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The seasoned professional executes discipline on a record that seems entirely natural--layered to the top, but never giving in to excess. [Winter 2008, p.92]

All Music Guide

It's an album meant to be discovered and lived with, revealing its jokes and its beauty over time.

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Rolling Stone

All he [Malkmus] wants to do is surrender to the lightheaded rush of the music, and the results are downright glorious.

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Lost At Sea

How does it compare to his previous three records--or eight, if you count his former band? Suffice it to say that's a rhetorical question. If Joe DiMaggio made albums... well you get the point.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

Real Emotional Trash features lots of long songs with prog parts ripe for '70s Camaro rides, but Malkmus' apparent glee in playing them helps keep excess at bay.

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Entertainment Weekly

Even as he skewers fakery with surprising directness, the husband and father remains largely at a feline remove himself. [14 Mar 2008, p.75]

Under The Radar

On Real Emotional Trash, Malkmus and the Jicks' most recent offering, they manage to bring both tendencies (to indulge in classic rock and play loose) together into a coherent whole without getting too polished or boring. [Spring 2008, p.83]

Mojo

Real Emotional Trash conjures a virtuoso meld of folk rock, prog and cosmic blues tropes, all filtered through the ex-pavement frontman's tradmark arch surrealism. [Apr 2008, p. 101]

Boston Globe

Real Emotional Trash isn't "Slanted and Enchanted" or "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," but hey, you can't have a perfect sound forever. Besides, there are more than enough old-school indie touches here to flash you back to the halcyon daze of '94, or give you an idea what your older sis had on her headphones.

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Hartford Courant

Some connect better than others, and the album feels a little front-loaded, but it's still a treat to hear Malkmus get in touch with his inner guitar hero.

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Sputnikmusic

Real Emotional Trash is a simultaneously funny and interesting record, shaped with just the right kind of meticulous care to strengthen its band-jam aesthetics.

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Uncut

It is, in short, a hippy record, and a very good one.

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Slant Magazine

The joy of listening to Malkmus's songs has always been the involvement the listener takes in separating the "truth" from the "spoof" (much like with other oddball geniuses like Robyn Hitchcock or Tom Waits). There's plenty of both here, but more importantly, there's enough interplay between the two to keep things interesting and delightful.

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The New York Times

The album is both a generous, transparent body pleasure and a flinty, oblique mind pleasure.

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Drowned In Sound

Polished production and an ironing out of the music’s creases creates a less-relaxed feel than we’re used to hearing, but there’s also a sense of warmth which was largely missing from the previous Jicks-aided album, "Pig Lib."

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Blender

It’s a very rare, wondrous thing: prog-rock for firesides and fuzzy-slipper Sundays.

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The Phoenix

Real Emotional Trash, with its long, winding guitar solos, extended jams, and emphasis on shifting psychedelic guitar textures, is as retro an album as Malkmus has ever recorded.

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Village Voice

With Malkmus, a spade is never a spade, and his usual counterinclinations set Trash aquake with tension: pop that's coy but direct but rambling but surreal.

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Amazon.com

Trash's capriciousness and experimental willingness are what gave Malkmus an audience in the first place--and what promise to keep it coming back for more.

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Prefix Magazine

For the most part, the album succeeds insofar as it either builds upon Malkmus's perennial themes or allows itself to indulge in experimentation.

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cokemachineglow

The Jicks do an incredible job of coming into their own as a band, channeling Malkmus’s sarcasm and foolery in a less controlled setting brilliantly; they just can’t, because of the immediacy of the album, tease out the full quirkyness.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

Even when the album gets really flaccid, as in the clattering breakdown of the turgid story-song 'Hopscotch Willie,' Malkmus is still annoyingly good at writing stuck-in-your-dome-piece melodies that keep you humming the tunes you don’t like just as much as the highlights

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The Wire

With the Jicks now sharing the spotlight, sees Malkmus's familiar tangled lyricism and meandering tendencies offset by some tremendous group performances. [Mar 2008, p.57]

Billboard

Janet Weiss adds welcome flavor on drums and vocals, but overall, how much you enjoy rummaging through this Trash will probably depend on the amount of patience you have for the Malkmus' indulgences.

