Pavement Vic, May 23
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Maybe it’s a guy thing. Every male critic under 35 seems to have weighed in with a Grand Theory of Why Pavement Is God at some time or other. Pavement’s songwriter, Stephen Malkmus, is the ultimate Zen X hero: by not trying too hard and having reluctantly acquired that underground mystique, he’s attained a level of coolness that Details subscribers can only dream about.
And of course all those grand theorizers couldn’t wait to get their hands on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, the 1994 follow-up to Slanted and Enchanted. Since Pavement’s celebrated indie rep had finally gotten them into the Rolling Stone club of important bands, the serious treatises came thick and fast with the release of that record. Pavement’s low-slung, jazz-influenced rambling rock was the most influential thing since Chuck Berry picked up a guitar or the Ramones plugged in their amps, readers were told. Again I shook my head in wonder. Yes, “Cut Your Hair,” with its oo-oo-oo sing-along chorus and loping hook, was a great single, and a few other tracks, like “Elevate Me Later” and “Silence Kit,” demonstrated Malkmus’s undeniable melancholy melodicism. But my reaction to that album was, well, “Pavement? They’re OK.”
By the time the band played “Gold Soundz,” Crooked Rain‘s anthem to emptiness, the lyrics “You’re the kind of girl I like, ’cause you’re empty, and I’m empty” rang a bit hollow. Pavement performed their music with spirit and an appealing near-sincerity, perhaps disappointing those who want Malkmus and company to remain icons of smart-alecky, in-jokey indie rock. Judging by their new material and their engaging performance, it seems that Pavement have outgrown some of the acidic aesthetic that defined them in the past and embraced the contradictions and confusions of adulthood with a certain awkward grace.
