Pavement and Stephen Malkmus

Pavement were the vanguard of the "lo-fi" movement that would become one of the most important rock movements of the 1990s. Their deliberately amateurish style - which "wastes" refrains and riffs as if it wanted to despise the rules of the music business, but at the same time intellectual as befits college kids - soon became the religion of thousands of alternative musicians.

The band was formed in Stockton (a town in California's central valley two hours from San Francisco) by Steve Malkmus and Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannenberg (better known as Kannberg).

Their first release, a 7" record titled Slay Tracks 1933-1969 (Kicker, 1989), was self-produced by the duo: gag-like songs such as You're Killing Me Maybe Maybe and Price Yeah exhibit a good dose of insanity and lunatic arrangements (besides spartan) that relate them to Half Japanese and other practitioners of "home" recordings, but the pop style of Box Elder's is even too mature for provincial goliards, and represented the prelude to a much brighter future; and the epic She Believes definitely points in the direction of the alienated boogie of the Velvet Underground.

Their second record, the 7" Demolition Plot J-7 (Drag City, 1990), did not change the coordinates very much, and if anything it increased the confusion, with the amusing boogie of Spizzle, the orientalizing and minimalist Internal K-Dart , the suffered pop of Perfect Depth , the bacchanal for muezzin Recorder Grot and above all Forklift , still in the vein of the most heroin-addicted Velvet Underground tunes.

Meanwhile, drummer Gary Young was replaced by Steve West.

At the end of the year, Pavement recorded the 10" Perfect Sound Forever (Drag City), which would only be released in 1991. Everything has come to maturity: Heckler Spray gloriously dusts off the Velvet Underground's White Light; From Now On adds a melody, a Stooges-inspired sound and an unbridled tribal dance hedonism; Debris Slide offers another poppy theme (recycling the refrain of Mudhoney's Sweet Young); and Home is again inspired by Lou Reed's colloquial singing with added background noise.

Perfect, Demolition and Slay Tracks were collected on Westing (Drag City, 1993).

In 1991 the single Summer Babe consolidated the legend. it is still a catchy song drenched in excruciating distortions (Reed docet), but this time Pavement are better and more serious performers. Mercy's narcotic spiel and Baptist Blacktick's maniacal nursery rhyme prove the similarities with the Fall but above all complete the renewal of the sound, released once and for all from the original amateurish limitations.

Also from the same period dates the flexi-disc My First Mine , a sarcastic unassuming ditty, and My Radio, a micro-concert of dissonances (on a 1992 compilation).

The subsequent EP Watery Domestic (Matador, 1992), with Texas Never Whispers , Frontwards , Feed 'Em To The Lions and Shoot The Singer , further reduced the group's artistsic stature, taking it into even more mellow and mundane territories.

On the other hand, the sophomore full-length album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Big Cat, 1993) definitively consecrates their style in a way that is also accessible to the general public. Even if a bit hypocritical, the catchy Cut Your Hair is a melody worthy of Elvis Costello’s best. The lyrical Range Life is a ballad worthy of Tom Petty. and the enthralling Unfair is a bacchanal worthy of the Who. These songs constitute exemplary cases of highly satisfying "lo-fi" rock. Pavement here fit in classic rock, albeit with a very personal, subdued and creative style, a parable quite similar to Galaxie 500, but a style that is always tinged with a surreal quality, in which sudden brackets of oddities open up (such as the pseudo-jazz instrumental 5-4 = Unity, or the new Fall imitation, Hit The Plane Down).
There is also something "Dylanian" in their folkrock spiced with boogie and blues, and in their way of using rock for emotional purposes. Indeed, this is the undercurrent that leads from Elevate Me Later to Heaven Is A Truck , from one (emotional) end of the record to the other.
Their skills as arrangers is on display above all in the slow drama of Stop Breathing (with an instrumental coda which is one of their most atmospheric things ever) and in the glorious Fillmore Jive, which closes the work in the most depressed and fatalistic overtones. With these psalms about the crisis of an era, the arrogant, cynical and sarcastic Pavement compose a psychological fresco of their generation.

Meanwhile Malkmus (who has lived in Idaho for some time) collaborated with the poet-singer Dave Berman's open group, the Silver Jews, for the album The Arizona Record (Drag City).

Malkmus and Kannenberg then went completely wrong on Wowee Zowee (Matador, 1995), an album without backbone and without any fire, played as if Pavement were not at all satisfied with nor interested in what they composed. Rattled By The Rush , halfway between Lou Reed and blues-rock, and Grounded , a “boogie" played with lysergic disorientation, struggle to evoke the ghosts they refer to, and the album gets lost in the trite cocktail lounge music of Grave Architecture and Fight This Generation, so that in the end the highlights are the brief zany sketches of Brinx Job , Serpentine Pad , Flux = Rad.

