Stephen Malkmus Series: “Freeze the Saints”

Stephen Malkmus is one of our great melodists and balladeers. There are so many other aspects to his music to that compete with this simple statement, whether it’s the obvious influence of The Fall on his early songwriting, the Zeitgeist-y “reflection of a generation” labels forced on Pavement’s music, or Malkmus’s gradual acceptance of his guitar god superpowers. Through it all, he’s written enduring ballads with never-to-be-forgotten melodies from “We Dance” to “Starlings Of The Slipstream” to “Hey,” a recent example with The Hard Quartet. Another entry on this list is “Freeze the Saints” from 2005’s Face the Truth:

Opening with piano and acoustic guitar, Malkmus sings “Freeze the Saints” in a warm, gentle, inviting voice, aptly so since it’s a love song. This is established immediately in the first lines, which evoke the feeling of timelessness, an indelible quality of many love songs:

Seasons change
Nothing lasts for long
Except the earth and the mountains.

But it’s a different kind of love song, one that is realistic about the acceptance of growing older. Malkmus sings that the couple in the song should “feel no shame” about “riding our divisible bodies.” He warns against the inevitable calcification of ideas that comes with aging: “It was long ago / That all of your willing dimensions / Lost the flow / And vanished in veneer.” He calls for a release of that mentality and to let go: “There’s no more counting days.” 

The chorus calls for this loved one to “languish here.” It’s a funny twist of phrase by Malkmus because the word “languish” has negative connotations, as if one is getting feeble or weaker. Malkmus turns that quality on its head, calling for the two to embrace this eventuality since they’ll be doing it together. The use of the word “here” creates a space for the relationship, a room that is accessible only to the two of them to languish together in love forever. 

It’s interesting to compare Malkmus’s use of the word “here” in the chorus of “Freeze the Saints” with the word’s application in perhaps the greatest of his ballads, “Here” from Pavement’s 1992 album Slanted and Enchanted:

“Here” is soaked in disillusionment, one of the preeminent Generation X anthems about being on the precipice of adulthood and learning that the hopes and dreams that you had as a kid aren’t necessarily going to immediately come to fruition when becoming a grown-up. This all-encompassing feeling of being let down could be about a career — “I was dressed for success / But success it never comes” — or about love and relationships. In the chorus of “Here,” the 26-year old Malkmus sings:

Come join us in a prayer
We’ll be waiting, waiting where
Everything’s ending here.

The “here” employed by Malkmus has a sense of finality as if growing up is death itself. With “Freeze the Saints,” an older Malkmus isn’t refuting the words written by his younger self, but instead seems less desperate, more patient and forgiving, and willing to acquiesce to the inevitabilities of aging that is part of every person’s reality.

Though “Freeze the Saints” is presented as a love song, addressed to a lover, it could also be written to a child as Malkmus sings, “Well you are, yes you are so much like me.” At the time of the recording of the track, Malkmus had become a father for the first time. However, the third and final verse could be seen from a different perspective, as if Malkmus is talking to a friend, taking on the manner of an advice song. Though this friend has an “exquisite pedigree,” Malkmus urges them to “share the wealth” and “cauterize the tears.” The latter is such a quintessential Malkmusian line, and it’s delivered perfectly. At this point in his career, Malkmus has honed such an easy command of the elocution of his lyrics. 

It’s hard to ignore the possibility that this friend that Malkmus is singing to could in fact be advice that he is giving to himself. The key lines are: “You said, ‘Done is good’ / But done well is so much fucking better.” This is rich, especially coming from the man who was accused of representing a slacker mentality so many times during his Pavement tenure. Malkmus may have finally reached an age in which he understands the difference between doing something good and doing something well and the satisfaction that comes with that feeling. 

Malkmus commented on the writing and recording of “Freeze the Saints” when talking to Fader about his favorite songs from his solo career:

“I chose this one because people really dig it. It’s based on this private folk release I’d heard. I wanted to do it like some type of dude that was crooning, so I took some inspiration from that and the song grew into a really sweet song. It kind of wrote itself. There’s a little bit of R.E.M.’s early stuff in there, too — something like “Shaking Through.” I was playing piano on it, too, which was the key instrument. It’s got good lyrics, too. They’re clever and emotive, not jaded, just naked and sweet. Some people get feels from it.”

Beyond Malkmus’s unique ability in interviews to use current vernacular that sounds at once sincere but with a little hint of irony, the connection to R.E.M’s “Shaking Through” is interesting since Malkmus mentions his own piano playing in the next sentence. R.E.M’s blending of guitar with piano certainly influenced “Freeze the Saints” while the melodies of the two songs also share a likeness. Of course, Malkmus paid R.E.M. the ultimate compliment by writing an entire song honoring the band’s influence on him, Pavement’s 1993 track “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence.”

Malkmus has an affinity for “Freeze the Saints,” playing it frequently over the years, including a recent live solo performance on May 17, 2025 in New Hampshire in which he can’t remember the name of the song but says, “It’s goes ‘Languish here.” The Jicks Picks compilation includes a rendition from a hometown show in Portland on January 20, 2007 that is a bit heavier than the studio recording and features an exquisite guitar solo by Malkmus:

During the interview with Fader cited earlier, Malkmus goes on to say that he started performing “Freeze the Saints” accompanied only by a piano player and that he “found new meaning in the song.” This arrangement can be found in a recording from June 14, 2018 at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY:

There’s a lovely contrast between the beautiful piano playing by Mike Clark and Malkmus’s fragile, sensitive delivery. His voice cracks a few times during the song, even betraying a bit of emotion from Malkmus. It brings to mind another singer/piano pairing: the version of “Thunder Road” that Bruce Springsteen included on the Live 1975–85 box set. Springsteen’s performance doesn’t include the sometimes fumbling keyboard solo that Malkmus takes in the middle of “Freeze the Saints.” It relieves a bit of the seriousness of the song and perhaps encourages the crowd to join in. The sing-along in this rendition of “Freeze the Saints” culminates when everyone belts out the line “But done well is so much fucking better” in unison with great gusto. By the end, Malkmus is practically whispering the words, straight through to the final “whoa.” Malkmus rightfully gives props to Clark on his playing, especially on nailing “the Bruce Hornsby coda.” An entirely different Bruce has entered the conversation!

The 2018 version of “Freeze the Saints” with the endearing sing-along invites one more reading of the song’s intended audience: Malkmus’s fans. He isn’t known for gushing about his supporters, but he is generous in interviews (despite him saying how much he doesn’t enjoy interviews), has a lengthy discography, tours regularly, and has now done two Pavement reunions. Taking all of this into consideration, the line that bids “So learn to sing along” could be taken literally and “languish here” could be Malkmus asking an imagined devotee to stick with him through it all. 

It doesn’t matter if there is a correct answer about the intended audience for “Freeze the Saints.” The myriad interpretations demonstrate the song’s universality. It’s another of Malkmus’s beautiful ballads, one of his best. “Freeze the Saints” is a different kind of anthem than what he would’ve written in his younger days, as this one is a little more generous, accepting, realistic, and reflective about the changes we all go through as we get older. 

Image: Fra Angelico, (circa 1395–1455), The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs, tempera on poplar wood, part of Fiesole San Domenico Altarpiece, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.