July 21st, 2008 11:56am

A Weak Stone’s Throw From Sheepshead Bay

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks @ Siren Music Festival, Coney Island 7/19/2008

Baby C’mon / Gardenia / Dragonfly Pie / Jenny and the Ess-Dog / Phantasies / Hopscotch Willie / Elmo Delmo / Cold Son / Baltimore / Astral Facial / We Can’t Help You / Real Emotional Trash // All Over Gently / Pencil Rot / Two Tickets To Paradise

The very fact that I went to this show is a testament to how much I love Stephen Malkmus and his Jicks. I really can’t emphasize enough how much I loathe the Siren Festival — it’s gross, overcrowded, always has terrible sound, and it’s totally out of the way. (It took me about 90 minutes to get there, which is about the same amount of time it would take for me to go visit my parents in the Hudson Valley.) I was there out of love, but I’ve got to say, I did feel a bit of resentment about having to go out to this thing.

Thankfully, it was worth it. I didn’t show up to the festival until around 7 PM, just a little while before the Jicks hit the stage, and right around the time the sun was going down. Without the overbearing sun, it was actually a fairly pleasant experience. Well, aside from being surrounded by some world-class indie dinks, but really, by the 30 minute mark of the Jicks set, most of them had cleared out to see Broken Social Scene. (How’s that for an indie generation gap, by the way? As these people streamed out, actively rejecting greatness and embracing bland mediocrity, I kept thinking “in indie rock terms, this is the face of the enemy.” I can be melodramatic.)

Unsurprisingly, the Jicks show had subpar sound, and the band was troubled by shoddy monitors. I don’t understand how this festival has gone on every year of this decade, and they still haven’t bothered to improve this rather crucial aspect of putting on a large-scale show. Nevertheless, the band turned in a pretty good show with a handful of welcome surprises — a very promising new song near the end of the main set, an amusing Eddie Money cover, and “Phantasies,” which I had not seen in concert for some time. “Cold Son” and “We Can’t Help You” were both far better in this show than when I saw them performed back in April, mainly because Malkmus performed both with his red-and-cream electric guitar, and not on his acoustic. I don’t think acoustic guitars suit him very well — they just aren’t colorful enough for his voice and his compositions.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Tuesday Afternoon” (Live for Fair Game, 4/1/2008) – My original plan for today involved writing about a particular song from Real Emotional Trash, but that number wasn’t performed in this show, and I don’t really have the time or energy to write about it well as I’d like today, so I’m going to put it off for a little while. Instead, I’m posting this very obscure cover that the band recorded in a session that I produced for Fair Game with the show’s engineer John Delore. Normally, I’d tell you more about the song, but really, everything I know about it comes from Stephen’s banter at the start of this track. He’ll fill you in.

Fluxcast #2 – The Fluxcast is back, by popular-ish demand! I’m still working out how to do this, so feedback is helpful. I actually made two of these over the weekend, and I much prefer the third episode, so that will run later in the week. This one is fine enough, but in retrospect I’m not too happy with the way I grouped similar songs into blocks. Also, I had to record the back-announcing for the first mic break twice, and in the second take I forgot to explain why I made that opening block in the first place. So, uh, sorry about that.

Elsewhere: Is this the worst indie rock tattoo?