He Is No Less Lost

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Elmo Delmo” – There’s something in Stephen Malkmus’ voice that keeps him from sounding morose, depressed, or even angry. His songs approach those feelings, but there’s something about his personality and the very sound of his voice that downsizes negative emotions or dilutes them, leaving just an insidious trace of fear, doubt, and longing. He sounds as if he can shrug off anything, and for all I know, he can. I’m not sure if I’d cast Malkmus as an optimist, per se, but he seems entirely incapable of approaching the worst in life without levity and perspective. This may be the root of why I identify with his music so completely — the subtle emotional gray scale of Malkmus’ body of work comes closer to feeling like my baseline state than any other music that I know.

Malkmus’ unflappable, well-adjusted everyman persona is exactly what makes “Elmo Delmo” one of the scariest pieces of music that he’s ever written. The song starts off sounding rather epic and heroic, with language and dynamic shifts that emphasize a sense of courage and strength, even when he’s talking about a purple puma and a meta grotto. That takes a turn after a few verses, when we finally get a sense of what he’s up against: “I’m one with the grid / it turns me into a double form / I risk dissociation at every turnpike.” Immediately after that reveal, the bottom drops out, and an extended instrumental passage takes us on a guided tour of the darker corners of our hero’s mind.

And then it begins: Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. Elmo Delmo. It’s total gibberish, but it burns a hole in his skull, and the mindless repetition beats his brain to pulp. It’s the onset of madness, the break from reality. Elmo Delmo is a cute, cuddly abyss. The worst traps seem innocuous at first. In the end, he rebels. He pulls against the tide, and swears to seize his life from Elmo Delmo, and the song goes out on a fight, but there’s no resolution, just this ambiguous cliffhanger. (Click here to buy it from Buy Early Get Now. You’re kind of a fool if you buy this record any other way.)