2003’s Pig Lib retrospectively casts Stephen Malkmus’ self-titled debut as an anomaly. The debut’s relative accessibility might have falsely suggested that Malkmus’ dalliances with prog, as heard on Pavement’s controversial final album Terror Twilight, were behind him, but Pig Lib defies expectation not only by reintroducing those elements, but by reintroducing them so explicitly. The result is Malkmus’ greatest album to date, one that perfectly balances his magisterial guitar playing with the songwriting on which he built his name. By now, Malkmus had internalized his rock fixations, and Pig Lib is the sound of these fixations secreting from his pores. He’s smart enough to acknowledge rock’s primal power but canny enough to not embrace its signifiers with too much outward jean jacket zeal; like a master chef counting single grains of cumin, he understands that a little Thin Lizzy goes a long way. Consistently underrated as a composer and arranger, the Malkmus of Pig Lib is full of surprises, whether in the form of abrupt tempo changes, mid-song introductions of new sonic colors, or protracted codas (Oh, how Malkmus loves a coda!). Following the first chorus of “(Do Not Feed The) Oyster,” the song careens into an unexpected middle section featuring twin harmonizing lead guitars and backwards effects before plummeting back into the regularly scheduled pop song, like some very psychedelic test of the emergency broadcast system. It’s a great, succinct sampler of millennial Malkmus: psych in microcosm, prog in miniature. The breezy “Vanessa From Queens” combines cheapo Casio factory pre-sets, handclaps, and a stereo-panned, direct-to-soundboard guitar straight off All Things Must Pass, while the oddly triumphant-sounding “Dark Wave” is “Embassy Row” recast at the place where power metal meets power pop. How much you enjoy the epic “1% Of One” will depend on your patience for guitar solos, which take up more than half of the song’s nine minutes. Puzzling out notes in real time with jazz-improv logic, Malkmus dots, doodles, and snarls his way through the tensile improvisation with great authority; you can almost hear him surprising himself as the solo builds, like an obstacle course participant whose every incremental victory exponentially builds confidence for the next challenge. “1% Of One” is a song that, like the rest of Pig Lib, has little to do with the albatross of a legacy, but everything to do with greatness in spite of it.