Pavement is a rock band from Stockton, California. They were formed in 1989 by Stephen Malkmus (S.M.) and Scott Kannberg (Spiral Stairs), longtime friends who were in their early 20s. Their early music was recorded by Gary Young, who joined the duo as a drummer. Later, a bass player (Mark Ibold) and a guy who sometimes sings and sometimes plays percussion and keyboards (Bob Nastanovich) were added. Eventually, a different drummer (Steve West) replaced Young. They released five albums between 1992 and ’99 and then broke up. In the 21st century, they reunited for two tours that constituted some of the biggest and best received shows of their career.
That is the Pavement story. It has been told many times — in magazine articles, online retrospectives, one book, and one documentary. And now it has been told again, in the least normal (and, therefore, most Pavement-esque) fashion yet.
I’m talking about Pavements, a hybrid of documentary, rock biopic, and jukebox musical written and directed by the talented indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry. The film — currently screening in select cities before a wider release next month — is about the most beloved indie-rock band of the 1990s. But it’s also about how rock bands of the past are immortalized (in good ways and bad) by various media forms. We see the usual backstage footage of Pavement rehearsing for their recent world tour, which took place from 2022 to ’24, as well as archival clips from the ’90s. But there is also Range Life, a biopic parody in which Stranger Things star Joe Keery portrays Malkmus. And we also see fake behind-the-scenes footage of that fake film, where Keery self-satirizes as a self-serious method actor in the mold of Timothée Chalamet obsessively aping Bob Dylan. And then there’s the additional meta element of Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical, which jokingly does to Pavement what American Idiot earnestly did to Green Day.
The film’s mix of sincerity and irony — and a certain ambiguity about which is which — mirrors Pavement’s own sensibility, which makes watching Pavements feel a lot like listening to Pavement. Speaking of listening to Pavement: Always a good idea!
After watching a screener of Pavements last month, I binged on a band I have loved for 30 years with fresh ears. And then I wrote many words about it. Shall we go back to those gold soundz?
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT PART 1: THAT CLIP FROM THE TONIGHT SHOW IN 1994 YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN ON SOCIAL MEDIA MULTIPLE TIMES
This video gets passed around every other month on the platform formerly known as Twitter. And the person doing the sharing usually says something like, “Isn’t it funny/amazing how Pavement did not try very hard?” Because that is the conventional wisdom on Pavement: They are the band from the ’90s that did not try very hard. And that’s what makes The Tonight Show video the ultimate Pavement Rorschach Test. There are people who find it genuinely funny/amazing that Stephen Malkmus begins “Cut Your Hair” by squawking like a monkey. They see it as mocking the banal mainstream culture that Pavement and their followers positioned themselves against. And then there are people who find this video “funny/amazing,” with extra emphasis on the sarcastic quotes. They see it encapsulating the alleged smugness and unearned air of superiority associated with bands like Pavement and their audience.
I am part of the former group, as you would expect from a person writing a column on his favorite Pavement songs. But I want to take issue with the framing here, the part about Pavement being the band that didn’t try very hard. You hear this all the time about Pavement. It’s the most consistent talking point in conversations about the band, whether it’s by music critics, journalists, fans, or haters. “Slacker” is defined as “a person who avoids work or effort,” and Pavement is the defining slacker band. And it never rings true to me. Pavement tried. They tried very hard. They might have been selective about what they tried (and what didn’t try), but that does not mean they didn’t try at all. And you don’t have to try very hard to prove that.
In the micro sense, The Tonight Show appearance required significant effort. The band members woke up that morning at 5 a.m. in Albuquerque and then flew to Los Angeles. I’m guessing it was a stressful trip. It occurred on April 21, about two weeks after Kurt Cobain’s body was found. This was the narrow window of time when Pavement becoming legitimate rock stars seemed semi-plausible. After doing the Jay Leno show, they performed two gigs in LA that night — an underage show at 8 p.m. and a 21+ concert at 10 — before shipping off on the six-hour drive to San Francisco. It was all part of a run that spanned 53 shows in 52 days, possibly the busiest year in Pavement’s history. (Before the reunion tours, anyway.) They were trying. And it was trying.
From a macro perspective, I know Pavement tried because they are a great band. And I don’t think any band gets to be great without trying extremely hard to be great. The blessing and curse of Pavement is that they never showed their work. They looked like slackers, which made them seem like slackers. And that was (and is) an attractive myth, if The Tonight Show Rorschach appeals to you. No Pavement fan wants to see Stephen Malkmus sweat. Now, if you’re Billy Corgan, it’s a different story. In that instance, Stephen Malkmus’ lack of perspiration is his most hateable quality.
We’ll be exploring this dynamic further as we proceed with this column. But speaking as a music critic who has listened to an estimated 1,432 albums made by bands who really wanted to be Pavement, I can tell you that sounding like you don’t care while also delivering incredible songs (the part people always seem to forget in this equation) is damn near impossible. It’s a lane that Pavement has never stopped owning. They are, like their name, a property that appears to just lay there when in fact it’s an incredibly sturdy foundation that lasts for decades. Only with this kind of pavement, the cracks are intentional.
