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Stephen Malkmus Calls Terror Twilight “Overproduced”

BOSTON, MA - SEPTEMBER 26: Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks perform onstage during day two of the Boston Calling Music Festival at Boston City Hall Plaza on September 26, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

In a new episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, Stephen Malkmus sat down with Emil Amos, the drummer for bands Grails and Om, to go over a range of things: from Elliott Smith’s gear fetish, to his adolescent fan days, to “kids” making ’90s indie again. Among the juiciest nuggets are the details surrounding the production of Terror Twilight, the final Pavement record, which was made with Nigel Godrich. Besides Scott West having to sit out on a song or two, Malkmus talked about how the record suffered from production bloat:

That was a real, classic rock, overproduced, $100,000 record. With that much money you should be able to make something good. We made some things that weren’t as good as they could’ve been. There was a big argument about the order of the songs. No one really cares about this album that much. [Nigel Godrich] had a certain order that was with a difficult song first, like Radiohead’s OK Computer that had a longer more challenging song to set the tempo. Scott in our band, and the other ones, not only did they not like that song, but they barely played on it. They wanted this easier song first, like the hit song. So Nigel was like “I’m done with this. This is the wrong move. We made a stoner album and you’re going halfway.” He’s right probably.

These comments start around the 25-minute mark, and you can listen right here.