Stephen Malkmus Series: “Cast Off”

“Cast Off” is the lead-off track of 2018’s Sparkle Hard, the last album that Stephen Malkmus released with the Jicks:

The song and album open with a dramatic chord and then Jicks’ keyboardist Mike Clark plays a beautifully gentle passage on the piano, which is repeated a few times with variations to create a sense of space within the song. With that, Malkmus starts singing the undeniable melody: 

Cast off from the shadows
Cast off from the bricks when they fall.

Malkmus only needs these two lines to meet the tone and fully inhabit the space created in the instrumental opening. His voice breaks slightly when singing “shadows,” yet he knows to hit the word “bricks” hard enough so that the phase “when they fall” truly does fall in alignment with the descending notes of the melody. The next lines — “I need some attention / It’s all that you’re focused on” — contain a perfect Malkmusian paradox, but, once again, he completely sells the line by evoking the utter vulnerability that comes with admitting that he needs attention. He’s asking for help. 

With that plea, the band breaks into a loud, cathartic set of riffs with multiple thick guitar harmony lines splayed across the line of sight of the song like suspension cables on the Brooklyn Bridge. According to an interview Malkmus did with Colorado Public Radio in 2018, the band tried out a few different approaches for “Cast Off” before arriving at the final, quiet-loud arrangement as suggested by Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme:

“I had it more as this dreamy, almost My Bloody Valentine chill groove…And then she’s like, ‘What about it’s a piano one?’ I have a soul version too. I have three versions. There’s an Al Green version, My Bloody Valentine version and this Neil Young version.”

Neil Young makes sense as a reference point since the Jicks are certainly channeling Crazy Horse during the loud section and Young has a seemingly countless number of piano-based songs. But it’s Malkmus’s vulnerability in “Cast Off” that most connects to Young, recalling songs when he’s at his most nakedly sensitive such as “After the Gold Rush” or “Birds.”

After the frenzied chaos of the instrumental passage, the band returns to the quiet verse once again. Malkmus sings, “Take off if you’re willing / Speak out if you know that you are / Unable to follow.” The blending of the second line into the third, despite it being the reset of the melody line, is expertly handled by Malkmus as he’s still communicating a sense of fragility. The final line directly references the danger of this kind of sensitive self-exposure: “Silly rabbits gotta run ’cause they’re prey.” While the words convey a deeply serious exploration of doubt, the line also has to be referencing the old “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids” commercial that pushed sugar-laden cereal during children’s TV programming and therefore known by heart by every Generation X kid in America. Malkmus walks the edge of apprehension and emotion while sneaking in a pop culture allusion. He knows what he’s doing, folks.

The band explodes into noise again, but this time Malkmus sings over the Crazy Horse-mixed-with-Dinosaur Jr. passage twice:

Sell it to me
Eloquently
There’s no room left to do
Everything that you said you’d do
Break out the rats
It’s not coming back
There’s no room left to do
Everything that you said you’d do.

In a 2011 interview with The Quietus, Malkmus stated, “People often complain that my lyrics are too literal! Some fans. You know, my later ones. It’s like, ‘he lost the mysterious Pavement thing’, or something.” The interviewer astutely speculated if that response by some of his audience is the result of Malkmus’s shift to writing in full sentences. He agrees:

“Yeah, and not just using rough ideas as lyrics that weren’t even done yet. Because I didn’t have time back then. I’m not really sure. It doesn’t matter to Bob Dylan if it’s just verbal diarrhea. Then there’s real poets like Charles Olson or Ezra Pound. Blood has been sweated over every line. There’s two different appeals, I guess. But one last thing to say is music that’s too tidy and over-thought, I just don’t like it. I’ve found when someone’s singing with their heart, even when it’s nothing, it’s more important. If it’s not exactly something, or it’s a little bit vague, what they mean, that’s more important than… if I know somebody sweated over these lines and it’s all tight and perfect. Slacker at heart, I guess.”

“Slacker at heart” is a perfect pull quote for an interview with Malkmus and honestly should be put on a branded Stephen Malkmus t-shirt. Notwithstanding the full sentences, there’s an ample amount of mystery in the final words in “Cast Off.” “There’s no room left to do / Everything you said you’d do” is suggestive of disappointment and maybe even betrayal. Is it a love song, a break-up song, a friendship-ending song? Putting aside these rhetorical questions about meaning, Malkmus always determines the correct voice for a particular set of lyrics. Whether screaming over the feedback laden section or his delicate-to-the-point-of-quivering vocals during the beginning of “Cast Off,” Malkmus utilizes the perfect instrument to deliver his words. Slacker or not, he always sings from the heart. 

Referring to a different part of The Quietus interview, the musical passage that ends “Cast Off” is anything but “tidy or over-thought.” As soon as Malkmus stops singing, his guitar soars as if he is playing on top of a mountain. It’s a glorious sound, a brief glimpse of enlightenment before the band stops playing almost immediately and the song dissolves away into dust. 

Thinking back to Malkmus’s quote to ​​Colorado Public Radio about the arrangement of “Cast Off” and how he and the Jicks ultimately landed on a piano-led, “Neil Young version” of the song, there’s another selection from the band’s catalog that also benefited from a similar arrangement. Recall the earlier post in this series on “Freeze the Saints,” which explores how Malkmus and the Jicks revamped that song as heard on a recording from June 14, 2018, a month after the release of Sparkle Hard. In that performance, “Freeze the Saints” featured what I described as “a lovely contrast between the beautiful piano playing by Mike Clark and Malkmus’s fragile, sensitive delivery.” Sound familiar? It’s hard to determine which came first, the piano-only arrangement of “Freeze the Saints” or the Neil Young-inspired version of “Cast Off.” Either way, both find Malkmus landing on a mode that he recognizes as a powerful one for the presentation of his songwriting. 

As of this writing, Sparkle Hard is the last album that Malkmus recorded with the Jicks. He subsequently tours with the band through June 2019 and goes on to release two solo records without them. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hits with no touring. In 2024, there’s the unveiling of The Hard Quartet with Malkmus serving as one-fourth of an indie rock supergroup. There has been no public statement about the fate of the Jicks. Are they done? Does Malkmus plan on getting them back together again? If so, after such a long delay, will there even be the same members as before?

Perhaps the biggest question in all of this is: Did Malkmus know that Sparkle Hard would be his last album with the Jicks? As I’ll explore further in the next Recliner Notes post, he already had his next solo album recorded and readied for release. Knowing that he either consciously or subconsciously perceived that he would be separating from the Jicks, it’s easy to hear “Cast Off” as a goodbye song to the band. The phrase “cast off” itself is an act of separation. “I need some attention” could be about Malkmus’s desire to be on his own again without a band. Perhaps Malkmus himself is the “silly rabbit” who has run away from his commitments. The song could be read as a release for Malkmus from his commitment to the Jicks. 

Cards on the table, “Cast Off” is my favorite Stephen Malkmus solo song. Despite its short run-time, so many elements contribute to that distinction: the quiet-loud arrangement, Malkmus’s grasping-for-the-heavens guitar playing, and even the possibility of it as a send-off to the Jicks. Most of all, the absolutely gorgeous melody sung so delicately by Malkmus gets me every time. “Cast Off” is a testament to Malkmus’s powers as a bandleader, a guitar player, a songwriter, and a singer. 

Image by Jm TD from Pixabay.