Face The Truth
- Stephen Malkmus
- Band Name: Stephen Malkmus
- Record Label: Matador
- Release Date: May 24, 2005
- Critic Score
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95It's weird, (but not annoyingly so), it's catchy (but not annoyingly so), and it's fresh (but not annoyingly so). Face the Truth is the work of a songwriter at his finest hour.
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90Face the Truth is probably the most eclectic of all Malkmus's work. There are elements of every Pavement album in amongst the tracks, with familiar noodly guitar intros, shouty, jaunty refrains and languid deadpan-rap segments.
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A vibrant return to form... thrilling and rewarding.
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An excellent album graced by the kind of clever hooks, lines, and sinkers that color Malkmus' best work, be it with Pavement or the Jicks.
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Malkmus has the same fractured pop sensibility, but his music is more expansive than it's been before.
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87Behind this happy clash of stylistic preferences is a subtly but surely revivified Malkmus, confident to experiment more deliberately than ever.
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84Of the three Stephen Malkmus solo albums, this is the one that sounds the most like Pavement. [#15, p.91]
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Consistently enjoyable, predictably inconsequential.
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It's weird, yes, but in a good way. [3 Jun 2005, p.82]
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With the Fiery Furnaces bringing indie-prog rigmarole back in fashion, Face The Truth might get a little more love than Pig Lib did, despite being the same album with a few more fart sounds.
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He's back in the groove here: relaxed, confident, weird in his own special way, smart, and ready to make great albums again.
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80Malkmus seems to be firing on all cylinders for the first time as a solo artist.
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80The confidence and unforced vigour of Face The Truth suggest Malkmus is happier on the margins of alt.rock than in its spotlight. [Jun 2005, p.112]
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80Blend[s] limpid Velvet Underground textures, strolling country-rock and wry, cryptically plaintive Malkmus poetry well enough to sound like neo-classics destined for a Wes Anderson film. [Jun 2005, p.111]
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Face the Truth won me over by showing all the sides of Steve that drew me to him in the first place, along with a few new surprises.
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Gone are the spotty moments that marred his previous solo work. Most important, Malkmus seems to be having fun again.
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The songs, which have the choppy angles and elegant dissonance of Pavement's, are painstakingly layered with keyboards and all manner of funky blurps and beeps. It all sounds very labor-intensive-and pretty smart, too.
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Malkmus has long made a game of languishing, but he now sounds refreshingly eager to turn off the scoreboard and let his songs coach themselves.
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80Pig Lib Part Two? Maybe so, but there are enough subtle evolutions here to keep any SM follower listening intently until the cows come home.
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75For good and ill, this jumble couldn't come from anyone but Malkmus. [Jun 2005, p.104]
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Face the Truth is paradoxically the most intriguing Malkmus album and the weakest of his post-Pavement career.
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The album lacks a unifying thread, either sonically or thematicallly. [#10, p.112]
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70Typically, there are also infuriating moments... but overall, this marks a welcome return to form. [Jun 2005, p.106]
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70Is Malkmus treading water? Well, maybe. But despite the complaints of those fans who can't let Pavement go, he's still making valid, adventurous and - most of all - fun music.
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70Stuffed with little revelations. [Jun 2005, p.113]
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His weirdest yet.
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70Too stylistically diverse, willfully weird and lyrically cryptic to be anything more than an acquired taste. [#68, p.101]
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May be the weirdest record Malkmus has made since Pavement's Wowee Zowee. [Jul 2005, p.174]
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60It's easy to boggle at but less easy to love, since there's nowhere to hang your critical hat for longer than about three bars at a time.
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60While Face The Truth rarely presents a side of its creator that has not already been seen, loved, and cried over, it's a passable, even better-than-average album.
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60If it's not a leap in the right direction, it's at least a big step.
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Does a new generation of music lovers really need a third solo album from [Malkmus] which includes songs that house guitar wig-outs and last up to eight minutes? Not really. [28 May 2005, p.64]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 27 out of 30
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Mixed: 2 out of 30
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Negative: 1 out of 30
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Serdil9
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PeterK.7
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AndrewE10