Slanted And Enchanted (Matador, 1992), recorded by a quintet with two percussionists (Bob Nastanovich has joined the band) and a bassist (Mark Ibold), catapults the band onto the international scene: the Lou Reed-ian lament of Summer Babe, the melodic, Kinks-style vignette of Trigger Cut, the Pink Floyd-ian progression of No Life Singed Her, the morbid serenade of Here, and the low-key ballad of Zurich Is Stained are the songs that rule on alternative radio.
The rest flutters in a limbo of epigonic art, between echoes of Spirit In The Sky (Two States) and of Crimson And Clover (Jackals False Grails), and lots of new wave (the Modern Lovers-sounding garage-boogie of Loretta's Scars, the Romeo Void-ish spoken melodrama of Conduit For Sale). Songs are less chaotic and more predictable. Quirky arrangements are mainly limited to the interludes in between songs and to the songs' codas. Several melodies are simply trivial and obnoxious. And several songs display mere attitude, no art. Quintessential album that erudite critics feels obliged to reward beyond the real merits, Pavement's debut album does not fully exploit the potentialities hinted at by the early singles.

The 2002 reissue adds 34 unreleased tracks.

Pavement instead returned to the happy pop of Cut Your Hair with the single Dancing With The Elders (Third Gear) and Give It A Day, off the EP Pacific Trim (Matador, 1995).

Former drummer Gary Young released his first solo album, Hospital (Big Cat, 1996), which is a solemn tribute to the great rock madman, Wild Man Fisher.

Pavement became an institution of alternative rock just like Sonic Youth had. The problem is that this group, a favorite of critics, produced very few songs that are truly memorable: Heckler Spray (off Perfect Sound Forever), Summer Babe and Trigger Cut (off Slanted And Enchanted), Range Life and Cut Your Hair (off Crooked Rain).

Brighten The Corners (Matador, 1997) is the worst of both worlds. It is played in a casual tone, as if the band had not prepared the material carefully and just wanted to publish whatever was ready, and it exudes a crappy commercial appeal, as if this was an arena-rock heavy-metal band. It is Crooked Rain without the good songs.
Needless to say, the result is at best uneven. Low-key numbers such as the Television-tinged ballad Shady Lane (with a refrain worthy of Jonathan Richman), or the jangling folk-rock of Kannberg's Date With IKEA, are more likely to last in rock annals than the furious rock and roll of Stereo and Embassy Row or the Hey Jude-style shuffle of We Are Underused. For every intriguing combination there is a lame ballad like Type Slowly or FIN, or an abused psychedelic ditty like Passat Dream. Sloppy arrangements and half-baked jamming do not help either.
The lyrics are a little too philosophical, the playing is a little too straightforward (the rhythm section, in particular, is one of the least inventive ever). What the music gains in depth, it lacks in energy and imagination.
If this is Pavement coming of age, their youth shall be badly missed.

Pavement planned Terror Twilight (Matador, 1999) as a collection of alternating hard-rock, pop and blues-rock tracks. When it comes out, the album runs the gamut from boogie (Platform Blues) to country (Major Leagues), from heavy metal (The Hexx) to folk-rock (Spit On A Stranger). Malkmus and Kannberg are being clever for cleverness sake when they quote the entire history of rock music in an album (and sometimes in a single song). They also quote themselves in Carrot Rope, and they strike gold.

The band split up after this album.

Quarantine The Past (Matador, 2010) is an anthology including some rarities (Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence).

Malkmus' first solo album, Stephen Malkmus (Matador, 2001), is an attempt to recreate the melodic apex of Pavement's career, Crooked Rain. Jenny & The Ess Dog, Phantasies, Jo Jo's Jacket, and especially The Hook rank with the best of that album. Given the disappointment of Pavement's latest albums, the options are two: either Malkmus kept the best material for his solo, or the Pavement were ruining his songwriting skills.

Stephen Malkmus' second solo album, Pig Lib (Matador, 2003) is a schizophrenic work, divided between a passionate tribute to blues-rock of the 1960s and surreal folkish songs. The quasi-psychedelic blues numbers, Water and a Seat, Sheets and Witch Mountain Bridge, are intriguing in the way they rediscover the legacy of Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Ten Years After, etc. The nine-minute jam 1% Of One plunges the listener right back into late-1970s blues-rock jamming. This is sometimes impressive, but a less charismatic popster would have serious trouble justifying such half-baked songs. The gentle lullaby of Craw Song, the stately hymn of Us, the progressive surf music of Dark Wave, the childish middle-eastern litany of Do Not Feed the Oysters are welcome reliefs from those cliches. The mournful elegy Ramp of Death and the laid-back vignette of Vanessa From Queens are also reminders that Malkmus could easily become a master of AOR ballads. Greater doses of rock guitar make up for Malkmus' annoying vocal style, but the songs are still only passable.

Pavement's guitarist Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg formed Preston School Of Industry with drummer Andrew Borger and bassist Jon Erickson. All This Sounds Gas (Matador, 2001) sounds like Pavement leftovers given a treatment that makes them sound more linear, traditional and mainstream than Pavement ever sounded (Whalebones, Falling Away). The EP Goodbye to the Edge City (Amazing Grease Records, 2002) displays a more personal version of that sound, but it is still quite generic roots-rock.

