Stephen Malkmus Opens Up About Recording “Overproduced” Terror Twilight With Nigel Godrich
On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus spoke with Emil Amos (Om, Grails, Holy Sons) about everything from indie rock’s ’90s revival to Elliot Smith’s infatuation with fine recording gear. Malkmus also talked about working with producer Nigel Godrich on Pavement’s 1999 album, Terror Twilight. Listen and find a full transcript of the passage below. He called the record “overproduced” before adding, “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.”
During the interview, Malkmus also mentioned working on some more country-influenced songs. “I don’t really like country as much as a lot of people,” he said. “I do like electric country like the Meat Puppets or the idea of the Eagles but not actually the Eagles. I can kinda play those songs… I don’t know why… but people seem to like my semi-country songs. They are not really country. Like country-rock, I guess.” When Amos cited “Range Life,” Malkmus replied, “Yeah. And I have more and I have new ones, and they actually sound for whatever reason… There’s a little like Sterling Morrison in my guitar solos, they’re not like country… So like I guess they’re also like Velvet Underground “fourth” style country… So I can do that.”
Stephen Malkmus on working with Nigel Godrich:
The only time we used a producer was with Nigel Godrich, who all engineers and studio people rightfully are in awe of. He’s pretty much the alpha of new-generation producers. He was interested in Pavement. He and Radiohead were fans of [Pavement] and Wowee Zowee. He told us he had time off and would like to do [Terror Twilight]….
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