Traditional Techniques
Stephen Malkmus
- LP
- Label
- Domino
Following up on Groove Denied and Sparkle Hard with the Jicks... It supposedly draws from centuries of folk-rock traditions and is based around his 12-string acoustic guitar while incorporating a wide range of sounds including Afghani instruments.
"Take the name Traditional Techniques with as much salt as you’d like or dig the Adorno reference, Malkmus’s third solo LP without the Jicks (or Pavement) is as organic as they come. It’s packed with handmade arrangements, modern folklore, and 10 songs written and performed in Malkmus’s singular voice.
An adventurous new album in an instantly familiar mode, Traditional Techniques creates a serendipitous trilogy with the loose fuzz of the Jicks’ Sparkle Hard (Domino, 2018) and the solo bedroom experiments of Groove Denied (Domino, 2019). Taken together, these three very different full-lengths in three years highlight an ever-curious songwriter committed to finding untouched territory. Perhaps some of these “folk” musicians could take a lesson or two."