10 of the bestPavementPavement – 10 of the best
Slacker’s finest posterboys or artful rockers perfectly combining bristling noise and elliptical, self-effacing lyrics? Here are 10 of their best songs – you decide
1. Debris Slide
Before their first studio album, 1991’s Slanted and Enchanted, Pavement were a seething, primitive beast. Debris Slide, from the Perfect Sound Forever EP, recorded over two frantic days at the end of 1989, then not released until April 1991, is a perfect introduction to the universe of those early days: bristling noise, ramshackle chaos, and sludge, all wrapped up in a weirdly artful tunefulness. And yes, it sounds a little like the Fall (even Mark E Smith called the band out: “It’s just the Fall in 1985, isn’t it? They haven’t got an original idea in their heads”). Though it also sounded like Sonic Youth and Pixies. Despite Debris Slide being over in two minutes, the magic is there: in the “ba ba ba da ba’s”, which are almost joyful; in the sloppy tape-hiss production and rudimentary riffs. This was just Malkmus, Spiral Stairs and temperamental first drummer Gary Young going for it. All together now: “Eyes in the socket, eyes in the socket!”
2. Zürich is Stained
It was easy to dismiss Pavement as slackers. Even Beavis and Butthead claimed the band “weren’t trying hard enough,” and “were too lazy to rock”. Yet Zürich is Stained, from Slanted and Enchanted, was one of the only songs where they really played up to it. This shrugged song about giving up on a doomed relationship was the closest they came to a slacker anthem. According to indie-rock lore Malkmus is, on one level at least, singing about staining his ex-girlfriend’s sofa. Whether it’s true or not, it certainly helps to decode the lyrics, though Malkmus sings them with a shrug over wiry, wobbly, catchy guitars, with the murky but tuneful melody buried in the mix. Indeed, he’s almost given up by the opening line: “I can’t sing it strong enough / ’Cause that kind of strength I just don’t have,” he croaks in an clipped, unenthusiastic tone. But while it seems like he hardly cares, maybe this casual reluctance to try is harder than it looks – “You think it’s easy / But you’re wrong.” The defence of any self-respecting slacker.
3. Here
For all their wry preening, there was a heart pulsing (gently) through Pavement; the sleepy romance of Here is a moment of real beauty. Back when the band was still little more than Malkmus and Spiral Stairs, this was as straightahead a ballad as they could make, but of course this is Pavement, so it was delivered in a rueful, woozy way. A sleepy, melancholic lead guitar picks out a simple, resigned melody, playing a perfect counterpoint to a deflated Malkmus singing softly about failure. As always, Malkmus does a great line in self-effacing commentary: “Your jokes are always bad / But they’re not as bad as this.” And we also see him ruminate on the theme of fame (and Pavement’s lack of it), to which he would keep returning: “I was dressed for success / But success it never comes.”
4. Frontwards
Courtney Love – trying (and failing) to gain his attention – once claimed Malkmus was the Grace Kelly of indie rock. And Frontwards, from their 1992 Watery, Domestic EP, is Malkmus at his most erudite, rakish and bratty: “I’ve got style, miles and miles / So much style and it’s wasted.” His bon mots seemed like a perfect summation of what the band was about. Malkmus had a natural nonchalance, as if he was in a permanent pose with his hands on his hips, while the band had the ability to produce catchy, shambling pop songs with a graceful swagger. Frontwards begins as a simple fuzzed-out chug, then broadens out to capture suburbia and isolation over a fractured melody. “Empty homes, plastic cones / Stolen rims, are they alloy or chrome?” Malkmus deadpans, and a charged-up guitar line brings the song to life. It was evidence that they could write perfect pop songs without seeming as if they were trying.
5. Unseen Power of the Picket Fence
For all the talk about the Fall, when Malkmus wrote a song to another band it was to REM – “Classic songs with a long history / Southern boys just like you and me” – with Malkmus offering us a song-by-song audit of REM’s 1984 album Reckoning. On the face of it, the song is simply a description of the album over a dark, woozy guitar line, with Malkmus telling us “Time After Time was my least favourite song”. It was so dutifully told, it seemed a genuine fan letter. But with Pavement it was never that simple and Malkmus, a history student, used the unusual analogy of the battle of Pickett’s Mill from the US civil war to reveal his love, comparing REM’s impact on music history to General William Sherman’s historic march to the Atlantic Ocean, with the band as stoic defenders of Georgia.
