Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks Tickets

Great show, kid of a bummer gotta pay to sit down!

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks enjoy playing their music. They are comfortable on the stage, and this makes the audience comfortable as well. There wasn't too much heckling/commenting from the crowd, and Stephen seemed to enjoy playing at the House of Blues in New Orleans. Mostly newer songs, with a few classics from early Malkmus solo albums, and at least one Pavement song ("Stereo").

This is the 4th time I've seen him solo, in addition to seeing him with Pavement twice. He and the Jicks have an excellent rapport and seem like they are tighter as a band than Pavement ever was. One thing that was cool about this show was that they did "Summer Babe" and "Stereo" by Pavement as encores - that was a first for me.

Saw a fun side of Malkmus this evening; he bounced and danced. Worth seeing!

Amazing show....lots of fun...Stephen is a musical genius!

Best I've heard Steve. He's matured into an artistic no-pick-git-box player/shreder. Still a shambles - way too long b/w songs... but love him for it. Best record of his solo career IMO. Great production/mix -- guitars way out front! Balanced. Thin Man. Cool shirt, cool jeans, trigger cut, dope shoes! "An intimate conversation w/ Steve" @ Pantages (a struggling venue in MPLS) + SM = [ >=] (Most possible fun) + (lame venue + presale)

5 star gig from beginning to end. played mostly 'mirror traffic', their awesome latest, which sounds even better live. jake morris deserves a nod for his perfect pacing and stellar stick work, and the whole band was in excellent form, but the night belonged to s.m., who truly outdid himself. he sang the hell out of all his songs, old and new, and played the hell out of his guitar, all the while making it look easy, then delivered the sweet's 'love is like oxygen' for an encore. modesty? irony? malkmus.

The venue is great especially when not oversold. One drawback of the show was that the sound engineers couldn't seem to get Stephen's mic to stop popping. I think it might have ended the show as during the encore he bgan to speak into the mic and it popped and he immediately took off his guitar and walked away. Maybe robbed the crowd of one more song.

Relocated from Bowery Ballroom to Webster Hall, Malkmus and co faced possible tone death and resonance denial in this well known extension of NYU's bid to outdo the pope in Big Apple Real Estate. Fortunately, the city's new adolescent recruits number but few initiates into SM's fraternity of shredding, and the crowd were mostly 40ish guys in black standing still. Like the crowd at Tonic, but with a post-recessional edge of dark, cold shouldered bitterness. Until the band arrived, to the strains of new instrumental bliss-out 'Jumblegloss', and the eyes of early middles age collectively lit up while the new Jicks catalogue fed a simultaneous wish to live in the moment and travel back to a betrayed Clintonian era of indie sunshine. The new tracks are as good as anything they've done, and the general clarity of the compositions (more lead patterns, fewer scuzzy chords) meant every note was audible. Hard to gauge the exact mood of the band - I would say, relaxed and focussed, getting more relaxed halfway through when a certain odor from the pits reassured them New York was burning the stick at both ends, so to speak. Favorites like 'Baby C'mon' met with cheers, as did main set closer, and most joyful indie riffride off the new LP, 'Stick figures in Love', by which time band and audience were swinging, and all gloom was definitively denied. Sweet's 'Love is Like Oxygen' provided an nice encore.

they came thru this awesome venue very clean and clear, the crowd was pumped and i was too, able to get a few good pics and heard some great new tunes