Some may call former Pavement guy Stephen Malkmus' band a "solo project" but that's not quite the way he sees it.
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To him, what happens in Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks is pretty much the same as how things rolled in 1990s indie darlings Pavement.
"I don't know - it's the same way I've always done it," Malkmus says.
"It's the classic arrangement, where I write the songs and go 'how 'bout this one'. And they take it further or they make it their own. They could write songs too, but I think they go 'wow, Steve's good at writing songs and people like Steve. We like Steve, we'll play his songs. No-one else has asked us to play their songs, so we'll play his'."
Yes, his tongue is slightly implanted in his cheek. But on the serious side, Malkmus says he enjoys the chemistry he has with his Jicks bandmates - and not just because they play his songs.
"We have a good attitude, with people in the band, it's pretty solid," Malkmus says.
"It's on a lower boil than Pavement was back in the '90s, when there was more intensity to it.
"Now I'm more established, we're more established and we have a pretty nice relationships and way of working together."
They've released six albums, including 2014's Wig Out At Jagbags, and some have seen fit to point out that's one more than Pavement had released. Which seems an odd thing to focus on, as if the new band isn't a "real band" until they've released more than his old one.
It's something Malkmus finds curious too.
"I guess it can be a way of making it concrete that this is what I do," he says.
"In a positive way it could be, 'wow, this is his thing now', but also it could be 'where the f--k has he been all this time he's been doing it that long on stage'.
"It's something to say I guess, the albums keep coming."
Seems they'll have something else to write about because some time this year the band's next album will come out. That means the new band will have released two albums more than Pavement.
"We're working on new stuff," Malkmus says. "We're on a new-love high with our new songs that we're working on. It's a special time, everything's new and fresh - it's young love. Working on that part of things is really fun.
"We're going to play some of those [live]. We'll mix them into the set, we won't abuse people with a lot of stuff they've never heard but for those who are interested, we'll play a couple of tunes."
While he's known as a wordsmith, Malkmus says it's the whole package that interests him.
"That's what's cool about music," he says. "I love writers and I love classical musicians but pop music, even if it's not popular, has got both and they hold together in a certain way.
"The vibe, the whole inspiration for the whole work is what you're really going for. When you hear something where the band's really on fire, that's what we're all looking for.
"If it doesn't happen, we keep pounding away at it, hoping to get it right the next time."
March 1, Anita's Theatre