Pavement - Low-Fidelity Distortions

When it comes to Pavement, there are no particular scandalous anecdotes to tell, no need to invent scenes or trends to contextualize their work, nor any sordid or macabre details to mark their end. Everything appears to have gone smoothly in the story of a band that, despite never having had a particularly strong or trendy image, managed through its music to decode its own generation better than anyone else. In the sound, attitude and songwriting of Pavement, a decade's worth of movements emerging from the indie-rock underground and the world of American college radio finds its outlet – movements that had already produced, back in the Eighties, phenomena such as Sonic Youth, Pixies, Beat Happening and Sebadoh, but which, at the dawn of the Nineties, was still waiting for someone able to crystallize the ferment of a certain crooked, noisy, “skewed” pop/rock, updating it for a new audience caught between the tail end of post-hardcore, grunge and the unknown. Pavement didn't invent anything new, but they folded the trend of “pop songwriting” into the broader American rock tradition, infusing it with a vitality that seemed unstoppable, eventually incorporating into that very tradition the “first take's the best take” approach and the lo-fi traits of their early work.

Pavement's first steps came at the end of the Eighties, thanks to Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg (also known as Spiral Stairs), two young men who cut their teeth in Stockton, California, recording garage-band experiments onto a 4-track. Meeting Gary Young, a drummer who occasionally lent his contribution to the pair's music, changed the picture and marked the true beginning of Pavement's story.

Their early attempts circulated through a series of self-produced singles and EPs, or releases on the young independent label Drag City; among these, at least “Slay Tracks”, “Demolition Plot” and “Perfect Sound Forever” deserve mention, perpetually balanced between pop and gratuitous low-fidelity noise, yet a mirror of much of the mood of “alternative” America in 1989-'91. The anthology Westing (by Musket and Sextant), released only in 1993, would gather all of Pavement's work as a duo/trio, and remains among the gems of American lo-fi music.

Meanwhile Malkmus had moved to New York, where his roommates were two characters by the names of David Berman and Bob Nastanovich, with whom he collaborated on the Silver Jews project, a band only seemingly “parallel” to Pavement, since the deus ex machina of the operation was Berman, who would carry on over the years, with and without Malkmus and co. Besides the Jews' debut, Starlite Walker, Malkmus also contributed to American Water, the band's third album, but that's another story, one that unfolds during a period when Pavement were in some sense “on standby”.

Between the end of 1990 and the middle of 1991, in fact, Malkmus, Kannberg and Young finished recording a debut album that would only see the light of day at the start of 1992, giving Pavement time in the meantime to settle into a five-piece lineup that would also include Nastanovich (first as road manager, then as percussionist-keyboardist-utility man) and Mark Ibold (on bass). So, by the time Slanted & Enchanted was released in spring 1992, Pavement's name was already quite well known on the American independent circuit: the label that won the fight to release the album was Matador – another up-and-coming label of the era – and even ahead of its release, Slanted & Enchanted was already one of the most talked-about records of the moment.

In gathering up much of the influence of the most recent American indie rock (along with echoes of late-period Velvet Underground and Fall), Slanted & Enchanted ends up imitating none of them, oozing personality from the very first seconds of the anthem “Summer Babe”: three chords, yes, but wrapped in an unprecedented, inimitable sound and style, a compromise between low fidelity (an economic choice, not an aesthetic one) and the most crooked kind of pop, which finally took center stage after years of surviving in the second rank. All of this delivered with a breezy, ironic attitude that has little or nothing to do with the imagery tied to grunge.

With Slanted & Enchanted, Pavement manage to reconcile tension (noisy guitar blasts and distortion) with spot-on melodies, heart-wrenching ballads (“Here” or “Our Singer”) and goofy nursery-rhyme tunes (“Two States”), unforgettable pop (the rest of the album) and improbable instrumental breaks. Without rock-star posturing, without “generational” posturing, with a spontaneity and a naivety (qualities not all of their followers would possess) that often lie at the heart of masterpieces like this one. The “twin” of Slanted & Enchanted is the EP Watery, Domestic, similar to the album in impact and sound, and notable as the first work recorded by the full lineup. Listen to Slanted & Enchanted straight through together with the EP and you'll realize just how tight and singular Pavement's sound was in 1991-'93, before the evolution that would irrevocably change them.

