Stephen Malkmus and Matt Sweeney on the Lyrics That Changed Their Lives
The indie heroes and Hard Quartet bandmates talk about songs that made them think: What the fuck is going on in here?
Words Matter is an interview series where songwriters whose work means a lot to us talk about the lyrics that mean a lot to them—the ones that helped shape their style, made them jealous, or left them awestruck.
From the moment Matt Sweeney heard the first line on Pavement’s 1992 debut album, Slanted & Enchanted, he was hooked: When Stephen Malkmus sang, “Ice, baby,” on “Summer Babe (Winter Version),” before launching into an absurdist tale of longing that involves finger eating and a “protein delta strip,” Sweeney knew he was listening to a kindred spirit. “I immediately caught the reference to Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby,’ and then it was immediately flipped into something else,” Sweeney recalls via video, sitting in his New York City apartment. “It jumped out at me at the time. That’s a great fucking opening line.” Malkmus, who’s calling in from his car somewhere between Chicago and Indiana, chuckles at the memory of his nod to the bygone white rapper.
More than 30 years after that initial connection was sparked, the pair of indie vets are now bandmates in the Hard Quartet alongside guitarist Emmett Kelly of the Cairo Gang and Dirty Three drummer Jim White. The group’s freewheeling self-titled album is also stuffed with references, though they read as more sincere than Malkmus’ Vanilla Ice callout. It’s in the way Sweeney harkened back to the vocal melodies of Big Star’s “Thirteen” on “Rio’s Song,” or how the band recreated the Rolling Stones’ “Waiting on a Friend” video for that song’s visual. It’s in Malkmus’ sidelong lyrical nod to disco stars Sister Sledge on “Chrome Mess,” and how Sweeney cribbed from Motörhead and Blue Öyster Cult on the poignant “Killed by Death.”
“With really cool songs and lyrics, it’s like you’re already friends with the band,” Sweeney says. “It’s like these guys are speaking to you, and all of a sudden you’re a gang.”
With his deadpan affect and ear for tartly funny lyrics, Malkmus, 58, is one of the most distinctive songwriters of his era, and has remained sharp and off-kilter three decades on from his most famous band’s heyday. Though he’s best known for his prickly wit, The Hard Quartet songs like “Hey” and “Six Deaf Rats” include some of the most moving lyrics he’s ever written. He starts the former by softly singing, “Hey, someone likes you/They’re into your illusion”—a line both lulling and knowing, heady and wise. “Generally, I like to have a first line, and then I just riff off that,” he says, explaining his improvisatory process in a shrugging tone. “I work on lines that fit a little bit better, or I’m like, Ooh, that slaps, or whatever. But I don’t overthink it too much.”
Sweeney, 55, is one of the most in-demand guitarists in music. In addition to leading the hard-charging ’90s band Chavez, he’s worked with songwriting greats like Johnny Cash, Cat Power, and Will Oldham. He’s an ardent student of rock, and that deep education comes through on the four tracks he sang and wrote the lyrics for on The Hard Quartet. “It can take me a long time to find words that don’t seem stupid and resonate with me,” he says. “I often try to write things that hit me the way that lyrics hit me when I was a kid—just lines that work.”
Talking about the songs and lyrics that made an outsized impact on them, both Malkmus and Sweeney looked back to their formative years. Malkmus picked acid-tongued tracks he first heard as a teenage punk in Northern California; Sweeney reminisced about lyrics that once terrified him or completely turned his head around. They dropped plenty of references throughout the interview, too—breadcrumbs for the gang of followers eagerly anticipating the Hard Quartet’s upcoming spring tour.