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT PART 2: JOE WALSH EXPLAINS PAVEMENT
The above monologue is taken from Allison Ellwood’s 2013 documentary History Of The Eagles, one of the greatest films ever made. And this scene is my favorite part of the movie. I think about it a lot — not just (or even mainly) in the context of the Eagles, but the entirety of popular music and life in general. What’s funny is that I don’t think Joe Walsh’s words really apply all that well to the Eagles. Don Henley and Glenn Frey are two of the most ruthless and cunning figures in rock history. The suggestion that random things happened to them which only made sense in retrospect seems antithetical to their approach. They were a pair of very premeditated desperados; even the creases in their jeans were impeccably rendered. If any band’s catalog can be likened to a “finely crafted novel,” it’s the Eagles.
Walsh’s words, however, do perfectly suit a band I’m sure he’s never heard of. “Shambolic” is the adjective that appeared most often in Pavement album reviews. Their career path was viewed as haphazard and self-sabotaging as it was unfolding in real time. Their third album, Wowee Zowee, was singled out for being an erratic disaster that derailed their career. And when they broke up after touring in support of Terror Twilight, their least acclaimed record, it appeared that they were ending on a low note.
Pavement’s career in the ’90s truly can be described as anarchy and chaos, with random, non-related events smashing into one another. And it’s overwhelming and it looks like “what in the world is going on?” But later, looking back on it, Pavement is a band whose catalog sounds pretty much perfect, with a logical progression from album to album that is satisfying and endlessly re-playable. The further away we get from their prime, the more it seems like a story that unfolded exactly the right way.
40. “Brinx Job” (1995)
The “Joe Walsh Explains Pavement” Theory is most overtly applicable to Wowee Zowee. Currently, it’s the fashionable choice for best Pavement album. For me, “best Pavement album” applies to whichever Pavement album I’m currently playing. So, I feel that way about Wowee Zowee roughly 20 percent of the time I’m listening to Pavement. (I thought this opinion might change during the writing of this column. But the equality of their five-album arc was only affirmed.)
Thirty years ago, Wowee Zowee was widely regarded as a comedown after Slanted And Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. And I can understand why, sort of, the same way I can sort of get someone in the ’60s singing “The White Album” after hearing Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. But when I’m listening to Wowee Zowee, I don’t understand the negative reviews at all. The album’s structural conceit is obvious — there are two or three “normal” songs, typically mid-tempo and very pretty, and then there’s a “weird” track, which is short, fast, and loud. This pattern recurs several times throughout, and it enhances the flow of the record. It keeps Wowee Zowee from being too slow or too beautiful without overshadowing some of the very best songs Malkmus ever wrote.
For the critics who heard Wowee Zowee in 1995, however, this didn’t make sense at all. Pavement was accused of tanking their career on purpose, like the Philadelphia 76ers in the early 2010s, only without an overarching process to trust in. The sense you get from reading reviews at the time is that critics almost felt like Pavement was mocking them for writing so kindly about the previous two records.
And that seems, frankly, crazy to me. Wowee Zowee has a much higher hit/miss ratio than “The White Album,” and “The White Album” is one of my favorite albums of all time. The best explanation for the critical reception comes from Rob Sheffield, who once pointed out that Alien Lanes by Guided By Voices came out one week earlier. “It made Wowee Zowee sound flimsier than it really was,” Sheffield argued.
That I can understand. However, I’m putting “Brinx Job” here because it’s the song that seemingly every cranky review of Wowee Zowee namechecked as one of the album’s worst. And I love it, and love how it fits on the album, right behind “Black Out” (gorgeous) and right ahead of “Grounded” (potential GOAT Pavement song candidate).
39. “Major Leagues” (1999)
The previous statement about how “my favorite Pavement album is the Pavement album I’m currently playing” really does apply to Terror Twilight, too. Though my love of that album is more reliant on how it fits with the other four records. As a stand-alone LP, it unquestionably has fewer standout tracks than the others. But as the “final” album of the run, Terror Twilight has extra resonance, as a Pavement record and as a ’90s indie-rock touchstone. It doesn’t appear to have been constructed as a farewell statement, but it feels like one. And given that it came out in the summer of 1999 — a season dominated by nu-metal and boy-band pop — Terror Twilight has unwitting symbolic “end of an era” status. (Pavement’s recording career taking place almost entirely in the ’90s, and each album aligning with larger cultural progressions of the decade, is among the most important “accidentally perfect” things about them.)
The story of Terror Twilight is that Pavement worked with a “real” producer, Nigel Godrich, who wanted to finally crack the code and make them a mainstream rock band. And that, inevitably, did not happen. Not in commercial terms, at least. Though when you listen to “Major Leagues,” Godrich actually did pull it off. It sounds like a Pavement song that also sounds like Travis’ The Man Who, the other big album released in 1999 that Godrich produced.
I know that description will further repel those who don’t like this album. (Malkmus himself called Terror Twilight “a real, classic rock, overproduced, $100,000 record.”) But the ambivalence baked into Malkmus’ lyrics to “Major Leagues” — which describe a failing relationship, be it romantic or musical — give the twinkly music a subversive, Pavement-esque edge.
