pitchfork music festival live update 2:4

“I’m all by myself tonight,” said Stephen Malkmus, decked out in a bright pink shirt and donning an acoustic guitar. So far, it’s remained that way. Opening with a charming, falling-apart version of “heaven is a truck,” malkmus is chugging through his catalog powered by scotch tape and raw nerve. There’s a lot of empty space in the songs, particularly when he pauses the action to trip through a gloriously unfussy, imperfect solo. It’s right on the border of messy and awesomely messy (during the second song, his guitar strap broke) but there’s an exhileration that comes from this kind of without-a-net performance. He just started “spit on a stranger,” and the reaction to that first cluster of notes was pure euphoria.