“That world seems so old to me—like it just doesn’t exist anymore, you know?” he said. “I guess it does.”

Malkmus has made a career of aloof vibes and indirect lyrics, but in person—in a wrinkled white shirt, trucker hat, and what appeared to be Tory Burch aviators—he came off as the self-aware guitar god next door. He lives in Portland with his partner, the artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, and their two daughters. He follows the N.B.A. generally. His kids love Billie Eilish, and he does, too. (“Huge fan. . . I think it’s going to stick for a while.”) He’s up to date on Taylor Swift’s standing in the collective tween mind-set. (“How does that feel? I know she doesn’t give a fuck, but just to have a 13-year-old decide you’re over, you know?”) He’s happy the culture gave Tyler, the Creator room to mature. (“He got time to fuck around.”) He reads theory and is pretty good at Twitter. He has thoughts on millennials!

“I know the statistics bear out that it’s bleaker now for millennials,” he said. “The numbers show that it’s even bleaker, but it wasn’t like a total walk in the park. I’m not trying to say we’re all in the same boat here, but there’s been cycles of fucking misery.”

Still, guys, he gets it.

“I can totally see people, younger people, saying, like, ‘Get out of the way, privileged white guys of the 90s.’” he said. “I can see being frustrated by that.”

Malkmus is, in other words, a dad—literally, yes, but also unavoidably in the broader sense the descriptor has taken on. Because he’s spent the better part of three decades as a standard-bearer for a certain strain of indie rock, the idea that he’d made a record his label had rejected came as something of a surprise. Isn’t throwing knuckleballs at one’s label kids’ stuff? As it turns out, that reading might be just a touch of marketing. While Matador founder Chris Lombardi did fly to Portland to persuade him to sit on the record, it wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds. Or at least Malkmus makes it sound less so, now that the actual record is being released.

“They were like, ‘You know, we don’t know. I don’t think this is the right move for you right now,’” he said about its initial reception. “That’s all it was.”

Still, he was taken aback—at first. Matador has released his records since Pavement’s debut LP, Slanted and Enchanted, in 1992, and this was new. But he was set to record what would become Sparkle Hard anyway, so he got over himself. “I’m not really thinking about what’s marketable,” he said. “I’m just thinking about what I did for the last six months, and I’m having fun listening in my car, and like, ‘This is really different. I like this more than the other one.’ So much of us, myself very much included—so many people live in fear of rejection.”

There’s something admirable in the idea of an indie-rock stalwart making a difficult record at this stage in his career. Certainly, he could put out one of those guitar records every three or four years, tour it, and do O.K. for himself. Presented with that idea, he seemed to wince.

“There’s plenty of very talented artists that just don’t get their dues, due to getting older and making something that’s just O.K.” he said. “There are minefields out there. You cannot be playing as big a place as you want to play, or you have to go back to your old band.”