Album Review: Mirror Traffic by Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks

It was a fun evening with friends and I was walking home with X when she said of Y, I think she dresses bad on purpose. X I found out was offended by Y purposely dressing bad because she thought Y was in essence saying I'm better than our society, I'm better than everyone else, and so I can dress how I like. She felt that Y looked down on her because she tried to dress, well normal.

This pretty much sums up how I've always felt about Pavement and thus Stephen Malkmus. When he wants Malkmus can produce exceptional alternative pop. For the most part though he would rather produce experimental stuff that seems to do nothing more than stroke his ego. Is that being too harsh?

I use to work with a guy who had worked almost every job you could imagine. He had even had the job of picking up dead animals off the side of the road and he swore the worst job he had ever had was working at a local food coop. It was dealing with all the people who thought so high of themselves because they were at the coop.

Here's the thing, if Malkmus is so smart, then he should sit down and produce a great album that can appeal to a large audience. Do that without abandoning his beliefs in music. That's what true artistic geniuses do.

All of that being said, there are as always with Malkmus's work, some good songs on this album and if you like Malkmus there isn't any reason why you wouldn't like this album.

Following the Rhapsody rating method I give it 1 out of 5 stars for Just OK.