It's all ch-ch-change for Stephen Malkmus

It's difficult for many young musicians to understand the influence of Pavement today, so long after their reign. And for those old enough to experience the release of Slanted and Enchanted first hand, the impact has probably been dulled by the march of time and new music. So we'll start from the beginning.

Formed by an art gallery security guard and his childhood friend, Pavement stripped classic rock and roll to its most base components, mixed it with Captain Beefheart's eccentricity and held it all together with the barest coherence of melody. It was almost too erratic, too brilliant, and with the band's breakup in 1999 they soon faded from the indie rock movement's fickle attention. But their influence remains, as do the mysteries. Why, for example, did drummer Gary Young give out cabbage and mashed potatoes at their gigs?

Sitting in the basement of a trendy London hotel, stretched out on a sofa and clad in a baseball cap, Stephen Malkmus looks like the last person to ask. The former Pavement frontman might have a new album out with his band the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash - but today he's more inclined to wax lyrical on fatherhood. Having just had a new addition to the Malkmus clan, his three-year-old daughter is attending a Montessori preschool, where they encourage arts and shun the rules found inside most classrooms. But Stephen laughs, complaining that she's never taught to pick up her toys so he stumbles around them at home. "But it's great," he enthuses: "It's different than always thinking about yourself or your band; you're constantly responsible for somebody else - which is good for your spirit, I think. Even if you're not having some sort of spiritual epiphany, just the fact that you're caring for somebody other than yourself is always bound to change you, though it's really difficult to truly change."

Nevertheless, these days it's hard to find the rock star inside Malkmus; he lives in Portland now, far from the limelight of New York where he spent much of his youth. Rubbing his eyes and smiling, he seems tired but happy and The Skinny wonders how the veteran muso sill copes with the pressures of the rock 'n' roll machine. "There's a need for me to be doing this [settling down]. I am by nature a travelling person; I don't stay in one place for so long. And now that's changed, I'm more earth-bound."

I ask Malkmus if he still needs to surround himself with creative people, like so many artists do, and if that explains his recent relocation to Portland. "No, it doesn't matter, for a family Portland is a good place to live," he reassures. Though Malkmus does seem close to the community, an active member of Portland's ever burgeoning music scene. He met Todd Haynes, director of Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, through friends at parties, and ended up providing Cate Blanchett's singing voice as well as a considerable chunk of the movie's soundtrack. "He's an auteur," says Malkmus of Haynes, when asked if any future collaborations are planned, "so who knows what he's working on next. He's probably worked out his rock 'n' roll demons. But maybe if there's a movie about 'da blooz'... I can definitely do that!"

Relying on lyrics in a context where the flow and sound is typically more important than their cohesion, Malkmus has a lot to say, but perhaps still says very little of it through his music. Would he consider expression through other mediums? "I don't know, that's a lot of effort. I just jump around, I can get in to this but I don't really know if it's... I'm just a guitarist." This elusiveness is surprising in an artist with so much history, and he understands the peculiarity. "I've had some book offers and agents have come to see if I'd be interested in writing either an autobiography or fiction, but I don't know. Writing down words to me is like..." He gestures in space with his hands. "It's very difficult to imagine stringing together enough to make a book. And I'm sort of disassociated from that kind of communication - from wanting to place trust in writing things down. When I see a novel these days I'm often so sceptical of the title, they seem all forced to me: like 'That's a clever one' or 'That's just a one word one'. And I feel too critical towards it, probably like a lot of people feel towards music."

Soundtracks, novels and 'da blooz' aside, Malkmus and his band the Jicks have been hard at work on the main reason we're sitting down with him today - their third album together. The laborious process took the band across three states, two coasts and a switch from old tape to computers. Snow Ghost Studios in Montana, where the album was recorded, is a far stretch from the New York studio where it was mastered. "Montana is beautiful, it's just pure nature: big sky country - like they say - big hills, beautiful lakes. The studio was a massive tech-out mansion. It was beautiful and fun to play in there, but it was 'put the stuff up in a room and see what you get'. In the end that was nerve wrecking."

Malkmus doesn't seem the type to isolate himself and I ask if that was why he finished back in his familiar stomping ground of New York. "I feel at home in New York as much as anywhere else in the world. As big as it is it's really small in other ways, once you know your circuits."

If the Big Apple hasn't changed in the near-decade since Pavement's break-up, the music industry certainly has. But not on Malkmus's radar: "I don't notice the difference myself but I may be oblivious. Being in a band is more about the gigs; the venues are still the same and the crowds are still the same so that feels familiar. We were established before the MySpace thing started so we pick up new fans through that and however music gets around, but there's always a backbone of people who heard us the old way and still like it that way. People still want to go out and see live people, they don't want to stay at home and just watch a podcast, luckily. Because that's boring! I noticed a bit of a downturn in Germany and Holland though, there's less interest [in the Jicks there]. There's enough to support a tour but not as much as there was with Pavement. But in America it doesn't really feel different. You play the same venues, people still like it there." Stephen pauses and laughs, shaking his fist, "But ze Germans!"

Despite ze Germans and any toll a new album takes on his family life, Malkmus is happy to be back. Pavement and its attendant success may be behind him but there's a thrill of the new: he's looking forward to playing to fans that may not know his legacy but will dance to Real Emotional Trash regardless. "It's fun to participate," he says. "I don't know where it's going to go. But the touring will be really fun because we're a good live band - we like each other and I feel confident." And wherever Malkmus goes, the music is sure to infect its listeners. "Well," he smiles widely, "people will come."