SM and the Jicks

Malkmus to Release New Album in May

Chris Rediske reports:
So there comes a time in the life of every artist when her/she must step out of the shadow of his/her Jicks and stand on his/her own two feet. Or are we mixing metaphors again? Whatever-- the point is that, according to Matador's lovely website, Stephen Malkmus has finished his third "post-Pavement album", which is entitled Face the Truth and is due out on May 24. As we reported late last year, Malkmus was working on the album primarily on his own in his basement studio, "punching in with my toe, Todd Rundgren-style." As it turns out, the Jicks are nowhere to be found this time out, and Face the Truth will go down in history as the first proper Stephen Malkmus album, should history be inclined to record that sort of thing.
We also listed a number of possible track names in that same report, only two of which are actually represented on the finished album-- which means that either Malkmus was fucking with us (quite possible), or that the names of the tracks have changed considerably (not at all unlikely), or that this album's going to have some serious b-sides (who can say?). In any case, we now have the finalized tracklist for Face the Truth, all pretty, finished, and quite frankly, not nearly as weird as usual. Take a look:

01 Invisible Bodies
02 Baby C'mon
03 Horslip
04 Mmmmm...
05 Loud Cloud Crowd
06 No More Shoes
07 Mama
08 Malediction
09 Pencil Rot
10 It Kills
11 I've Hardly Been

According to that same post, Malkmus is preparing for the birth of a child, and will thus be selfishly not touring much for the new record. However, he will be playing "selected U.S. dates", the only confirmed example of which is a headlining show at South By Southwest on March 18 at The Parish in Austin (god, how I love a preposition). According to a post on Malkmus' official website, that show will see him play with "some sort of weird unit," as drummer John Moen will be gallivanting across the country as the new drummer for the Decemberists.