Pavement, Steve Malkmus' seminal former band, apparently took their name from one of the top 20 nicest sounding words in the English language.
That he has christened his new outfit The Jicks speaks volumes. It sounds more like something one might cough up after a heavy night on the cigarettes.
Ambling on stage in an unbuttoned blue shirt, his gangling arms dwarfing the Fender Jaguar clutched within, Malkmus still looked the epitome of the US college-rock anti-star.
But, for the first 40 minutes, his band sounded drab and subdued as they ploughed through material from the newly-released album Pig Lib.
Where Pavement were the pioneers of downbeat, angular, skewed pop, as a solo artist Malkmus struggled to even hit a melody.
The mind-bendingly complex stop-start rhythms, time changes and dissonant chords sounded like the work of a man weighed down by the lost genius of an unobtainable past.
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