What would cement the five-piece's definitive move from the underbrush of great indie hopes to the wider landscape of early-Nineties "new rock" was an album whose shape was the product of a sharp change that took place during 1993. Young, an increasingly unreliable and unprofessional drummer, left the group, which, after some turmoil, replaced him with Steve West, an old friend of Nastanovich's who had already been orbiting the band back in the Jews days. West is a technically solid drummer with a more classical approach, and with his arrival the Pavement sound grew sturdier. The acoustic standards of Slanted & Enchanted, recorded on an 8-track at Young's house, could only improve on, and sure enough its successor, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, introduced audiences to a brand-new band in blazing form.

Despite the clear difference in production, the album holds up effortlessly against its predecessor: the formula is still that of crooked songwriting with huge pop potential, dressed up with dirty guitars and unexpected sounds, in this case percussion or keyboards. It's a more refined record than its predecessor, and, bolstered by memorable singles like "Cut Your Hair" and "Range Life" (not to mention another 10 tracks, none of which is anything less than beautiful, from the deranged "Unfair" or "Hit the Plane Down" to the gorgeous melodies of "Stop Breathin'" or "Gold Soundz"), it would become the best-seller of the Pavement catalogue, as well as, in hindsight, the true measure of the quintet's art.

At this point (we're in 1994), the band could have repeated itself and put together a passport album into the alternative-superstar pantheon that Nirvana or Soundgarden had finally managed to break into; instead - true to their "lightweight" spirit and their scant interest in the music business - they unveiled Wowee Zowee. Released in 1995, it's the longest, messiest, most unpredictable and most heterogeneous record in Pavement's history, capable of splitting fans with its 60 minutes suspended between atmospheric pieces, guitar pop and pure goofing around. Enough to make it a good album, yes, but a "transitional" one, the strangest moment of Malkmus and co.'s golden period. Even if, for some, it represents the absolute peak of their output.

Across the first five tracks, Pavement prove they can masterfully inhabit every territory adjacent to their music, from the acoustic ballad you don't see coming ("We Dance") to the big pop single "Rattled by the Rush", from more classically "slow" tracks like "Black Out" or "Grounded" to the scrambled fragment of "Brinx Job", all the way to the indie anthem "Fight This Generation". It's an up-and-down trajectory that makes this record irresistible precisely because it's so heterogeneous.

The attempt to make a more traditionally rock-oriented record (helped a great deal here by the presence of an outside producer, Mitch Easter, who had already worked with R.E.M. in their early days) arrives with the next effort, 1997's Brighten The Corners, which at the time of release looked like something of a misstep but which, in hindsight, holds up just fine. Of this album (the first in which sonic polish is prioritized over compositional heterogeneity), what stands out, more than the tracks that are by now settled into the "Pavement-style" ballad mode like "Type Slowly" or "Starlings Of The Slipstream", are the other compositions in which, having definitively given up on eccentricity for its own sake, the band tries to showcase its ability purely through songwriting.

Hence the spotlight falls on the single "Stereo", the extraordinary ballad "We Are Underused" or the livelier tracks like "Date W/ Ikea" and "Embassy Row". Had it been a debut, we'd remember it as a great record, but in the shadow of the three preceding masterpieces, it's obvious the perspective shifts considerably.

The swan song arrives in 1999 with Terror Twilight, the fifth and final chapter of Pavement's career, as well as - at least initially - the least loved by fans. Not so much for the average quality of the songs, which actually improved compared with the previous two albums, but for the overly polished sound, the work of the obsessive perfectionism of Nigel Godrich, a fan of the band who tries to graft his own "Radiohead style" discipline onto the weird-slacker attitude of Stephen Malkmus and co. Thanks to his contribution the project does manage to get unstuck, after weeks of advancing amid endless difficulties that generated huge frustration within the band. Godrich's hand is slightly heavier than that of his colleague Easter, if only in convincing the band to leave the States to record in England.

Pavement's proverbial lo-fi ethic thus went out the window, giving way to the polished serenity instilled into "Major League" and "Ann Don't Cry", or the neatly crafted indie-pop flourishes of "Spit On A Stranger" and "You Are A Light", which confirm Malkmus's unmistakable songwriting gifts. Alt-rock instincts remain well in evidence on "Cream Of Gold", playground oddities surface in the closing "...And Carrot Rope", while the more purely experimental business stays confined to the unpredictable Zappa-esque approach of "Platform Blues" and "Speak, See, Remember". Country shadings can be glimpsed in the banjo of "Folk Jam" and in the unpredictable ending of "Billie", but the most overflowing moment spills out of the psychedelic coils of "The Hexx", among the absolute high points of Pavement's entire career, here launched into an unprecedented lysergic dimension.

