Weekly Artist Overview: Pavement

Pavement, in some respects, are the quintessential slacker band. Their music was textbook lo-fi, their lyrics were sardonic and indecipherable, leader Stephen Malkmus' jaded vocals recalled Lou Reed, their songs were often fragmentary and seemingly half-finished, they lit feedback bombs in unexpected places, and they took a whatever's-handy approach to production, tossing in virtually anything that might seem to make an interesting noise.

It seems unlikely that Malkmus and crew realized what they were doing when they first started banging around in a shed in Stockton CA. Time has since put their achievements into better relief; Pavement were the leaders of the lo-fi movement, perhaps the most critical genre of the early 1990's, and the lessons they taught, particularly on Slanted and Enchanted, continue to inform loners with 4-tracks around the world. They helped re-shape the indie world, garnered considerable critical attention, and earned a devoted cult of fans and inspired fellow musicians, and took the DIY ethic a step forward from punk; more than anyone at the start of the 90's, Pavement showed that literally anyone could make a convincing, challenging album. Their main competetors were Sebadoh, but history has been kinder to Pavement.

Pavement was formed in Stockton in 1989 by Stephen Malkmus and childhood friend Scott Kannberg in 1989. Malkmus had just returned from the University of Virginia, where he had majored in history. At this time, the duo called themselves S.M. and Spiral Staircase, a name also used by Kannberg himself. At the beginning, they considered themselves a studio project; with no band, they had no plans to tour. Malkmus did most of the singing and songwriting.

The duo met up with drummer Gary Young (not to be confused with drummer Gary Young of Daddy Cool and Jo Jo Zep) who was in his 40's and an eccentric veteran of third-tier local bands since the 1960's. He was living in Stockton as something of an acid casualty; however, he had his own tiny little recording studio and could still play drums. Malkmus and Kannberg invited Young to join them, while they availed themselves of his studio.

The trio recorded an EP, Slay Tracks (1933-1969), named after a high school shooting incident that occured on the day of recording in 1989. Murky and noisy, it is a lo-fi recording of guitar feedback and angst; at times bordering on unlistenable, it also offered glimpses of talent underneath. Discs were pressed on a homemade label called Louder Than You Think for $800. Kannberg handled promotion, which mainly involved giving away the disc to friends, relatives, his dad, fanzines, and a few small record labels. The few that found their way into the hands of reviewers did get some lukewarm notice; the jittery melodies and noise were something different. One early recipient of theis rare pressing was influential British deejay John Peel. On the strength of this, the band was able to get a deal with the somewhat larger Chicago indie label Drag City, who came to specialize in both lo-fi and experimental music.

The trio followed this up with Demolition Plot J-7, released on Drag City in 1990. While this too is a screeching, muddy noisefest, it also demonstrated an embryonic pop sense creeping in. Demolition Plot J-7, while nearly as noisy and chaotic as its predecessor, actually had a great song on it, "Forklift", and a fairly touching emotional number called "Perfect Depth". It represented a progression from the debut; after celebrating noise on Slay Tracks, the music was taking on a shape and something of a signature sound. The band's lack of a cohesive identity actually added a hint of mystery to the music, which bolstered their appeal.

Perfect Sound Forever is where Pavement starts sounding like what they were destined to become. The title was an audacious gauntlet thrown down in the face of what still remained half-formed music, but the best moments on the disc come close to living up to it; "Debris Slide" and "From Now On" are early anthemic classics of slackerdom, and provide a taste of what would come shortly after. Perfect Sound Forever was written up in numerous publications; Pavement was becoming a name people recognized, even if few had still heard their music. The interest began to grow so much that poorly-mixed tapes of the band's debut album, Slanted and Enchanted were leaked and began to circulate among fans and critics. Their sound was compared to R.E.M., Sonic Youth, the Pixies, and British lo-fi pioneers The Fall; a British music magazine would later play "Two States" for Mark E. Smith of the Fall, telling him it was an old Fall b-side. Smith believed them.

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