It was with only a slight tremor of bitterness that, at the start of this millennium, I read and accepted the news that Pavement had played their final show in London at the end of November, and were no longer working together. Although they were one of the most entertaining and important bands of the nineties, having produced a string of ridiculously great records including Slanted & Enchanted, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and Wowee Zowee (my personal favorite, and an album that has become a sort of indie rock White Album for fans—a brilliant, expansive, uneven record that showcases Pavement’s best and worst ideas), I knew it was time for them to go. The nineties were theirs—let the new century belong to someone else.

Now it’s 2003, Stephen Malkmus is in a new band called the Jicks (the name derives from the intersection of “Jerk” and “Dick” or Mick Jagger in reverse, depending on who you ask, and when), and Pavement is just a milky shadow hovering at his back. With the Jicks, Malkmus has created two strong, quirky albums, the newer of which, Pig Lib, was released and warmly received earlier this year. Even for the most devoted Malkmus fan, however, these records will always be evaluated, ultimately, for how they do and do not match up to his former band’s output. This is unfortunate, because Stephen Malkmus is one of the truly great songwriters we have.

When I spoke to him on the phone, a day before he and the Jicks were to begin a high-profile, convention-center-style tour supporting Radiohead, Malkmus was relaxed and congenial, dryly humorous, despite the fact that I was somewhere in the middle of an extensive list of interviews he would have to endure that day. The disarmingly casual trajectory of the conversation reminded me of a line from the Pavement song Stereo, in which Malkmus ponders the private life of Rush frontman Geddy Lee: “What about the voice of Geddy Lee / How did it get so high? / I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?” We learn, in the next line, that, yes, Geddy Lee does hang his falsetto on the dressing room mirror offstage. With Malkmus, though, I could only barely tell the difference between the man and his songs, and that lack of distinction has always been at the heart of his work.

—Matthew Derby

WATER SAFETY

THE BELIEVER: I know that, living in Portland, you’re pretty close to the ocean, and there’s that song on your new record where you warn the listener not to feed the oysters. Does the ocean make you nervous? I...