Monsoon (Matador, 2004) fulfills that EP's promise by displaying a tight trio playing catchy tunes penned by a real, mature auteur. His muse falls in between Tom Petty (the jangling country-pop The Furnace Sun with a bit of Velvet Underground overtone), Bob Dylan (the echoes of Desire in Walk of a Gurl and the echoes of Blowing in the Wind in Her Estuary Twang) and Luna (the nonchalant romanticism of Caught in the Rain, the pensive So Many Ways). Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the music is revolutionary or the lyrics stunning. This is aboved-the-average radio-friendly music, but rather unlikely to change the history of music. The one moment of genius could have been the dissonant and reckless romp of Get Your Crayons Out, crossing into the acid-folk territory of the Holy Modal Rounders, but it lacks the required fearless nonsense.

By far his most upbeat work ever, Malkmus' Face The Truth (Matador, 2005) is also his most inconsistent yet. Pencil Rot ventures into electronic dance-pop, the fad of the moment. The catchy Mama is little more than a nursery song. Baby C'mon is straightforward rock'n'roll. Kindling for the Master would be remixed by several artists. The lengthy, technically challenging No More Shoes is one of his most stately efforts, but still pathetic compared with the output of contemporary psychedelic and progressive bands.

Stephen Malkmus' Real Emotional Trash (Matador, 2008), with the Jicks now including Sleater Kinney's drummer Janet Weiss, is his most accomplished work since the demise of Pavement, possibly because the Jicks became a real band and not just his backing band. Malkmus the guitarist is more interesting and inspiring than Malkmus the (gasp) singer or Malkmus the (mediocre) lyricist. Dragonfly Pie careens at an agonizing blues pace that is reminiscent of Cream and early Led Zeppelin. Baltimore, the melodic zenith, is a gentle lullaby with an effective guitar solo, like Donovan backed by Neil Young. However, after three minutes the song completely changes nature, turning into a hysterical blues-rock jam. The only aspect the two contrasting halves have in common is a Sixties flavor. Another song that harks back to the Sixties is the poppy Gardenia, a blend of Hollies-like refrains and movie soundtrack choirs (probably the catchiest song of Malkmus' career). We Can't Help You even evokes the memory of the Band's infectious roots-rock.
The mellow ballads Out Of Reaches (with soul-jazz organ) and Cold Son (with the melodic counterpoint of a synth) sound like a less ambitious, radio-friendly version of Built To Spill, while the longer Elmo Delmo (torn between progressive folk and acid-rock jamming) and Real Emotional Trash (ten minutes of interesting blues-soul-jazz-rock guitar inventions that lead to a noisy boogie gallop with burning organ) evoke a less competent, less creative version of Built To Spill. There is something in the constructs of Malkmus' more complex songs that makes them sound amateurish and tedious even when their start out intriguing. However, even an inferior version of Built To Spill is something to admire, and the Jicks also manage to approach the original, angular, emotional Pavement sound with the seven-minute Hopscotch Willie (way too long) and Wicked Wanda. All in all, the Sixties imitations fare better than the alt-rock originals.

Pavement's guitarist Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg debuted solo with the mediocre The Real Feel (2009).

Where it succeeded, Malkmus' Mirror Traffic (2011) owed a debt to producer Beck's kaleidoscopic effort that shunned the edgy progressive-jam verve of Real Emotional Trash in favor of the jagged elegance of early Pavement. However, most of the songs are just that: regular songs. The catchy Tigers and the frantic Stick Figures in Love stand out, but they could have made the two sides of a single with more conviction than being surrounded by faceless melodies and riffs, while the goofy Senator (quote: "what the senator wants is a blow job") and the caustic Forever 28 try to reenact juvenile memories in a touching but ultimately pointless manner. The bulk of the album is actually generic Pavement-ish songs like Tune Grief and Asking Price, from which occasionally there emerge middle-aged midtempo meditations like Brain Gallop.

The Jicks released Wig Out at Jagbags (2014), that only has Planetary Motion to commend itself, and Sparkle Hard (2018), competent but unexciting collections. The latter contains the anemic chamber pop of Solid Silk, the noisy robotic seven-minute jam Kite, the catchy Middle America and Refute, an alt-country duet with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.

Stephen Malkmus turned to synth-pop and played all the instruments himself on Groove Denied (2019), including electronic keyboards and computers. The Kraftwerk-ian Viktor Borgia and the catchy Ocean of Revenge are fashionable in the age of the synth-pop revival.

The electic Malkmus then steered towards (mostly acoustic) psychedelic folk on Traditional Techniques (2020), whose highlights are the Velvet Underground-ian Xian Man, the Indian-tinged Acc Kirtan and the alt-country ballad The Greatest Own in Legal History.

Gary Young died in 2023