Stephen Malkmus Series: “Senator”

In 2011, Stephen Malkmus, with his backing band the Jicks, released Mirror Traffic. The album contains an arresting cover image of three Black men, two of whom are watching something in the distance while the third is zipping and hiking up his pants. With the album’s release, Malkmus did an interview with Pitchfork breaking down the cover, sharing that the source of the image is from the book Baseball by the poet Tom Clark. The entire interview is fascinating as Malkmus reveals his interactions with Clark, which are laced with the typical Malkmusian hilarious commentary. One instance is this reflections on the illustration used for the cover:

“They just seem like some guys in the bleachers or at a horse race, I can’t really tell. But they definitely look like the kind of guys who hang around a race track. I’m pretty sure they look to be from the Bay Area. The one guy looks like he’s listening to the game on his radio. There’s definitely a hard-boiled, Central Valley bleakness to the dudes. It has a 70s feel but hopefully not the classic stoner-rock kind of thing, you know, bell-bottoms and Camaros.”

Malkmus invokes the Bay Area here, one of the many California and “West Coast” references that he makes in interviews doing the promotional circuit for Mirror Traffic. California itself is one of the throughlines for the album with perhaps the biggest Golden State move was Malkmus’s decision to have Beck produce the sessions. Emerging out of Los Angeles as a musical bric-a-brac assemblage savant at the same time as Malkmus’s rise to prominence as part of Pavement, Malkmus divulged how the two got to know each other in an interview with Spin in 2011:

“Well, I wouldn’t say friends. He’s a pretty private guy. But he’s definitely an ally. We were on a couple of tours together during Alternative Nation time, like Lollapalooza before he did Odelay. He went on this Australian tour we did with the Beastie Boys, too. I stayed at his house a couple times in the ’90s when he lived in Pasadena. There’s no blah, blah, blah ego stuff going on with him. In that context, we were certainly in the same boat.”

Another California maneuver for Mirror Traffic was Beck’s suggestion that he record Malkmus and the Jicks at the legendary Sunset Sound Recorders on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, the birthplace of Pet Sounds, the first Van Halen album, and many more classic recordings. Malkmus recalled this decision in a 2020 interview with Fader:

“Beck had gotten in his mind that he wanted to produce bands that he liked for a little while. He did a really cool album with Thurston Moore [2011’s Demolished Thoughts], and he reached out to me. Obviously, [Malkmus’s label] Matador would’ve loved to have any new thing to talk about at that point with what I was doing [Laughs]. Also, he’s super talented — I know he’s an audiophile, and I knew it was gonna get done in a cool way. It was really fun and interesting. We went to the famous Sunset Sound, and maybe it’s a shell of its former self but shit still happened there, so you got some of that boomer energy that Mojo magazine likes. Van Morrison, Jim Morrison getting his dick sucked — shit like that.”

Speaking of oral sex, that’s the prime image employed by Malkmus in “Senator,” the first single from Mirror Traffic:

The song explodes out of the gate with Malkmus already in mid-rant as he splutters, “The toxin’s American-made / Weapons-class gray sludge for migrants.” The Jicks expertly perform a tricky, yet unbelievably catchy, start-stop musical progression powered by Janet Weiss’s drumming. This leads right into the defining lines of the song: “I know what the Senator wants / What the Senator wants is a blowjob.”

In the same 2011 Spin interview linked above, Malkmus reflected on these unforgettable lyrics:

“The chorus just came to me naturally. To me, it’s really just a metaphor. The Senator could be me or any singer in a band, anyone that’s trying to hang in there. Anyone that’s trying to stay in office and do whatever they can do to get votes. They’ll say whatever they can. Democrat or Republican, they want to stay in office more than anything.”

The sex life of a Senator is something that Malkmus has previously referenced in his songwriting. “Vanessa from Queens” from 2003’s Pig Lib includes the line “Bob Packwood wants to suck your toes,” an allusion to the former Senator from Oregon, who was forced to resign because of sexual misconduct, obstruction of justice, and ethics charges. Moreover, Packwood did everything he could do to stay in office before finally capitulating, much like Malkmus’s characterization in the Spin article. That type of authority figure in a vulnerable position is too ripe a symbol for Malkmus to resist. 

