Jicks mesh guitar flourishes, cryptic lyrics

Indie rock band Pavement was a kind of Steely Dan of the post-punk ‘90s, hipsterism filtered through French philosopher Jacques Derrida: rockers trading subculture secrets for the assurance there weren’t any secrets worth knowing anymore, assuming an arch, deconstructed and self-referential cool.

Now that frontman Stephen Malkmus is three years into his current band, the Jicks, things have changed, but the love fest that met the group’s set Monday at the El Rey confirmed that they’ve changed only a little. Instead of alt-rock songs that flirt with pop and then slap the listener with fast and barely resolved punk changes, the Jicks’ songs flirt with British Isles folk rock and prog. Happily, Malkmus’ songs are still draped with obtuse and oddly placed lyrics.

Malkmus still has a kind of attention-deficit disorder that won’t let him ruminate on any musical figure for more than a few bars, but now he chases one filigreed guitar curlicue after another in a kind of fast-evolving Fairport Convention-meets-Lou Reed chamber-prog buildup, sometimes locking into a chugging guitar jam or a keyboard odyssey by the Jicks’ Mike Clark.

But despite impressive new guitar skills, Malkmus is still at his best when he gets back to his byzantine lyrics and Ray Davies romps on, for example, “Ramp of Death,” “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster,” and “Vanessa From Queens” off his latest album, “Pig Lib.”

The poetical-shmetical lyrics have a higher function: Each song is so tantalizingly close to busting into straight rock that the obtuse words provide a place to land, and some sense of relief. When Malkmus plays a song straight, as he did on a gorgeous, unidentified tune built around the phrase “languish here” -- a new one? another Mellow Candle cover? -- it’s a revelation; straightened out, some of these songs are gorgeous ballads. But that would be beside the point. He’s cracking some strange, obsessive code buried in music history, with astonishing results.

Folky shimmer-pop openers the Pernice Brothers also spread out a bit onstage but suffered a little from the sameness of their songs. The band is given to making albums of introspective, orchestral country-tinted ballads, but their live show delivered Nick Lowe-styled lite power-pop. Maybe emphasizing the slow intensity of the Pernices’ recordings would have focused everyone’s attention.