38. “Harness Your Hopes” (1997)
Last week, Pavement was back on a late-night talk show. Stephen Malkmus did not squawk like a monkey. Instead, they played the Pavement song that people who were not alive in the ’90s are most likely to know.
Here’s another thing Joe Walsh was right about: The most streamed Pavement track is a B-side that nobody can explain (or remember) why it was left off a proper record. And that, naturally, is the perfect kind of Pavement song to break through. It only seems like “Harness Your Hopes” became a left-field Internet hit because of some fluky algorithmic hiccup. The reality is that it was part of the same cosmic forces that have slowly shaped Pavement into the warm and cuddly classic-rock institution they are now.
37. “Roll With The Wind” (1997)
Malkmus first realized that “Harness Your Hopes” had become a quasi-hit in the late 2010s, while out with one of his daughters at a Portland gluten-free bakery. (How many “Stephen Malkmus-looking” guys are hanging out at a Portland gluten-free bakery on any given day? Lots, I’m guessing.) At first, before recognizing his own voice, he thought it was “Tumbling Dice” by the Rolling Stones.
This brings me to the next critical (and also under-discussed) aspect of the Pavement legacy: They choogle. I mean it. They really do. They try, they make sense (even when you think they don’t), and they choogle like hell.
Pavement pundits like to dwell on their punk and post-punk influences — The Fall, Swell Maps, Devo, etc. But Creedence Clearwater Revival comes up a lot in the band’s interviews. The first song Stephen Malkmus learned on guitar was “Suzie Q.” And Stockton, California — the original homebase of Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, as well as their original drummer Gary Young — is only about 120 miles east of CCR’s birthplace of Berkeley. Like John Fogerty, Malkmus towered over his bandmates as the dominant creative force. But he could never quite get the same sound without his bandmates (as much as I like Malkmus’ Jicks era). What I mean is a certain looseness that feels a little lazy but in fact requires an instinctual swing and an understated, almost subliminal tightness. In a word: choogle.
The hiring of Steve West made Pavement a groovier band, which paid immediate dividends on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, particularly one of the signature songs, “Range Life.” But the “choogle” side of Pavement reached its zenith on a record that doesn’t really exist. I refer to the collection of B-sides and outtakes that compose the back half of the first disc on the expanded edition of Brighten The Corners, along with several tracks from Disc 2. I made a tape of these 13 songs called Death Of The Slack, Long Live Choogle. It starts with “And Then (The Hexx)” through the end of Disc 1 and then continues on Disc 2 with “Slowly Typed” through “No Tan Lines,” and ends with “Nigel.” (I recommend that you make your own version.)
“Harness Your Hopes” is the “hit” from this album, but I actually like the next song, the harmonica-powered “Roll With The Wind,” a little more. It’s like Pavement if they were known as Pavement Turner Overdrive.
36. “Embassy Row” (1997)
This one has the spirit of Death Of The Slack, Long Live Choogle, only it ended up on Brighten The Corners. It also has enough of a Nirvana vibe to make me think that Malkmus could have made radio-friendly post-grunge if he wanted to. Or perhaps the era’s post-grunge bands could have covered Malkmus songs like folk-rock bands doing Dylan covers in the ’60s. “Embassy Row,” in a different and much weirder universe, could have been the greatest Seven Mary Three song of all time.
(Before we segue to the next topic, I need to shout out two Pavement-adjacent projects with strong choogle vibes, both released in 1998: Marquee Mark by The Crust Brothers, which is Malkmus plus the three guys from Silkworm doing a live set of classic-rock covers, and American Water by Silver Jews, which is simply one of the finest indie albums of that decade. As Malkmus says on Marquee Mark, “I’ve never been sated with chooglin’.” )
35. “Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)” (1992)
My favorite Pavement album is the Pavement album I am currently playing. But what about EPs? EPs are a different story. The greatest Pavement EP is Watery, Domestic. Some days, I think it’s the greatest Pavement release ever. It was the last record that Pavement made at Louder Than You Think, the Stockton studio operated by their hard-drinking/drugging hippie-guy drummer, Gary Young. It’s also the first true “band” record, with Mark Ibold and Bob Nastonvich making their in-studio Pavement debuts. Though I’m not sure that explains how huge Watery, Domestic sounds. Not even Nigel Godrich could make Pavement sound as enormous. There’s a thickness to the sonic texture that feels wiry and electric, and it exudes a level of swagger that exceeds even Slanted And Enchanted.
I could have put every track from Watery, Domestic on this list. I didn’t, but I could have. I instead stuck with three tracks, and this is one of them.
34. “You Are A Light” (1999)
For physical media people — who should be disproportionately represented among readers of a Pavement column — the Watery, Domestic songs are more readily available on the expanded Luxe & Deluxe reissue of Slanted And Enchanted from 2002. All the Pavement albums have been given the deluxe reissue treatment, and those versions — thick with outtakes, B-sides, live songs, and other valuable strays otherwise hard to track down — are the definitive incarnations. That is, with the exception of the Farewell Horizontal edition of Terror Twilight, which was reissued with a new track sequence on the vinyl and streaming editions that aligned with Godrich’s original wishes to start the album on a “difficult” note. So, instead of opening with the inviting “Spit On A Stranger” (good song, not on the list), it commences with “Platform Blues” (punishing song, not on the list). This sequence throws off the mojo of an already downbeat record.
