Pavement are dead! Long live Pavement!

That's essentially the frame of mind I'm in; Pavement may be officially nada, but Stephen Malkmus has released an album which sounds, thank Christ, like Pavement. Essentially, the spirit of the band lives on.

Pavement basically defined, if not invented, American lo-fi. They started off as a noise band influenced by Sonic Youth and the Fall, but Pavement aren't the sort of band who really ever sound like anyone else. This is mostly due to Stephen Malkmus' voice and lyrics, which are respectively slightly out-of-tune and whiny in a good way, and bloody obscure and downright odd.

Pavement do veer around pop, and the singles off their last album could've probably been quite popular if they'd got any airplay outside of specialist shows. But while Pavement to write some great melodies, there's always that skewed, low fidelity aspect to them. Some people would say if they'd only stop pratting around, they could get a hit single. But obviously it's these idiosyncrasies which make Pavement special. Sorry, made Pavement special. Sniff...

Have a look here to see what 'Shady Lane' looks like when translated into Korean then back again by altavista.
 

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Stephen Malkmus (2001, Domino)
If there was ever any doubt the Stephen Malkmus was Pavement, this album clears it up.

The reason Pavement split up was probably more geographical than anything, what with the band members living at different ends of the country. But Stephen Malkmus' debut solo record (as the frontman of his new bands the Jicks) has no sense of dislocation, and is more self-confident than anything Pavement did since, oh, 'Crooked Rain Crooked Rain'. Musically, though it has nods to 'Terror Twilght', this album sounds as playful as 'Wowee Zowee' but as cohesive as 'Crooked Rain...'. It seems S.M. has once again discovered the enjoyment of being in a band and doing what the hell he wants.

Although 'Terror Twilght' remains my favourite Pavement album, for various disparate reasons, it was a very melancholy record. 'Stephen Malkmus', however, treads the same gentle balance between up and down that made Pavement special. It terms of tone, it manages to be both convincingly sad ('Church on White', etc.) and refreshingly unserious ('The Hook', 'Jo Jo's Jacket' and pretty much the rest of the album).

It's the lyrics where Pavement always shone, and it looks like on this album S.M. has thought more about the lyrics than on certain records (i.e. 'Brighten the Corners'). They're equally intelligent and equally surreal, of course. Musically, even, this album never noodles, while many tracks still manage to be significantly longer than the average pop song. Not only length, but also quality.

However, this is not just a Pavement album. It has a sincerity which I think S.M. might have found harder to achieve within Pavement. I don't think Pavement could have ever recorded songs like 'Trojan Curfew', 'Vague Space' and 'Deado' in quite the same way as the Jicks have. The addition of female backing vocals, as well as some more fiddling about with S.M.s vocals than is usual, add a certain ambience which is more reminiscent of the Delgados than the Fall.

If Pavement had released this album (which I don't think they ever could have), it would have been hailed as a new renaissance for the band. But for all intents and purposes, this is Pavement, or at least their spirit. Stephen Malkmus was, and is, what made Pavement Pavementy. As far as I'm concerned, this is as good as most Pavement albums, and better than some.

Terror Twilight (1999, Domino)
Probably one of the reasons why Pavement always seemed so bloody good was because they seemed to create brilliance without actually even trying; Stephen Malkmus is always the nonchalant slacker, claiming he just makes up his lyrics as he goes along. Maybe he does. But the weird thing about Pavement was the way they made the silliest things the most affecting; they may have been trying to be ironic, but they ended up sounding genuine.

'Terror Twilight' was their last album. It came after all those great albums; a track record not really equalled by more than a dozen or so American bands- I mean, their first album was actually good, how rare is that?

'Terror Twilight' is also my favourite Pavement album, so it's probably for the best that it was on this note, rather than the really-good-but-not-quite-brilliant predecessor, 'Brighten the Corners', that they decided to end it.

'...Twilight' starts with 'Spit on a Stranger', a cousin to 'Wowee Zowee's 'We Dance'; it tries to sound half-hearted but ends up melancholy. And melancholy is definitely the mood here. Pavement may have done uppy pop tunes like the classics 'Stereo' and 'Cut Your Hair', but they've always had a tendency to dwell on all things sad; and with this album, that desire comes completely to fruition (except for 'Carrot Rope', which is mad pop and superb, that is.)

There are vaguely grungey/post-rock bits where the guitars are turned up to spectacular effect, and the cymbals crash in, and there are innovative time-changes aplenty, but it's the slow bits which are the core of this album. Otherwhere, 'Billie' is pure uplift, with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood adding harmonica. Whether or not it's got anything to do with everyone's second favourite underage teen-pop idol is unclear; but it does have a lyric which goes something like, 'You've never seen a foetus in a jar'. Which is nice.

All the tracks on this album are perfect. Utterly. There is nothing you could change about them which would make them better, and this is largely due to the production; as if there was any more proof needed, this album shows that producers aren't the work of the devil. Stripped away of the lo-fi fuzz, Pavement are revealed the be what we always thought they were; the best rock band of the 90s.

#LINKS#
StephenMalkmus.com
whoo-hoo! It's up, baby! Ahem, anyway this is a really good site, and apparently written by the man himself. Looks nice too.
pavementtherockband.com
sadly now defunct, but I link it still has some links
Pavement Mothership
a nice looking site, not really updated anymore, but has some good links
Through the Woods
a really good site, shame it hasn't been updated for, like, a century. Plenty of really unreliable guitar tabs plus one or two good ones. Beware of the Shady Lane tabs in particular; they're crap.
 
 

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