Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks were a bit sloppy and very laid-back at their concert Monday night at Santa Barbara’s SOhO Restaurant & Music Club. In other words, basically what you would expect, and basically what you wanted.

Malkmus is best known as the former singer/guitarist/songwriter for 1990s alt-rock stars Pavement, who were a brainy alternative to the brawny grunge bands of the era. The band broke up in the late 1990s after a string of influential albums, and Malkmus continued in much the same direction with The Jicks, which has included bassist Joanna Bolme from the start, guitarist Mike Clark for most of that time and now with new drummer Jake Morris.

About half of the set came from the latest Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks album, 2011’s Beck-produced Mirror Traffic, including the opener “Tigers,” a personal favorite; “Spazz” with its varied tempos; “Sharing the Red,” which has a nice Axis: Bold as Love guitar sound and a bit of a Grateful Dead vibe; and “Senator,” which is arguably the most memorable one — “I know what the Senator wants,” and I can tell you that it’s not a bipartisan solution to the nation’s problems. Think Bill and Monica.

The set stretched back to Malkmus’ first solo album with “The Hook” and “Jenny and the Ess-Dog,” and included the new songs “Planetary Motion,” “Scategories” and “Surreal Teenagers,” which closed the main set in jammy fashion.

The biggest surprise of the night came during the encore in the form of an alt-rock cover of “Peace of Mind” by Boston. An interesting choice, no doubt, as Boston was kind of the antithesis of the alt-rock explosion that Malkmus and Pavement were a part of. I actually remember trying to convince my druggie neighbor in the dorms that Boston had a really cool sound, and he said, “No, you should instead be listening to this new band. They’re called Jane’s Addiction.” He was a bit ahead of the curve.

“Peace of Mind” medley’d into a cool cover of “What Goes On” by the Velvet Underground — hey, it’s always good to hear a VU song. This eventually fragmented, and one caught a bit of sloppy, Robbie Krieger-influenced guitar, which marked the beginning of a greatly abbreviated cover of “The End” by The Doors.

It seems that Malkmus and The Jicks are throwing some interesting covers into their encores these days, and they certainly didn’t disappoint, in this or any other regard, at SOhO.

There were no Pavement songs on the program, which was fine, as it highlighted Malkmus’ post-Pavement songs that are often just as good, albeit not as well known. A wise man (hint: his initials are SM) once sang that “you can never quarantine the past,” but that doesn’t mean that you need to relive it.

Setlist

Tigers
All Over Gently
The Hook
Spazz
Share the Red
Forever 28
Asking Price
Jenny and the Ess-Dog
Planetary Motion
No One Is (As I Are Be)
Senator
Scategories
Animal Midnight
Surreal Teenagers

Encore

Vanessa From Queens
Peace of Mind (Boston cover)
What Goes On (Velvet Underground cover)
The End (The Doors cover)

— Noozhawk contributing writer Jeff Moehlis is a professor of mechanical engineering at UCSB. Upcoming show recommendations, advice from musicians, interviews and more are available on his Web site, music-illuminati.com.