Curiously, both tracklists have “You Are A Light” in the third slot. Which is exactly where you want one of the power hitters in the lineup to be.
33. “Box Elder” (1989)
The poppiest number from the first EP, Slay Tracks 1933-1969. It was released in the summer of 1989, around the time that Robert Pollard patched together the third Guided By Voices record with some high school friends and drinking buddies. In the past — not online but in barroom conversations — I have classified GBV as the Stones to Pavement’s Beatles in the ’90s lo-fi scene. But that seems more like a matter of temperament or image than music. (GBV has many Beatlesque songs and zero tracks that might be mistaken for “Tumbling Dice” in a Portland-area gluten-free bakery.) “Box Elder” actually sounds a lot like a GBV rip-off, only I don’t think Malkmus had been to Dayton, Ohio yet in the late ’80s.
32. “Half A Canyon” (1995)
Pavement is sometimes described as a rock band about other rock bands. Which is why critics like them so much — with the possible exception of Vampire Weekend, no band has ever looked and thought about music like the people who wrote about them more than Pavement. Upon the release of Slanted And Enchanted, Pavement appeared to be an irreverent amalgam of various rock eras, both mainstream and underground. They both emulated and mocked their influences. Malkmus once described “Range Life” as an attempt to write an Eagles song, even though he hated the Eagles. That, more or less, sums up the Pavement ethos. And that only became more pronounced with the second Pavement LP, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which made the winking musical subtext of the debut album’s music (i.e. “this is a deconstructed form of rock at a moment when the form might finally be artistically exhausted”) a central theme of the lyrics (“Goodnight to the rock ‘n’ roll era,” etc.).
I have a less parroted theory about how each Pavement album represents a different period of the so-called “rock ‘n’ roll era.” Crooked Rain is their quintessential “1990s” album. (It’s possible no rock album is more 1990s — or, more accurately, mid-1990s.) Brighten The Corners is their 1980s “college rock” record. (It was co-produced by Mitch Easter and represents Pavement’s closest approximation of R.E.M.) Terror Twilight, meanwhile, looks ahead to the 2000s. (It foreshadows the “new century” dread of two future Godrich productions, Kid A and Amnesiac by Radiohead.)
“Half A Canyon” is the jammiest song from Pavement’s “late ’60s/early ’70s” record, Wowee Zowee. And that points to my own hypothesis about why critics initially rejected this album: It marks the point where Pavement announces that they are closet hippies rather than loud-and-proud hipsters. I already talked about Wowee Zowee in relation to Alien Lanes, which came out the same month. But I would argue that you could also liken the Pavement record from 1995 to A Live One, the concert double-LP put out by Phish that June.
It’s the jam-band vibes of Wowee Zowee that made the Pavement-worshipping critics of the mid-’90s uncomfortable. But that, too, has also aged exquisitely.
31. “Folk Jam” (1999)
A certain kind of indie-rock lifer gets really upset when you point out the relatively close proximity of godheads like Pavement, Yo La Tengo, and Built To Spill to the jam-band universe. So, I’ll put this as delicately as I can. Pavement is not a jam-band. But they are a band who jams. And they sometimes jam in a manner that is stylistically similar to jam-bands. Like this song that literally has “jam” in the title.
30. “Perfume-V” (1992)
What about Slanted And Enchanted? What decade does that record signify? “Perfume-V” sounds like “now,” in that it’s the version of Pavement you still hear young indie bands trying to remake in their own image. Perhaps because it seems the most approachable, though in reality it’s by far the hardest of their albums to effectively replicate.
“I always was hoping it was music for the future,” Malkmus says in Pavements. “I think anybody who’s not that successful in their time tries to think that.”
In true Pavement fashion, I have waited almost 3,000 words to do the professional thing, which is discuss the timely hook for this column. Also, in true Pavement fashion, Pavements is a rock movie about rock movies. Alex Ross Perry approaches the genre like Malkmus pondered the Eagles — with a mix of disgust (for the antiquated, degraded popular art form) and semi-ironic conviction (that he can improve upon the formula while also taking it apart). The conceit doesn’t always work — the idea of turning Pavement’s catalog into a jukebox musical is a funny joke, but by the end of this overstuffed movie it starts to wear thin. (At 128 minutes, Pavements is Wowee Zowee-sized.) Conversely, the rock biopic parts of Pavements actually made me want to see more of Joe Keery’s Stephen Malkmus impersonation (not to mention the funny portrayals by Jason Schwartzmann and Tim Heidecker of Matador Records heads Chris Lombardi and Gerard Cosloy). If Perry’s intention was to point out all the ways that rock biopics are stupid, he accidentally crafted the cinematic equivalent of an affecting-despite-itself country-rock song.
