Pavement:Classic or Dud

This is all v informative

Malkmus' career post-Pavment is pretty underrated and he is still touring the world at pretty decent sized venues. The Jicks do play Pavement songs in countries that did not get a chance to see Pavement more than 1-2x. I hear traces of Pavement in current acts like the Parkay Quartz and Speedy Ortiz.

it's not like everyone born in '95 is bumping PC Music and Drake

― hackshaw

phew!

Anyone young enough to have tindr do a quick search for # of results for Pavement?

kids still listen to Pavement like kids still listen to Nirvana

how is that?

i ask because afaict kids these days listen to nirvana the same way kids in my generation listen to bob dylan and i don't think pavement is quite there yet

People around my age who read Spin were pretty well acquainted with 90s indie rock, so even if we didn't cop Slanted and Enchanted when it was topping critics' polls we were on board a year or two before the group broke up. I suppose the reissues and Pitchfork appraisals would have acquainted '00s teenagers with the group, though their inspired, funkless amateurism was a pretty far cry from what U.S. indie rock sounded like after 2004 or so.

I once heard the comment "don't talk to anyone under 25 about guitar music" and shook my head so that's why i feel the need to clarify all this stuff

and Guided By Voices, and Sebadoh. and you name it. it's not some forgotten thing. nor will it ever be for a certain subsect of people

I didn't get Dylan at all until I wasn't a kid anymore

alright how about led zeppelin as a comparison then

Also, to state the obvious, Pavement never posted anywhere near Dylan's or Nirvana's sales numbers - kids in the early 90s didn't listen to Pavement like they listened to Nirvana, either!

Which answers your above question - only suitable comparison for Led Zep would be, like, AC/DC/Aerosmith/Guns N' Roses/Metallica. No one else even approaches that sales bracket

Pavement was the first indie rock band I got into. This was in 2002, when I was 13. I still like the records a lot (didn't catch the reunion tour).

My impression is that they're an indie rock staple of enduring cross-generational appeal. In short, hackshaw is right.

It reminds me of 80s hair metal, where it's popularity is very limited to a subset of people who were teens in the 80s.

have you already forgotten about Guitar Hero and Rock Band?

also: I Love the 80s, 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, and 100 Most Shocking Moments in Rock & Roll, all on constant VH1 loop.

Yeah, I was in college when Pavement was as-big-as-they-ever-got and I was sort of shocked to find myself among the oldest people at the reunion show.

pavement obv aren't culturally entrenched like mj or the beatles or zep; they're culturally entrenched like the velvet underground

a close but cooler friend in high school whom some combination of mental illness and acid later made very different burned me a cd-r with "cut your hair" on it and i can hardly listen to it these days

I am 27, got super into Pavement in high school around 2003 or 2004, I get that they're a product of a past era (loose meandery goofy slackers with a wry sense of humor) but I can still appreciate them and I think they're musically really ultra great.

I wonder what is happening now that's SUPER rooted in the current era that 20 years from now I'll be like "really? What are you getting out of this in 2035??" All I can think of is PC Music

Diplo will probably be president in 2035.

Or his mother.

I dig Pavement, fell hard for them in high school, but man i don't begrudge anybody for not getting them or liking them, and indie rock these days seems partially detached from pavement style slacker steez anyway

Diplo travelling through time and being his own mother was the worst Star Trek episode

I hear traces of Pavement in current acts like the Parkay Quartz

I thought I'd read Parkay Quartz (who I like) deny it in an interview, but it's beyond traces - they sound like a tribute band half the time.
The last song on their last LP is called "Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth" LOL

It seems like the Pavement influence is pretty big in the young indie rock scene even beyond Parquet Courts and Speedy Ortiz. Grooms, Twerps, Menace Beach etc. all remind me of them in some way.

yeah, if anything i think there's more Pavement echoing thru current indie rock than there has been in many years

I hear a lot of "90s" running through current indie rock, but only a little bit of Pavement here and there.

I've always thought of Pavement as sort of 90's continuity/evolution of what The Replacements for their time; I can totally see both bands having similar trajectories when it comes down to their appeal to subsequent generations.

I hear a lot of "90s" running through current indie rock, but only a little bit of Pavement here and there.
yeah i think malkmus is a pretty unique/unusual musician/lyricist when you get right down to it... parts of the pavement sound were easy to replicate perhaps, but he's hard to pin down. kind of like what big star worshipers miss about alex chilton, i think.

