Where 2005's "Face the Truth" found him in a somewhat upbeat and pithy mood, Stephen Malkmus [ tickets ] doesn't waste any time communicating his current mood on the opening cut of his latest LP, "Real Emotional Trash."

By the time the Skynyrd-esque twin-guitar attack kicks in on "Dragonfly Pie," it's clear that Malkmus and The Jicks are taking everyone down the rabbit hole, and that getting to any specific sort of destination is going to be pretty much impossible here; this is intergalactic driving music.

After dispensing with the somewhat gloomy opener's southern-rock overtones, Malkmus ignites his inner Neil Young on the next track, "Hopscotch Willie," then pans away from the song's "Cowgirl in the Sand" mechanics for the pleasantly rocking "Cold Son."

Malkmus' post-Pavement output has revealed a gradual decrease, album by album, in his apparent need to write meaningful lyrics, and "Trash" is no exception, not that this should be counted against the disc in any significant way. He seems more interested here in the way words sound than what those words mean. "The abstract city sun," he sings on the quite psychedelic, 10-minute plus title track, and then repeats it again, twice as fast this time, in what he probably believes is a style called "scat."

It's a long way back to Pavement, however, and the subtle swipes at society and mass culture have been exchanged for a much more muscular and beautiful sound than Malkmus' old bandmates could have ever mustered. These Jicks, featuring powerful drumming from the newest Jick, ex-Sleater-Kinney Janet Weiss, can propel straight forward or completely sideways on demand; the group playing here is both adventurous and professional, two qualities that don't always exist side-by-side on the indie landscape.

The gorgeous "Out of Reaches" takes the album into Allmans territory, the sort of laid-back driving jam that was never really in style even when it was in style.

"Baltimore" offers a head-spinning array of chord changes and tempo shifts parceled out within the explicitly formal conventions of a traditional English folk ballad, replete with mentions of random acetylene torches and crucifixes and being "in love with a soldier from Baltimo-whoa-whoa-whoa."

After a sprightly run through the sunny "Gardenia," Malkmus hops right back onto the Lonesome Highway on the minor key masterpiece (and unfortunately titled) "Elmo Delmo," which teeters somewhere between early '90s Sonic Youth and the weird sort of extended jams John Fogerty fitfully introduced to late-period CCR when he decided he wasn't being taken as seriously by critics as the Grateful Dead.

The album ends with the naked Beatles swipe "Wicked Wanda," replete with backwards horns and lyrics of the "sitting in an English garden" sort. It's a mildly frustrating close to a flawed but beautiful record--frustrating because you sort of want to ask him where he's going with all of this, but the next time you spot him he'll be climbing back into his spaceship, waving either goodbye or hello.

It's anybody's guess where he touches down next.