29. “Grave Architecture” (1995)
Pavements is also a documentary, though that is also a house of mirrors, given this band’s (or, let’s be real, Stephen Malkmus’) historic caginess. For the super-fan who has already watched Lance Bangs’ 2002 doc Slow Century 800 times, you won’t learn a lot. Though it is fun to revisit the band’s highs and lows. The lowest of the low has to be the infamous Lollapalooza tour stop in West Virginia from 1995, sometimes credited as the performance that helped to kill the traveling festival. (A claim that seems dubious, to be honest — Metallica headlining the following year is what truly made Lolla a redundant, meaningless enterprise.)
Anyway, the setlist looks pretty sick. Those West Virginians didn’t know how good they had it. For their own sake, it’s good that nobody hit Stephen Malkmus in the chest with a rock before they played “Grave Architecture.”
28. “Kennel District” (1995)
Perry’s deftest mix of documentary and fake biopic footage occurs during the Lollapalooza sequence. Perry juxtaposes actual video of Pavement after the performance (laughing, bewildered, mostly in “who gives a shit?” mode) with a contrived post-show argument between Malkmus and Kannberg about how Malkmus’ ambivalent attitude about rock-band professionalism is holding Pavement back. Perry’s point is that these kinds of movies inevitably exaggerate (or flat-out invent) intra-band dramas for the sake of the cheesy biopic formula in ways that actually flatten and dehumanize the figures they’re supposedly meant to revere. In this case, it’s the common stereotype about “artistic differences,” with conflicting cliches bandied about regarding art vs. commerce. The very thing one might expect to exist in a fictionalized Pavement movie made by, say, James Mangold, rather than an avowed A Complete Unknown critic like Perry.
And he’s absolutely right about all that. But I also think this scene hints at real-life dynamics in Pavement that Perry couldn’t comfortably explore in the “true” documentary sections of his movie. And (I think?) that’s intentional on his part. It’s a dynamic that isn’t unique to Pavement, but Pavement is one of the better examples in rock history. (Sting’s relationship with the other members of The Police also comes to mind.) It’s the one where you have a single individual who overwhelmingly has the most power to decide whether the band gets to exist or not. And most of the other people are okay with that, though there is usually one other person who is slightly less okay with it, in part because he once had more parity with the “in charge” guy. The scene Perry made up is basically about that, and while it’s factually untrue it also feels accurate to the emotional life of this band.
Alas, I have spent most of this blurb about a great Scott Kannberg song talking about Stephen Malkmus, which makes a similar point.
27. “Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence” (1993)
Brian Jones started the Rolling Stones, Larry Mullen Jr. started U2, and Scott Kannberg started Pavement. It was the name of his college band when he attended Arizona State. (His major was urban planning, which inspired naming the group after the foundation for urban planning.) But Pavement was not a four-headed democracy like R.E.M., the band to which they paid homage with “Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence,” one of their most famous non-album tracks, originally released on the epochal alt-era compilation No Alternative. They were, at times, not a band at all. Like their lo-fi doppelgangers in Guided By Voices, Pavement has stretches when they only existed as a band on record.
There’s another band like that, and only Malkmus ever thought to compare them to Pavement. “I always felt a kinship with Steely Dan,” he once said in a 1993 interview with The Melody Maker. “They’re absolute ice princesses — stoned, cold, and empty, like if New Order came from Los Angeles.”
(Shoutout to “5-4=Unity,” which is not on this list but is the Pavement song most like a Steely Dan song.)
Malkmus later sang (in a song much later in this column) about liking a girl “because you’re empty, and I’m empty.” So, he’s self-aware about the cold, stoned air he exudes. Courtney Love famously called him “the Grace Kelly of rock,” which gets at the same idea. (“I’d take that as a compliment,” Malkmus said in 2008, “because Grace Kelly is very graceful and cool.”) I would liken him to a Bill Murray character from the early ’80s — the Stripes/Ghostbusters axis — in that he has a sort of noncommittal charisma, where people really want to follow him and he betrays no feeling about it one way or the other.
Having interviewed Malkmus twice, I can confirm that (under the contrived circumstances of a media phoner) he is very funny in conversation and also completely inscrutable on an emotional level. And it seems like being in a band with him, off and on, for 35 years is a similar experience. In a fantastic Stephen Malkmus profile published by GQ in 2010, Chuck Klosterman wrote that Kannberg talks about Malkmus “like he’s describing someone distant — someone he thinks about yet barely knows.” He then follows with a casually devastating quote: “Maybe Pavement is just not as important to him as it is to me. That’s probably all it is. But I’ve come to accept that.”
26. “Rattled By The Rush” (1995)
Anyway, when people praise/complain about Pavement for “not trying hard” — like the two finest rock critics of the 1990s in the clip above — I think they’re really talking about the Grace Kelly/Bill Murray of it all.
25. “And Then (The Hexx)” (2008)
Not to be confused with “The Hexx,” from Terror Twilight, or the B-side to “Spit On A Stranger.” This is the full unedited version — the full “Hexx”! — released on the expanded Nicene Creedence version of Brighten The Corners, the one I put on my Death Of The Slack, Long Live Choogle tape. It’s the same great guitar riff, one of Malkmus’ best, but there’s more of it, which is exactly what I want.