The section of “Senator” after the chorus contains a fusion of oh-so-satisfying crunchy guitars. The lyrics explore power in a quintessentially Malkmusian couplet stocked with wordplay and words that were seemingly created for Malkmus to sing in a power-pop song: “Panic in the antechamber motion to impeach / Cattle prod the working classes there’s some things you can’t teach.” The melody that Malkmus sings with these lines and the guitar tone bring to mind the impeccable melody/voice/guitar riff combinations of Guided by Voices’ corporate rock, power pop era of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s.

As soon as this section ends, Malkmus and the Jicks move to a new musical theme with Malkmus singing:

Because we’re fading fast
Like a stone
Come fading fast
Into the picture you own.

It’s hard not to invoke the famous Neil Young dictum, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” here because Malkmus seems to intentionally use the word “fade.” Going back to his explanation about “Senator” in the Spin interview, Malkmus said that the song considers “anyone that’s trying to hang in there.” With these lines, he acknowledges that we all either fade away or fade fast. Getting older is inevitable and it’s natural for one to want to hang on and stay relevant, whether as a musician, politician, or even as a parent or a partner. By singing, “Come fading fast / Into the picture you own,” Malkmus is saying that one should invite the undeniable and embrace it to allow ourselves to become a fuller, more complete person.

From here, the band continues to play the same chords, but Malkmus stops singing and begins a spoken word recitation. As previously explored on Recliner Notes, recitations are a common device in songwriting, particularly in country music, as a change of pace, to emphasize a particular point, or as a way to build tension towards an emotional climax. Throughout his solo work and his time in Pavement, Malkmus often utilizes a speak-singing technique as a variation of his regular singing, almost as an off-speed pitch, especially since he likes to play with his delivery almost every time he sings a song. One memorable Malkmus usage of speak-singing is in Pavement’s 1999 song “Ann Don’t Cry.” He barely sings a melody in the song’s first verse, but he speaks the following lines:

But your vulgar display
Caught me off guard
Cold, cold boy with American heart
Gonna run in and lock up the shots again.

Those words yearn to be chanted, not sung, especially the cadence of “Cold, cold boy with American heart.” Malkmus’s spoken word articulation is essential for the slightly pained but fighting-to-not-show-emotion stance the song’s narrator needs to convey before pleading in the chorus: “But Ann don’t you cry / Don’t you cry, Ann.” It’s a perfect juxtaposition.

Back to the spoken word recitation in “Senator”: Malkmus definitely wants to tell a little story here:

Little Nicky Nicky Nicky
Down in Ocean Beach he’s strumming
He used to carry his guitar around his back
And he’d just walk into certain places
And look for gigs and illuminate
Smoking weed in our truck
The cops pull up
How couldn’t they not know?
We were so so so so so so so invisible.

It’s hard not to hear Lou Reed in the way Malkmus communicates these words since he has acknowledged the Velvet Underground’s influence going back to the early days of Pavement. Furthermore, Reed is perhaps the most infamous speak-singers in all of rock and roll. Going even further with the comparison, there are a number of tropes in the “Senator” recitation that are straight out of a Lou Reed song: a character with an adjective as part of his name, drug use, and an overall sense of seediness. But instead of the New York air that’s always associated with Reed, so much of Mirror Traffic is California core and this story is no different. Set in the Ocean Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, Little Nicky is a guitar-carrying seeker, always looking for illumination, which inevitably turns into nothing more than getting high in his truck. Though Malkmus’s intonation is all Lou Reed, the details feel more in keeping with another Neil Young & Crazy Horse song, “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze.” Little Nicky would fit in well with Young’s two Santa Cruz ne’er-do-wells who are in search of enlightenment and a cash payout, all in one transaction, of course. Who’s burning out and fading away now?

