Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks’ have announced their new album Sparkle Hard, to be released on May 18. Following first single ‘Middle America’, the band share another taste of the new album with the song ‘Shiggy’, an insanely gleeful, old-school four-chord stomper. Listen below!
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks have thrived, rather than simply endured over 17 years and delivered six albums of buzzy, sub-cultural significance. With Sparkle Hard Malkmus, Mike Clark (keyboards), Joanna Bolme (bass) and Jake Morris (drums) hit the ground running.
It’s light ’n’ breezy, head-down heavy, audacious, melancholic and reflective, good time and bodacious, and it’s both unmistakeably The Jicks and The Jicks refashioned. Sparkle Hard is now available for pre-order here.
Malkmus started writing Sparkle Hard in 2015. He’d upgraded his home-recording equipment and bought some electronic drums and had been working on the Netflix series Flaked. Demos were done in one day in April of 2017 and then in May, The Jicks started recording at a new studio in Portland called Halfling, managed by multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, who produced the album.
Self-indulgent escapism has never been The Jicks’ bag, but on Sparkle Hard, the reality of modern life sits closer to the surface, communication cutting to the chase whether it’s a proto-punk grind or a back-porch country duet doing the talking. A cleaner burn for dark and complex times.
Stream / purchase ‘Shiggy’: https://stephenmalkmus.lnk.to/shiggy