24. “Texas Never Whispers” (1992)
I almost put “Fame Throwa” here. Instead, I went with another song from Watery, Domestic, because it has the same guitar riff as “Fame Throwa,” only it sounds slightly more awesome. It goes back to that special “wiry electric” texture specific to the EP, which doesn’t exist on other Pavement releases and really sets Watery, Domestic apart.
23. “Newark Wilder” (1994)
The first song on this list from my first Pavement album. I discovered Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain by reading a cool zine you haven’t heard of. It was called Rolling Stone. It was the lead review in the February 24, 1994 issue, the one with Bob Marley on the cover. (Bob was already dead 13 years at that point, but he was thriving in the nation’s dorm rooms.) The critic was Matt Diehl, who also reviewed Alien Lanes for the magazine one year later , a coincidence I did not realize until I started writing this column.
That I was introduced to possibly the two most impactful indie-rock albums of my teenage years by the same Rolling Stone writer says a lot about my own indie-rock bona-fides. Corporate magazines still suck, a famous t-shirt once said, but I read them nonetheless.
Diehl framed his take on Crooked Rain in terms that were precisely suited to my interests at the time. The lede is still striking:
Rock is dead — long live rock. The Who introduced this contradictory sentiment 20 years ago, around the time of punk’s birth, and Pavement revived it for punk’s rebirth — and not a moment too soon — on their stunning new album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. While the Who smashed guitars and eardrums, Pavement smash preconceptions on Crooked Rain — about how an indie-rock band should sound, about whether “alternative music” is an alternative to anything — creating an album that’s darker and more beguiling than their heralded previous efforts.
I realize that many indie-rock people — Gen X or otherwise — will roll their eyes at the defining boomer-rock publication comparing Pavement to, of all bands, The Who. But as a 16-year-old, I appreciated reading something that linked a band from my time to a band from the classic-rock era, which I was interested in but otherwise seemed as distant as The Paleozoic Era.
Diehl also clued in on Stephen Malkmus’ playful engagement with rock mythology. It was a tricky balance of snark and sincerity that felt different from, say, Pearl Jam covering “Baba O’Riley” (very sincere) or Nirvana running through Kiss’ “Do You Love Me” (extremely snarky). Unlike those artists, Malkmus actually wrote about rock myths directly, like a rock critic might, only he was far more quotable than the typical rock critic.
For instance: “It’s a brand new era / it feels great / it’s a brand new era / but it came too late.” He wrote his own Rolling Stone review in just 18 words.
22. “Unfair” (1994)
Crooked Rain was made by the band, but it is not really a “band” record. Malkmus and West recorded together, and the rest was made up of overdubs. Bob Nastanovich didn’t actually hear any of the sessions until a few days after the album was finished. He drove to New York to pick Malkmus up for a drive back to Bob’s home in Louisville, and they spent a good part of the 13-hour drive listening to the album. And it was then that the pair figured out what Bob would contribute to the songs on stage, including the vocal on “Unfair,” his standout moment from the Crooked Rain era.
21. “Conduit For Sale!” (1992)
Bob’s inclusion in Pavement is what makes Pavement an atypical rock band. His role isn’t completely unprecedented, but you have to patch together several antecedents to get one Nastanovich. He’s an auxiliary drummer (like Mickey Hart) who sometimes functions as a co-frontperson (like Donna Godchaux). He’s a bit like Dave Weckerman from The Feelies, except he sometimes acts as a form of comic relief (like Flavor Flav).
Malkmus summed up Bob’s role the best: “Even if you thought I was a dick or lethargic, he was always there and he always gave 1,000 percent, every show.” This song is Exhibit A for the value of Bob’s “1,000 percent.”
20. “Fillmore Jive” (1994)
The most conceptually interesting song from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain to my burgeoning rock-critic mind in high school. Writing rock songs about how rock is dead goes back to at least, well, The Who, as Rolling Stone helpfully reported in their review. But many of my favorite bands of the ’90s seemed to operate on the assumption that their days were numbered. (This was also true of bands I did not like all that much.) In my memory of that Rolling Stone review, Matt Diehl called Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain “the last rock album.” But he apparently did not do that — or if he did, it was edited out of the web version by Jann Wenner in a fit of overprotective rock paternalism. Either way, when the eulogy for rock is finally delivered, I hope it is accompanied by the guitar solo at the end of this song, the most gloriously florid of Malkmus’ career.
19. “In The Mouth A Desert” (1992)
I have already referenced “Range Life” several times in this column, and I’ll be talking about it more a little later. But I won’t be talking about the most conversed-about part of the song, mostly because I have already talked about it many times in the past. I no longer have anything original to say about Stephen Malkmus’ parasocial relationship with Billy Corgan and the symbolic meaning thereof.
Instead, I want to talk about Pavement’s rivalry with Weezer.
I’m convinced that if Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain came out one year later, Stephen Malkmus would have dissed Weezer rather than Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. If not for “Range Life,” nobody would have ever talked about the Pumpkins or STP in relation to Pavement. That song single-handedly invented a dynamic between those bands. But they would have talked about Weezer, the band that big-footed Pavement by taking their aesthetic and making it broader and more populist.