6. Range Life
And here we have the alt-country-folk diss track. Over a breezy twang of country-folk, Malkmus languorously dismisses both “those elegant bachelors” the Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins: “Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins / Nature kids, they don’t have no function / I don’t understand what they mean and I could really give a fuck.” Originally the song had focused on Malkmus’s desire for a simpler life. A 1993 demo didn’t feature the controversial verse; in the liner notes from the 2004 reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Spiral Stairs recalled that when Malkmus first revealed the new lyrics, “we almost lost our lunch from laughing so much”. Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, a man not renowned for his affable attitude, was so angry that he had Pavement removed from 1994’s Lollapalooza bill. In 2008, Malkmus told Blender magazine: “Billy’s gotten over it.” Though he may need to remind Billy of that – in 2010 Corgan dismissed Pavement as “sellouts … they represent the death of the alternative dream”.
7. Gold Soundz
The sound of a woozy, blissed-out summer – and not just because Malkmus sings of being “so drunk in the August sun” – Gold Soundz is effortless in the way only Pavement could be and joyous in a way that they were often too clever to achieve. It’s the radiant beauty of this track which makes it one of their very best. In fact, Pitchfork said it was the best of the 1990s. If you could sonically capture the nostalgia of a happy, hazy summer day and press it on to vinyl, it would be this. Shimmering guitars propel the song along, the lightness of their touch helping it glide along as Malkmus talks of secrets and wasted words. And then the sun has set. It’s all over within 2’40”, gone in the twinkling of an eye – you’re just left with the memories. And, of course, a band so contrary had to dress as Santas in the video.
8. AT&T
After the success of Crooked Rain, Pavement seemed to be standing on the verge of (alternative rock) stardom, but they turned their backs on that prospect with their next album. Wowee Zowee was a record of 18 sprawling tracks which says more about the band than any of their other albums. It’s their White Album, their most wide-ranging and bizarre record, a backlash against their new-found fame and created with the intention of shedding any casual fans. It said: “This is us, make of it what you will.” From jangling country and English accents to frenzied punk and huge sparkling guitars, not to mention Spiral Stairs’ finest song for Pavement, Kennel District, Wowee Zowee was all over the place (Malkmus has admitted this was partially due to excessive marijuana use). AT&T’s scattershot approach sums up the lack of focus perfectly. It starts with a simple strum but goes off the rails quickly, fraying at the edges, speeding up and slowing down and adding more nonsensical lines and random observations. Then it ends, aptly, with the song folding in on itself and Malkmus screaming out of tune.
9. Stereo
On the face of it, Stereo seems essentially about selling out and the dangers of letting fame destroy your band. But this is Pavement. So the chorus reads more like an ironic statement by Malkmus about the band not being on the stereo and the whole song seems a knowing dig at the band for having never becoming as popular as they should. But there was the trick: with its huge chorus and loose, stadium-filling guitars, it sounded exactly like it was made for your stereo. This could have been the song that made them. Malkmus delivers the lyrics in a clever, shrewd drawl, referencing Geddy Lee’s high-pitched voice, Kaiser Frederick’s III cyst and the catchphrase of the Lone Ranger. It has all the hallmarks of classic Pavement. Yet the best bits are the interplay with Bob Nastanovich, Pavement’s multi-instrumentalist/goofball sidekick – “I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy? / I know him and he does!” If they could have been bothered, they would have been huge. Instead Stereo made it to No 48 in the UK singles chart.
10. … And Carrot Rope
The final song on their final album, Terror Twilight, and how did we get here? With its very un-Pavementlike three-part harmonies, barre chords, a music video showing five men in yellow oilskins imitating a boyband and the Anglicisms that were Malkmus’s wont (“the wicketkeeper is down”), it is a bizarre mix so unlike their usual work that it actually perfectly sums up the band. Spiral Stairs said Major Leagues and this one are: “Two classic Malkmus pop songs that he hates. He had something against playing great pop songs.” That probably explains why on the commentary to the Slow Century DVD we’re told “… And Carrot Rope was only released as a single at the specific request of the group’s UK label, Domino, following significant playtime on John Peel’s Radio 1 show. It was to be the band’s highest charting UK single, reaching No 27.” It also remains a mystery what Malkmus meant, exactly, by “carrot rope”.
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