I hear a lot of Chilton in Pavement

yeah i do too, w/o it being particularly explicit

First time I heard Pavement I bought "Slanted and Enchanted" and "Mellow Gold" on the same trip to Media Play. Kind of sad that the slapdash atmosphere and lo-fi DIY spirit of those records hasn't really been revisited amidst all the 90s nostalgia. One thing I loved about both acts was they really didn't take themselves seriously at all. Beck's career has veered in the complete opposite direction but Pavement seemed to have kept its sense of fun up until the end.

yeah, seemed like terror twilight was a bit of a half-hearted attempt to make a "mature" record, but they blew it (typically). [i do like TT though]

yeah even with all the moroseness in TT they still made Carrot Rope the single

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij9Tm5vewY4

xpost

yeah I guess the Pavement traces in a lot of contemporary indie bands could be attributed more to a general 90s-ness I'm hearing, because none of these bands have someone as distinctive as Malkmus on guitar or writing songs, which is why I'm not really feeling this current trend.

I liked Pavement in the 90s, but I didn't typically elevate them above all others (I saved that honor for Archers of Loaf), so hearing a little bit here and there in current indie pretty much mimics my experience with them back then.

What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.

I know him, and he does.

Then you're my fact-checkin' cuz.

[cue 90s lounge-Bossanova drum machine]

I was about to make the Chilton/Big Star comparison to Pavement. it's super cliche. but yeah the mystery, the sense of humor and the sense of commercial "failure" is part of what drove them from well-respected to canonical

the lyrics are also just something that have a huge impact on you at an impressionable age. they can be interpreted and studied over forever. they impacted my personality for sure

The slacker type is kinda coming back no? Mac DeMarco would represent that archetype.

Pavement evolved from a shroud of mythical obscurity which I think would be very hard to replicate in these times. They claimed they were from California to throw off the info seekers which led to the ascent of the band was fueled by the pseudonyms, the unlikely prog-burnout drummer, the revolving line-up changes, the obtuse liners. They were a moving target only achievable through the backpages of fanzines and midwestern mailorder catalogs.

Could a band today be as mysterious, obscure and obtuse?

yes but no one would care

As a mid/late millennial (26), Pavement was a huge part of my high school and early college music listening. They always felt before my time (my favorites of theirs were released when I was 3-7) but never "old"; the contemporary bands who were important to me drew from them more in ethos/vibe than they did in specific sound or style. They seemed less like something to revive or respect -- like the Velvet Underground or Television -- than they did a trailblazer for bands I was into. Although I didn't have a brother who got me into them like global tetrahedron mentioned upthread, that anecdote is fitting. They were a musical cool older brother; aloof and versed in things I could never quite get (The Fall, hardcore punk, etc.), and more interesting and daring than the music that was important to me at the time. (I remember the first time I listened to Conduit for Sale! and finding its atonal rambling skronk to be the most badass thing, just so much more idgaf and progressive than the milquetoast indie that otherwise populated my mix CDs.)

I've grown musically and personally since then; their arch remove and slacker talent-wasting don't speak to me as an adult comfortable with being genuine and wishing to do the best I can with what I have. (It doesn't help that I shared them most closely with a friend who succumbed to the depression I see lurking at the fringes of Pavement's ironic distance and nihilist disengagement.) But there was something unique to them as they fit in that moment of indie rock's last gasp, and the appeal they had to those of us who bought tickets to see Art Brut, Wolf Parade, No Age, etc. the day they went on sale and somehow got a ride to the city to jump around a few hours in a sweaty church basement. It makes sense, ten years on, that they're now being "revived" by Mac DeMarco, Parquet Courts, etc. -- and that those acts don't speak to me the way they seem to do to slightly younger crowds, who might view Pavement the way I used to see the Velvet Underground.

There's definitely some slacker lineage that starts with Big Star/Chilton, continues with the Mats and is passed onto Pavement in the 90's

otm cpl593h

I'd say all had a universal sense of emotion in their writing. it all had a bit of nihilism, a bit of romantic disarray, some snotty rebellion.

they all transcended their eras by writing incredible songs and continue to serve as a soundtrack for the loners of the world

xp - that was my bloodline through high school and college -- i'm the older brother only i don't have any younger siblings and i'm not a man.
i liked pavement back in the day -- they didn't write stupid love songs and were kinda funny and i liked how noisy they were. i barely remember caring about terror twilight but they were there for me when i needed them.

debris slide!

lol

Slacker lineage starts w Dylan.