-to-know-stephen-malkmus-xian-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Song You Need to Know: Stephen Malkmus, \u2018Xian Man\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stephen Malkmus<\/a>\u2019 2019 album Groove Denied<\/em> <\/a>was a mix of electronic tunes and garage-rock, recorded minus his longtime band the Jicks. He\u2019s quickly following that enjoyable record with another great solo LP, Traditional Techniques<\/em>. Where Groove Denied<\/em>\u2018s synthy leanings felt like somewhat of a detour, Traditional Techniques<\/em> is more of a culmination; it\u2019s a folk-rock record, with Malkmus playing acoustic guitar and going all the way in on the fireside, cardigan-sweater-and wool-socks guitar beauty that\u2019s long been a hallmark of his solo albums since leaving Pavement<\/a> over 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

The idea to record a mostly acoustic record came about while Malkmus was working on his last album with the Jicks, 2018\u2019s Sparkle Hard. <\/em>\u201cMalkmus took on Traditional Techniques <\/em>as a kind of self-dare,\u201d reads a statement accompanying the album announcement. \u201cConceived while recording Sparkle Hard<\/em> at Portland\u2019s Halfling Studio, Malkmus had observed the variety of acoustic instruments available for use. The idea escalated within a matter of weeks into a full set of songs, and shortly thereafter into a realized and fully committed album.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s joined on the album by guitarist Matt Sweeney \u2014 a member of the great Nineties indie-rock band Chavez \u2014 who has collaborated with Will Oldham\u2019s beloved Bonnie \u201cPrince\u201d Billy and also appeared in Billy Corgan\u2019s early-\u201900s supergroup Zwan. The first single, \u201cXian Man,\u201d is a sweet, wintry jam that kind of suggests how it might\u2019ve turned out if Richard Thompson or Bert Jansch had played guitar on the third Velvet Underground album (or, I suppose, conversely, if Lou Reed had sat in on Fairport Convention\u2019s What We Did On Our Holidays<\/em>), with Malkmus banging away elegantly on his acoustic guitar and Sweeney adding cool, droney electric leads. The whole album, out March 6th, is a treat, just the right mood-stabilizing stuff to get you through those last couple weeks of winter.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Malkmus\u2019 2019 album Groove Denied was a mix of electronic tunes and garage-rock, recorded minus his longtime band the Jicks. He\u2019s quickly following that enjoyable record with another great solo LP, Traditional Techniques. Where Groove Denied\u2018s synthy leanings felt like somewhat of a detour, Traditional Techniques is more of a culmination; it\u2019s a folk-rock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-24 23:39:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}