As far as I know, Rivers Cuomo has never acknowledged this. In “Heart Songs,” his preposterous tribute to his influences, he references so many artists (Gordon Lightfoot, Eddie Rabbit, Bruce Springsteen, Iron Maiden, Debbie Gibson, Michael Jackson, Will Smith, Nirvana, etc.) that it’s frankly insulting he doesn’t also mention Slanted And Enchanted. But just listen to “In The Mouth A Desert” and “El Scorcho” back to back and tell me that Rivers Cuomo shouldn’t have to wash Stephen Malkmus’ car for the rest of his life.
18. “Black Out” (1995)
From the Pavement side, Weezer represents a road not taken. “If we had signed to Gold Mountain management, or if we had signed with Geffen, maybe Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain sells 750,000 copies instead of 250,000 copies. But it was really just the difference between being Pavement or being Weezer,” Malkmus told GQ in 2010. “I never had a great deal of confidence in my ability to write hits. There’s a formula to that, and I’m not a good chorus writer. I’m better at the verses. Sometimes I don’t even get to the chorus.”
Malkmus perfected the art of not getting to the chorus on Wowee Zowee, exemplified by this incredibly pretty stoner rock ballad, which showed that he was not interested in making his blue album sound at all like Weezer’s blue alarm.
(I can’t prove this, and no one would admit it, but the one time Pavement seems like they’re ripping off Weezer is “Stereo,” the first song from Brighten The Corners. The guitar riff is pretty Pinkerton-esque, and the lyrical quips are smirkier and less subtle than usual. If I can liken Pavement to The Simpsons, the Geddy Lee nod and the “fact-checking cuz” part are more like Family Guy jokes. I don’t hate it, but it’s not on the list for a reason.)
17. “Starlings Of The Slipstream” (1997)
Speaking of jokes: The best one embedded in the musical theater sequences from Pavements is that Perry cast actors that have starred in other jukebox musicals, including Michael Esper (American Idiot) and Kathryn Gallagher (the Alanis Morissette show Jagged Little Pill). I’m not sure how many viewers will notice this, given that the audience for a Pavement movie and the audience for musical theater represents two almost entirely separate circles. (I had the benefit of watching a screener three times — this aspect didn’t sink in fully until the second viewing.)
A (perhaps) unintended consequence of using these ringers is that the showtune versions of Pavement songs often sound… pretty good actually? “Starlings Of The Slipstream” comes to mind as one of the better examples. Hearing the choir of theater people sing that chorus really brings out the quality of the melody and unlocks Malkmus’ heretofore hidden Andrew Lloyd Webber side.
16. “Passat Dream” (1997)
My favorite Scott Kannberg song, from the strongest Kannberg Pavement album. (Brighten The Corners also has “Date With IKEA” — not listed, but still a good tune and even better product placement.)
15. “Debris Slide” (1991)
From the second-best Pavement EP, Perfect Sound Forever. Also, an opportunity to talk about Gary Young, the one who made Pavement an atypical rock band before Bob joined. Pavement’s image (among detractors) as a bougie, rich-guy band belies the blue-collar lives of the band members who aren’t Stephen Malkmus — a bartender, a farmer, an almost bus driver, and whatever it is Bob does with horses. And then there’s Gary, the 40-something-year-old hippie guy who worshipped Yes and did headstands on stage during the slow songs. In Jed I. Rosenberg’s Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History Of Gary Young And Pavement — released in 2023 just months before Young’s death at age 70 — we see him looking stooped and worse for wear as he slugs down orange soda mixed with vodka. He looks like the grizzled ex-timekeeper for a stoner metal band, not an original member of the cognoscenti’s favorite ’90s group.
What Gary represented about Pavement’s character and uniqueness is important. But he was also just a great “wild man” drummer, a perpetually drunken but fundamentally sweet-natured iconoclast who functioned as Pavement’s de-facto co-frontman early on. You can hear that on “Debris Slide,” where he attacks the kit like Bill Bruford on horse tranquilizers while Malkmus and Kannberg melt their guitars together.
14. “Loretta’s Scars” (1992)
More Gary Young excellence. That sloppy syncopated chug is one of his trademarks. For all of Steve West’s superior skills as a timekeeper, it’s the one thing he can’t quite copy when Pavement plays the old songs. Crazy, free, in the pocket most of the time but (crucially) not all of the time. He plays ragged, but with finesse.
13. “Trigger Cut” (1992)
No disrespect to “Kite At: 17,” but I’m sticking with the main attraction. Remember that quote where Malkmus described Steely Dan “like if New Order came from Los Angeles”? This song really sounds like if New Order came from Los Angeles (and then moved to Stockton when they were in grade school).
12. “Elevate Me Later” (1994)
We’ve reached the “Every Song Is Tied For No. 1” part of the list. All of these rankings are arbitrary, but we’re now in “truly interchangeable” territory. I’m putting the second song from Crooked Rain here because it’s paired permanently in my mind with the next song, the two tracks I played on repeat forever when I bought the tape because I couldn’t believe the rest of the record could possibly be as good. (It was.)