The music builds over the course of the recitation leading into Malkmus chanting, “Heavy heavy heavy heavy heavy heavy heavy smelter,” before the music booms once again and Malkmus yells, “Fuck you!” He then proceeds to belt out a big echo-y scream and it’s back into the guitar riff from the song’s opening. Since it’s always easy to read Malkmus’s tone as ironic, it could be interpreted as though he is lightly mocking this specific type of West Coast stoner in this little character study in the middle of “Senator.” But the “fuck you” shows how much fun he is having throughout this entire scene. If Malkmus is ridiculing Little Nicky, it’s all good-natured ribbing. Case in point: the first line of the next verse is “Is it funny enough? / The serious business is void and null.” With the next lines — “My duty to the Republique / Is to lose double speak ’cause the halo’s off” — Malkmus shifts focus from Little Nicky back to the song’s titular Senator as this character steps into a different role, post-sex scandal exposé. Recalling the Spin interview in which Malkmus said the chorus of “Senator” is talking about a politician or a singer who is “trying to hang in there,” this line could be an acknowledgment on Malkmus’s part that his lyrics are often viewed as “double speak.” It’s a lyrical realization that he should drop this mask and speak directly to his fans and the rock and roll “Republique.”

As Malkmus and the Jicks move back to the chorus, he sings it the same as before the first time through, but then changes it the second time stating, “I know what everyone wants / What everyone wants is a blowjob.” Putting aside the male dominant posture of the line, Malkmus calls for a sort of universal blowjob, an acknowledgement that we all deal with being self-interested and that sometimes all we want is to be the center of the world. But how do they end the song? With Malkmus singing, “You are fading fast / You are gone.” This is a way of saying that the need for gratification dissipates. Once again reflecting on Young’s maxim, Malkmus decides to take his own advice, drops the double speak, and chooses the fade away option. And how is Malkmus going to fade out? With an incredibly satisfying, grand classic rock guitar solo, but not before yelling “Look out,” channeling every guitar hero before him.

A live version of “Senator” that needs to be highlighted from the Jicks Picks collection is from the band’s great hometown gig on May 8, 2009 at the Doug Fir Lounge, Portland:

In the studio version of “Senator,” the recitation sounds like Lou Reed in California. But for this rendition, two years before recording the song in L.A. with Beck, Malkmus chooses the Jersey Shore boardwalk as the setting for the recitation. He traffics in details and makes use of phrasing from the most famous bard of that particular milieu, legendary well known for mid-song stories about his teenage years. Malkmus utters: “Me and little Stevie used to walk the streets with our instruments on our backs. Driving past the venues, just wishing someday that we’d just find a drummer and a dream and might explode on that New Jersey scene. The sand was dry, and the water was wet [smirks]. But we didn’t care. We just fucking corn dogs.” And the band explodes once again. It’s a command performance. Even if Malkmus is fading away, he’s going to take the piss out of one of rock and roll’s most beloved figures along the way.

Speaking of Malkmus possibly taking the piss, here are Malkmus and the Jicks in 2014 playing what’s supposed to be Beck’s classic “Golden Age”:

It’s immediately obvious Malkmus doesn’t know the words to the song and asks the Jicks’ drummer to sing, which he does. But Malkmus doesn’t really care, declaring, “This is my favorite part” and plays the guitar line. Then he switches to falsetto and sings Beck’s “Debra” instead. He doesn’t know those words either but improvises a string of come-ons before playing some Hendrix-esque echo-y guitar leads before landing on singing lines from Pavement’s “Gold Soundz.” For all of Malkmus’s talk about West Coast guitar playing, vocal delivery, and lyrics, his improvisatory fusing of “Golden Age,” “Debra,” and “Gold Soundz” may be the pinnacle moment of West Coast vibes. 

Back to “Senator,” it’s an incredibly catchy song with an earworm for a chorus. Malkmus had written tight pop songs before. Putting aside the classic examples from Pavement, his solo work includes short, extremely memorable songs in the same framework as “Senator,” including “Us,” “Mama,” and “Gardenia.” Despite its catchiness and Matador Records selecting it as a single, “Senator” would never become a hit, the blowjob reference serving as one big factor. But then what was the likelihood that Malkmus would have had a hit single at this point in his life? He was 45 years old and the chances of him becoming a middle-aged hitmaker like Phil Collins were slim to none. Going through the album release cycle so many times at this point, it’s obvious that Malkmus is self-aware about his status, audience, and career trajectory. All of this feeds into the themes for “Senator.” Malkmus knows that he is fading fast and is completely satisfied with his place in the rock and roll stratification and in life.