Stephen Malkmus taking a new path back to indie scene

One night last November, an unexpected opening act popped up at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Stephen Malkmus, best known for fronting the 1990s indie-rock giants Pavement, took the stage without even a guitar. Malkmus, wearing a trucker's hat and T-shirt, brought a laptop, picked up a microphone and sang an album's worth of the songs he planned to release as his next record.

Malkmus had created the music in his basement with Pro Tools, Ableton software and keyboards. It felt good to experiment, to move away from the guitar-driven songs that dominated his catalogue. Then he dropped the files to Matador Records. It had been more than three years since the last Malkmus record. His longtime label wasn't thrilled to get a keyboard-based set driven by drum pads.

“They didn't want to put it out,” said Malkmus. “Or they thought it was dumb to put it out first because it was a head-scratcher.”

This is the first time Matador rejected anything from Malkmus. But instead of rage, the label's dis actually inspired a name for his then-untitled electronic album: “Groove Denied.”

“I could have just put it out myself,” he said, “but I also listened to what they had to say. I was like, ‘You may know more about this than me,' and I also always had this record.”

“This record” is “Sparkle Hard,” his album out on Matador this month, the one Malkmus is touring behind this summer with the Jicks, a band assembled after Pavement's demise and now pushing 18. They're playing a sold-out June 3 show at Chicago's Thalia Hall.

Matador didn't hate “Groove Denied.” Chris Lombardi, the label's founder, says he definitely plans to release it. He just believed “Sparkle Hard” should come first.

It is all part of his mission to put Malkmus back atop the indie pedestal.

Lombardi knows what he's up against. To the aging indie-rock intelligentsia, Malkmus, 51, is a legend. To the general public, he barely registers. His most marketable currency is a band, Pavement, that had one minor hit, “Cut Your Hair,” during Bill Clinton's first term. The most recent Malkmus album, 2014's “Wig Out at Jagbags,” was almost universally praised. It has also sold as many copies over its lifetime (21,000) as Taylor Swift's “Reputation” moved by lunchtime last Nov. 10.

The notion that Malkmus had “Sparkle Hard” on reserve is startling when you consider how good it is. There's the groove of “Bike Lane,” the country-tinged “Refute” and “Middle America,” a song as beautifully melancholic as anything Malkmus has ever done.

Malkmus actually wanted to cut “Middle America” from “Sparkle Hard.” Naturally, that's the song Lombardi pegged as “the one we want to go out with.”

And selling Malkmus, or reintroducing him, has become his latest mission.

“The music industry has changed, listening habits have changed, and we have to kind of direct people's attention to something truly genius,” says Lombardi. “To kind of get everybody focused on what Steve Malkmus is again, we wanted to tell the story from a bit of a safer place.”

Malkmus grew up in Stockton, California. At the University of Virginia, he studied history and, after his 1988 graduation, formed Pavement with Scott Kannberg. Matador signed them and put out 1992's “Slanted and Enchanted,” an album so acclaimed that there's a chart on its Wikipedia page devoted to listing the publications that have ranked it one of the greatest albums of all time.

Early on, Malkmus established an aesthetic driven by spontaneity. Vocals were done in a single take. Lyrics were packed with slacker slang and obscure references. Guitar parts were punched out almost as an afterthought.

Then there was the image. Other '90s frontmen — think Eddie Vedder or Billy Corgan — delivered deadly serious dispatches with steely gazes. Malkmus wore untucked, button-down shirts and performed with his eyes half-closed. Bob Nastanovich, a UVA buddy drafted to become Pavement's “auxiliary noisemaker,” believes his detachment was often misinterpreted.

“He was actually nervous, and the way that was portrayed was looking like he didn't care,” says Nastanovich. “If you recall the few appearances he made on national television in the 1990s, he came off as incredibly awkward and often put forth a disastrous performance.”

Take a 1994 booking on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” Pavement was set to play one of its most radio-friendly singles, “Cut Your Hair.” And yet Malkmus, ignoring the blueprint laid down at rehearsal, opened the performance with a series of improvised chirps. When the song finally kicked in, he sang with his eyes partially rolled back in his head.

“I know I did not look cool,” says Malkmus. “I was just trying to play the song, probably. It feels weird up there. Jay Leno's up there. Everybody's acting like everyone's normal. I'm sure basically I really did not want to do it, and I was just making myself, ‘Come on, you can do this. Please be over.' That happens often on those types of shows. Like when Pavement played Coachella. I was like, ‘I can't wait until this is over.' “

It would be over, in 1999, after which Malkmus recruited the Jicks to back him. Each record — “Sparkle Hard” is the seventh — has brought more critical acclaim, fewer albums sold.

This time around, Malkmus says he is trying to be more open, to give the people — or in this case, the press — what they want. Does he wish he could sell more records? It's such a straight question. What he wants from “Sparkle Hard” is something new, whatever it is.

“I just don't want to just put it out and have it come out for one week and have some attention for one week and do the same shows in the venues that we go,” says Malkmus. “Because that's not fun. It gets a little boring. And I would have wanted that on the other ones, too. I'm just talking about it more. Why not just say why you're really doing it instead of saying it's about the art. You want to do well, you want to succeed, you want people to like you and think it's cool music.”