11. “Silence Kid” (1994)
Unbelievable album opener. The Steve West choogle is immediately, gloriously apparent. I remember feeling like I already knew the melody the first time I heard it, but I figured that was just a testament to Stephen Malkmus’ timeless songwriting. It took me years to realize that he lifted it from Buddy Holly’s “Everyday.” Of course, stealing in rock ‘n’ roll is never wrong, so long as you steal from the best. In his review, Matt Diehl pointed out all the other songs “Silence Kid” pulls from — the groove from Sly And The Family Stone’s “Everyday People,” the cowbell from Free’s “All Right Now,” the folk-rock goofiness from Barry McGuire’s “Eve Of Destruction.” But it’s done with such infectiousness that the thievery reads as inventive genius.
10. “Cut Your Hair” (1994)
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain seems in retrospect — in terms of its influence — like an album that sold 3 million copies. It didn’t, and as Pavement fans, we can agree that is the fault of the world. Again, the knock on this band as being snarky layabouts who couldn’t deliver the red-meat goods simply doesn’t align with the actual music on this record. Pavement detractors would be shocked by how straightforward this record sounds now. Far worse groups took their sound to the bank. Weezer, a great band in their prime, is exempted here. I’m talking about outfits like Marcy Playground, whose big hit “Sex And Candy” would have landed them in court if Pavement were managed by Allen Klein.
“Cut Your Hair,” in a weird way, is sometimes blamed for the album not breaking more. In interviews, Malkmus more than once has called it the song that couldn’t quite get them over the finish line. Though, at the risk of repeating myself, this is the fault of the world.
9. “Here” (1992)
The source of the definitive Pavement lyric: “I was dressed for success, but success it never comes.” I’m giving myself bonus points for not crafting the lede of this column around it, in accordance with well-established Pavement-related editorial clichés.
Thankfully, the sentiment isn’t actually true for Pavement. They were dressed for success, but success never comes… in a timely fashion during the original run of the band. Though it did arrive in subsequent decades, and that was pretty much by design.
8. “Shady Lane” (1997)
A song about the suburbs pitched at the midpoint between Talking Heads’ “The Big Country” and any number of Ray Davies tunes. Malkmus, like the former, is mocking, but he’s kinder about it than David Byrne. You feel, like Ray, that Stephen has secret affection for this world of “dutch” dinners and over-friendly concierges. Though, in the end, only Malkmus could have written, “You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life.”
7. “Grounded” (1995)
For the first 42 seconds, this is the greatest Pavement song of all time. The other three minutes and 33 seconds are also fantastic, but they nevertheless represent a (small) letdown. Alas, it ends up at a very respectable No. 7
6. “Range Life” (1994)
The Eagles is the usual reference point here, but “Range Life” sounds more like “Dead Flowers.” (More ammo for the “Pavement equals The Rolling Stones of ’90s lo-fi” argument, though Royal Trux probably wins the overall battle.) Special recognition must be given to Bryce Goggin, who along with mixing Crooked Rain also added some sweet Nicky Hopkins-style piano licks to this song, which really drives it home.
I have made the case that Son Volt’s “Windfall” is the greatest alt-country song of all time. And I’ll stick with that, though I also believe “Range Life” (which came out one year prior) is the most important “accidental” alt-country song of the era. So many modern acts that mine this musical territory, starting with MJ Lenderman, have significant portions of “Range Life” in their musical DNA.
5. “Father To A Sister Of Thought” (1995)
The second most important “accidental” alt-country song of the era. Though only because it’s less famous than “Range Life,” because as a song it’s a touch better. I would be a happy man if there was a good new indie band that just sounded like this song, over and over, every couple of years.
4. “Stop Breathin’” (1994)
An anthem with subtle grunge-coding. (Any ’90s rock song that prominently features a “dad” character is, at least, grunge-adjacent.) When I was in high school, this was the go-to wallowing song from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The tennis metaphors communicated an anti-authority message. Though given what I know now about Malkmus, this song might only be about tennis. Either way, the guitar breakdown at the end is a wonderful self-pity soundtrack.
3. “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” (1992)
The Pavement song, in that it sounds like something any band could do but in fact virtually no other band can do. It’s as if they ripped off every great rock tune from the previous 20 years (but especially “Sweet Jane”), but then you listen to those other songs and they feel nothing like “Summer Babe.” Oasis did something similar a few years later and the world called them a Beatles homage. But Pavement always was Pavement.
2. “Gold Soundz” (1994)
Need I say more? Along with being one of the very best Pavement songs, this is one of the best songs by anybody where the artist does play-by-play of the song as it is unfolding. If “and they’re coming to the chorus now” doesn’t make your heart explode out of your sternum, then you might not have a heart at all.
1. “Frontwards” (1992)
Pavement didn’t try, you say? Pavement didn’t rock, you say? Pavement didn’t have rock-star cool, you say? Really? Really? Have you not heard this song? The man says he’s got style, miles and miles, so much style that it’s wasted, and he’s telling the truth. So many of these songs represent what I want from a rock band — it’s music you want to hear when you’re three beers deep on a Saturday night, and you also feel like you have style for miles and miles. That’s not slack. That’s choogle. And having just spent weeks listening to this band over and over, let me tell you: It all feels like a finely crafted novel.
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