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Pitchfork

Real Emotional Trash is determinedly unified, even if it isn't always clear to what ends. At its best, the record hints at opening a whole new musical world for Malkmus--one in which his well-worn style is effectively played down in the service of a mighty rock'n'roll band.

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PopMatters

If Real Emotional Trash falls short of "Pig Lib," it’s because we’re spending too much time in the tunnel, and not enough in the funnel to the tune.

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Dusted Magazine

Like Stephin Merritt, his East Coast cognate, Malkmus’ songwriting chops and eye for upper-middle-class detail are too-available excuses for music that is often unremarkable.

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musicOMH.com

Real Emotional Trash fails--beautifully and melodically, yes, but it fails nonetheless.

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Paste Magazine

With Real Emotional Trash, he proves he can retain both, leaving behind the controlled one-man-band environment of 2005’s Face the Truth and issuing his most eclectic and unpredictable album yet.

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Spin

Trash has its moments. [Mar 2008, p.106]

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Delusions of Adequacy

There is just too much hit and miss on this album.

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Observer Music Monthly

Here Malkmus dispenses with the electronic curiosities that blighted his 2005 solo album Face the Truth and adopts a more polished version of the old indie-rock of soaring guitar solos and oblique lyrics.

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No Ripcord

Real Emotional Trash feels like a compromise, for Malkmus and for us.

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The Guardian

There is so much going on - veiled lyrics, abrupt key changes - that it would take months of patient unravelling for the 10 tracks to fully reveal themselves.

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NOW Magazine

Real is a beefy record that plods and dances precariously close to the jam band divider.

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Q Magazine

His fourth album is another trough, low on songs and over-reliant on meandering guitar jams. [Apr 2008, p.112]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 27 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Shiftybob . gave it a10:
This album blew me away. I'm a long time Pavement fan who lost a little interest after what was to me, just an ok first solo album. After the good word of mouth on I picked up Real Emotional Trash and it hasn't left my PC/car/stereo/ipod since...So many good tracks but yes Hopscotch Willie is a 10 by itself and Janet Weiss is brilliant. Everyone I've played it around has been "What's that you're playing? It's really good!!!" I agree.

HB gave it a10:
R.E.T gets better with every successive playing. Smart lyrics match oddly tuned fuzzy guitar. The Jicks are simultaneously loose and tight.

Ramirez gave it a9:
The Doors (anyone else notices how the breakdown in Baltimore sounds like spanish caravan?) meets classic Pavement with some sonic youth jamming inbetween. Musically there are some awesome fuzzy solo's like on wicked wanda, and lyrically it's classic Malkmus brilliance. Col Sun has a great chorus, Elmo Delmo's first half is brilliant, Out Of Reaches is stunningly beautiful but the standout song here for me has to be Baltimore, one of his best songs in a long time.

Andrew A gave it an8:
I think musicians and all time malkmus fans will really love this record. And as I am a Malkmus fan I would say it´s heavy, the jams are great, the key and tempo changes are amazing, and finally there are definitely some nice hooks to be discovered. But then, I think if you are not a musician or a malkmus fan, you will just hear a couple of long jams.

Meggie J gave it a10:
Superb.

T Smith gave it a3:
probably fun to play on. definetly not fun to listen to. but if you like jammy phish like monotony this might be your album of the year.

Drew gave it a10:
I hadn't heard a SM album before this and I got it and was completely blown away! I've heard the rest of his collection since and was equally blown away (haven't really stopped listening to the stuff yet) but this one just has more depth. Musically it seems a lot more serious and personal. (The solo on Out of Reaches is just chilling) It's definitely heavier, more shredding, just more of SM being a total badass with his songs. The addition of Weiss is evident and a definite plus in my book. I missed out on seeing them live recently and I am regretting it every time I listen to the bastard's music...Damn you SM for being so incredibly good, damn you!

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