The Sublation of Hippie and Punk

Although I purchased this album at midnight on the day of its release, I didn't hear it as a whole until today. Part of the reason for that is that I have been listening to live versions of the tracks from the 1/9/07 show at Plush for some time now. But Matt LeMay's mediocre review in Pitchfork played a role as well. As I already wrote in "my Live Journal entry about the measure of my devotion":http://cbertsch.livejournal.com/728367.html to all things Pavement-related, I struggle to evaluate anything by its former members objectively. I can't hear my way outside of my ritual satisfactions. I'm pretty sure, though, that this state of affairs would change abruptly if I were listening to a record that truly wasn't good.After all, although I eagerly purchased the solo record by Pavement's first drummer Gary Young and cheered the video for "Plant Man"'s astonishing appearance on ??Beavis and Butthead??, it's not like I ever would have described it as something I listen to for musical pleasure. Maybe the problem with Stephen Malkmus's solo work is that it seeks the pleasure spot too lazily, through jamming that will win over members of his -- and my -- generation whose affection for punk and post-punk was, to some extent, already a ??historical?? affection and therefore far easier to reconcile with the psychedelic revival of the mid-1980s. My sense is that Malkmus, like me, came too late to hate the hippies. Rather, he was able to discern the hippie elements in the culture inaugurated by punk and to see the precursors to punk within the midst of hippie-dom. This is all by way of noting the aptness of a comment my friend Joel made back in 1997, as we were listening to Pavement's ??Wowee Zowee?? towards the tail end of a very long drive to Death Valley, to the effect that Pavement could step into the role occupied by the Grateful Dead and Phish if they desired. I would say that Malkmus's solo work has continued a trajectory already apparent by Pavement's second record ??Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain??, with its Fillmore-invoking final track. ??Real Emotional Trash?? is definitely the ??most?? jammy of his four solo -- or semi-solo, since The Jicks are a real band -- albums to date, but hardly a break with precedent. The difference is that instead of one or two songs that devote extended massages to musical ??fleur-de-lis??, ??Real Emotional Trash?? has five or six. My suspicion is that it would sound great through headphones in a state of total darkness. But, as I've found out this morning, it's not a bad accompaniment to doing the dishes and writing notes on what I mean to write.