Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks w/ Holy Sons

It's hard not to look at Stephen Malkmus's latest album with The Jicks, this year's Beck-produced Mirror Traffic, as a response to his previous record, 2008's Real Emotional Trash. That record was long on guitar heroics and short on endearing hooks, but the new one is as brisk and poppy as any the former Pavement frontman has recorded since his 2001 self-titled debut. One of his most immediately accessible works, it was also his last Jicks record with drummer Janet Weiss, who left the band during his Pavement reunion tour last year to rejoin her old Sleater Kinney bandmate Carrie Brownstein in the group Wild Flag.