After the album and its accompanying tour, which stretched the band's internal frictions to the breaking point, Pavement slipped away quietly, without much fanfare, from a musical world that had by then fully absorbed the traits of their music: pop/rock that's hard to pigeonhole, original without being revolutionary, odd without ever tipping into bad taste or into the predictable rock-star imagery. Left on the sidelines were the solo-career attempts: Spiral Stairs, with his Preston School of Industry, cut two albums devoid of spark (All This Sounds Gas in 2001 and Monsoon in 2004) that dispel any doubt as to why he wasn't the main author of Pavement's music.

Malkmus, for his part, together with his band the Jicks, has continued to offer up his own personal take on singer-songwriter electric rock. After a less-than-brilliant debut (Stephen Malkmus, 2001), followed by a merely decent outing (Pig Lib, 2003), he landed a solid hit in 2005 with Face the Truth. Then came the uneven Real Emotional Trash (2008), Mirror Traffic (2011), Wig Out Of Jagbags (2014) and Sparkle Hard (2018). Later on, without the Jicks' backing, he recorded Groove Denied in 2019 and Traditional Techniques the following year.

As proof of the classic status the band has by now attained, various anniversaries have prompted a reissue campaign, in deluxe format, covering nearly the whole catalogue: Slanted & Enchanted in 2002, Crooked Rain in 2004, Wowee Zowee in 2006, Brighten The Corners in 2008.

Every album comes loaded with unmissable bonus material (single B-sides, radio sessions, live concert snippets, EPs and unreleased tracks) and is presented as a double CD with extremely rare photos and liner notes written by the band members themselves.

Riding this renewed interest in the band, in 2010 Matador released the retrospective Quarantine The Past. At the same time, Pavement launched into a hugely successful reunion tour that also took in Italy. Quarantine The Past gathers twenty-three tracks from a trajectory that, at least in its early stages, laid the groundwork for the modern conception of lo-fi. There's no unreleased material, but plenty of fans will be drawn in by the presence of "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence", which appeared on the 1993 compilation "No Alternative", along with five tracks pulled from some of their many EPs (in this case "Watery, Domestic" from 1992, "Perfect Sound Forever" from 1991, and "Slay Tracks", their very first release, dating back to 1989).

The rest of the selections are fairly balanced, with the center of gravity tilted toward the band's early output: five tracks pulled from "Slanted & Enchanted", as many from "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain", two from "Wowee Zowee", four from "Brighten The Corners" and just one from "Terror Twilight", the record saddled with the unenviable task of closing out the story, making way for choppy solo careers, starting with the up-and-down output of frontman Stephen Malkmus. No need to dwell here on the alt-pop perfection of "Range Life" and "Gold Soundz", on the melancholy of "Here", or on the importance of generational anthems "Trigger Cut" and "Cut Your Hair": with Quarantine The Past we're faced with a run of superb compositions that show how, even in its most "commercial" moments, musical exploration was a constant throughout Pavement's career. It's material that still sounds thoroughly current, and on which entire generations of determinedly unaligned musicians have been raised (and continue to be raised).

In 2019 word came that Pavement would reunite the following year for two shows, headlining the twentieth-anniversary edition of the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona and its Portuguese twin event. Fans' hopes were accordingly rekindled for the long-awaited release of a new album of unreleased material. Then the pandemic froze everything for two years, and those shows were pushed back to 2022, alongside a full-fledged new reunion tour and the release of the one deluxe edition still missing from the set, that of Terror Twilight, which hit stores in early April. In the digital and vinyl versions the sequencing is changed in favor of the - convoluted and frankly baffling - one devised by Godrich and rejected by the musicians involved at the time. Besides the remastered tracks, there's room for the brief unreleased instrumental "Shagbagh", the singles' b-sides, a handful of home demos and a few rough recordings captured during the interim sessions held at Echo Canyon Studios, the studio owned by their friends Sonic Youth.

This way we can trace the slow, laborious evolution of the songs and grasp just how much the producer's input helped steer the work toward reassuring yet intriguing shores, compensating for the growing limitations of part of the band, who were technically no longer able to make further leaps forward. Toward the back of the tracklist there's also room for a handful of live recordings from the era, which reveal a clear intent to play those songs by faithfully replicating the finished album versions. The box set, titled Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal, gathers 45 tracks in total, 28 of them previously unreleased, spread across four vinyl records or two CDs, plus a book featuring extremely rare photos and commentary written by most of the people involved. Released at the same time is an expanded edition of the Spit On A Stranger EP, pressed on vinyl for the first time.

