Stephen Malkmus. Let's get the comparisons going right off the bat. Spiral Stairs has been second banana to the guy for a career now. He added the occasional song to Pavement's albums in a suitably nasal style that blended in well-- usually a nice poppy or jammy number of good quality. Sure, you might have wondered how the guy would do on his own, but my bet is, if you're interested in this band, you've got S&M;'s solo record already and are just itching to play musical Battlebots. It's not right, though, comparing an EP to a full-length. Whatever long-played Stairs and Co. come up with may be far more masterful than this, and may shed the lesser tracks. Perhaps I should compare this to the Discretion Grove EP. Life is unfair, however, and I never got Discretion Grove, so I'm going to compare the apple and the orange, because I think it'll show some problems with this work. Verdict: Malkmus kicks Preston School of Industry square in the ass.

Mr. Malkmus wanted to call his post-Pavement band the Jicks. Someone at Matador said, hey, it's got to be Stephen Malkmus. Such is the price of name recognition. Personally, I think this was a mistake. I think those that like Pavement are a smart bunch and would figure out who the Jicks were. It's a good name. "Malkmus" does not roll triplingly off the tongue, after all, and may have saturated all its crossover appeal. Now Spiral Stairs, there's a cool name (albeit snatched from the late 60's pop group Spiral Starecase)-- one this guy still goes by. Nonetheless, he's calling this act the Preston School of Industry, one of the worst bandnames ever-- one that doesn't just beg for obscurity, but one I confuse with that Panoply Academy Corps of Engineers, or whatever they're calling themselves these days. It's also written just in initials on the cover, which suggests, to my dorkish self, "P'soi," the name of some imagined character from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series.

Now we get to the songs. "Something Happens Always" charges in with some pretty unimaginative two-note pop horns interlocking with sunny, whistling keyboards, and ends with some bass trills and what sounds like kids singing. Musically, though, it works. Somehow. It's bouncy. The lyrics are another matter; Stairs spins a very awkwardly portrait of a midlife crisis. When he sings, "I've got an allegory heart," as the song's effective chorus, he's overlooking an essential tenet of rock lyricism: never say "I've got an allegory heart." Other phrases from high school comp. which are good to avoid: "This is a metaphor"; "The end of innocence"; "Man's inhumanity towards his fellow man"; and "Insert comma here."

"How to Impress the Goddess Pt. 2" throws some slow cello over a distorted guitar phrase similar to David Bowie's "DJ," a similarity this song quickly departs from. It's another "Ballad of a Thin Man"-- a mining man family slaughter-type yarn, and one Stairs can't fully bring to life. He needs at least one more key detail to make the story real, and "what does that save happiness" chorus does little to illuminate, not even bothering to throw up its hands at the absurdity and cruelty of life. To its credit, the song does have a nice guitar jam-out at the end.

Also nice is "The Spaces In Between," a near-instrumental that tells more of a real story in its one line of lyric than the first two songs combined. Musically, it bounces like a Chinese league-level ping-pong match, with sunny bleeps skipping over a simple, happy keyboard phrase and some arty Adrian Belew type fretwork. A blast.

Stairs also wrests some real emotions from the minimal lyrics of "Where You Gonna Go?," a sleepy song of loss with lazy slide guitars over a sweetly plucked, swelling jangle of acoustic guitars, underlaid with the sound of Spiral groaning. The EP's title song then rides that acoustic sound out to close the record on a sweet if unmemorable note.

There's nothing embarrassing about the Preston School of Industry, except perhaps its name. The songs are pleasant enough, though we'll hope for now that Stairs will have better ones on his full-length. Still, have you heard Malkmus' record? "The Hook?" "Jenny and the Ess-Dog?" Of course you have.

-Dan Kilian