"What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much"
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Malkmus is doing that classic indie-rock two-step: acknowledging the machinery without surrendering authorship to it. “What producers did was mostly recording in the studio” shrinks the producer’s mystique down to a practical job description, almost clerical. It’s a gentle demotion of the “genius in the control room” narrative that rock history loves, especially once the 90s made studio craft a kind of religion.
The second clause is where the real boundary gets drawn: “so it never changed our sound just that much.” The hedge (“just that much”) matters. He’s not claiming pure, untouched authenticity; he’s claiming a controlled permeability. Producers can frame the band, capture it, maybe polish the edges, but they don’t get to rewrite the band’s identity. That’s a very Pavement-era posture: the sound is supposed to feel like it’s happening despite the industry, not because of it.
Contextually, it’s a defensible stance from a musician whose cultural capital was built on looseness, anti-slickness, and an air of accidental brilliance. In the 90s, saying the producer “didn’t change us” is also a way of protecting the myth that the songs arrived fully formed, that the band’s ragged charm wasn’t engineered. The subtext is less “producers are unimportant” than “our core is unbuyable.” That line reassures fans that whatever happened behind the glass, the band’s crooked compass stayed in their own hands.
The second clause is where the real boundary gets drawn: “so it never changed our sound just that much.” The hedge (“just that much”) matters. He’s not claiming pure, untouched authenticity; he’s claiming a controlled permeability. Producers can frame the band, capture it, maybe polish the edges, but they don’t get to rewrite the band’s identity. That’s a very Pavement-era posture: the sound is supposed to feel like it’s happening despite the industry, not because of it.
Contextually, it’s a defensible stance from a musician whose cultural capital was built on looseness, anti-slickness, and an air of accidental brilliance. In the 90s, saying the producer “didn’t change us” is also a way of protecting the myth that the songs arrived fully formed, that the band’s ragged charm wasn’t engineered. The subtext is less “producers are unimportant” than “our core is unbuyable.” That line reassures fans that whatever happened behind the glass, the band’s crooked compass stayed in their own hands.
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| Topic | Music |
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