In 2024 Matador released Cautionary Tales: Jukebox Classiques, a limited-edition box set containing every single Pavement ever put out on 7" vinyl over the course of their career, from their earliest recordings right up to the band's breakup. The set includes eighteen records originally issued under a range of different labels (Treble Kicker, Drag City, Big Cat, Domino, Fellahen), along with a hefty 24-page booklet.

Cautionary Tales doesn't offer any unreleased material, but it does a fine job of distilling the band's history, dragging a few hard-to-find flashes of brilliance back into the spotlight. There's barely a forgettable moment here, almost lost among the many undeniable strokes of genius and the countless wild, illuminated visions. A sequence of distortion and melody held together by an extraordinary talent, one capable of turning even its own mistakes into an art form, and one that has kept its allure fully intact over the years, becoming a source of inspiration for generations of musicians to come.

There's no stopping the Pavement comeback: in 2025 came the release of the soundtrack accompanying Pavements, an oddball documentary-film project about the band, a "biopic" — let's call it that — directed by Alex Ross Perry, constantly teetering between reality and fiction. Get comfortable, half-close your eyes, and enjoy these 41 tracks: an immersion not only into a chapter of the history of one of the most important and influential indie-rock bands of all time, but above all into a considerable chunk of your own life. If you ever loved Pavement, if they ever truly meant something to you, brace yourselves to be overwhelmed by a kind of "energetic melancholy", generated by a gripping, densely packed run of songs interspersed with spoken interludes lifted from the footage, with emotion always ready to catch you off guard, as the record unfolds as if it were itself a genuine film. Inside you'll find Malkmus's very first recorded song, "You're Killing Me", the unhinged, drunken rock'n'roll of "Spizzle Trunk", a couple of treats for true die-hards, but above all some of the songs that made Pavement genuinely popular. A sequence that lays bare the band's distinctly un-ordinary streak of madness: "Our Singer", "In The Mouth A Desert", "Zurich Is Stained", "Grave Architecture", the torrential "Fillmore Jive" (cue the tears...), the even more torrential "Type Slowly", the irresistible "Serpentine Pad", the thrilling "Grounded", the unexpected hit "Harness Your Hopes", which has become their most-streamed song of all time.

Everything here is unmissable, even when it's the film's own actors doing the singing, in the "Jukebox Musical Version" segment, where Joe "Djo" Keery (Steve Harrington from "Stranger Things") takes on "Range Life", or Michael Esper, Zoe Lister-Jones and Kathryn Gallagher handle a wonderfully sweet, stripped-down "Here" (cue the tears again...), or Gallagher herself throws herself into an enthusiastic version of "Give It A Day", all the way to the triumphant "Slanted" Enchanted! Finale!", a kind of bizarre closing recap that feels very much like an end-of-term celebration. The tracklist also makes room for "Witchitai-To", a cover of Jim Pepper, the American saxophonist and singer who died in 1992 at the age of 50. The song, first released by Pepper in 1969, was recorded by Pavement during rehearsals for their 2022 reunion tour, and was then performed at every date on the tour. "Witchitai-To" marks Pavement's first recording in 25 years, going all the way back to the "Major Leagues" EP in 1999: quite an event. There's also a cover of Snail Mail's "Shoot The Singer". Listening through all of this material offers a chance to see Pavement from new and different angles, and even if the short spoken interludes risk chopping up the listening experience a bit too much, they're still part of a narrative the project's curators clearly wanted to preserve. If you're so inclined, go ahead and seek out the film, but in the end it's really all already here: half-close your eyes and you'll see it unfold, just by listening to these nearly ninety minutes of music and words. A genuinely important little piece of indie music history.

Also in 2025 comes Pavement's second anthology, Hecklers Choice: Big Gums And Heavy Lifters, further proof of a lo-fi resurgence with no intention of letting up. A (let's call it...) "greatest hits" that sticks to the best-known songs by Stephen Malkmus's band, something close to a "best of", with "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" as the most represented album (four tracks) and "Wowee Zowee" ignored entirely, while including that old b-side "Harness Your Hopes", which unexpectedly became their biggest commercial success thanks to some mysterious trend that took off on social media.

The indie-rock charges of "Stereo" and "Cut Your Hair", which went on to become genuine cult anthems for a generation, the formal perfection of "Gold Soundz" and "Range Life", the touching gait of "Here", the more mature movements of "Spit On A Stranger" and "Major Leagues": twelve songs in all, lining up dissonance, distortion and melody, produced with a slacker aesthetic that set a whole template, spawning countless disciples. For everyone who was there (in the Nineties), and for everyone who wishes they had been.

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