Pavement Gear Up

Where many would consider R.E.M. the definitive band of the 1980s--arty and indie-bred, critically adored, an organically grown antidote to corporate rock all of which is grounded in classic pop conventions, yet bent on reshaping them--Pavement may well come to be recognized as the definitive band of the '90s: They're wry and weisenheimer-ish, fragmented and sprawling, anthemic yet easily distracted, tenuously grounded in punk rock (at least the DIY part) and ever so slightly coy about playing this game called "entertainment."

"I'm not sure that we'd be considered 'the definitive '90s band,' " Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg demurs, "because there are some great bands out there that are more influential than we are. But I would take that as a compliment.

"We just want to keep putting out records and doing something different each time, and I think that's what R.E.M. tries to do too. The similarities are that R.E.M. built up their audience over each record, and each record was good," he says, mumbling that last word so it's barely audible. "And hopefully, that's what we're doing too."

With their fourth full-length album, Brighten the Corners, released this month through the joint Matador/Capitol distribution agreement, Pavement continues to stab herky-jerky at posterity, laughing until milk shoots out their nostrils. Founded in the late 1980s in Stockton, CA, the band has built an unlikely career on well-adjusted whimsy and weirdness, not to mention dueling guitars filching shamelessly from all corners of pop history. Because he once declined to be interviewed with his bandmates for a story for Rolling Stone, Kannberg is supposed to be a bit of a recluse, harboring a certain disdain for the glad-handing routine. The fact that he and founding partner Stephen Malkmus first began releasing Pavement records under the cryptic monikers "Spiral Stairs" and "SM," respectively, combined with Malkmus's puzzle-riddled lyrical style, has furthered the idea that the critically acclaimed band with the slanted and enchanted world-view is prank-prone and publicity-shy.

Well, not exactly. Over the course of a few days during which his band was en route to their various homes across the States after a mini-tour of the U.K. and Ireland, Kannberg graciously put up with a series of missed connections and jumbled overseas phone numbers before finally settling in for an interview from his current Berkeley home in newly-wedded bliss. Yes, he's a little reserved, not exactly given to effusive outbursts--but no, he's by no means uncooperative.

Kannberg and his colleagues still see their "star"dom as a strange source of amusement. "What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high?" Malkmus muses aloud on the new album's lead track and first single, "Stereo," continuing his comic running commentary on the rock scene which Pavement find themselves a part of. ("Stone Temple Pilots, they're elegant bachelors," goes one previous barb.) But the stylishness and careful construction of Brighten the Corners suggest that, just maybe, Pavement themselves are hunkering down for the long-haul "Career in Rock."

"I don't think we have ever felt that way," Kannberg says. "We're still pretty fragile, to the point where it's [still] one record at a time. I mean, the relationship within the band's not fragile--it's just, 'do we want to go out and tour for a year?'; that kind of stuff.

"But I think after [1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain] came out, when we were playing a lot bigger places and were able to play Lollapalooza [and the Tonight Show], it hit us. We were able to say, 'Well, we could probably do this for a few more years. At least put out records that we want to put out, and not have to do a lot of the bullshit that some bands have to do...' Hold on, my dog is about to jump off the balcony."

In the wake of the surging groundswell that accompanied 1991's Perfect Sounds Forever EP, the sparkling and slavishly applauded debut LP Slanted and Enchanted in1992, and the deconstructive breakthrough Crooked Rain, the band met their growing expectations sideways, with 1995's Wowee Zowee, a meandering round-up of musical ideas that was probably their least substantial record to date. That catalog might sound less than substantial in its entirety to the uninitiated, but keep in mind that Pavement's brilliance has always been their ability to make even the most belabored of songs sound tossed off.

Kannberg acknowledges that Wowee Zowee wasn't perfect. "We made some mistakes on that record," he says. "Although there are some really great songs on it, I think we were kind of pressured into putting out a record a little faster than we were ready to. I mean, I'm totally into the record. It's just if we had another six months to think about it, it would've been much different.

"We could've easily made an extension of Crooked Rain, just a structured record, 12 songs going up and down," he says. But the band consciously went for the bizarre, even more so than usual. "I just heard a song from it last night and I was thinking, 'God, that's a weird song,' " Kannberg laughs. The cut was "Western Homes," one of several Pavement tunes for which Kannberg received songwriter's credit.

Afforded the luxury of two years to gather their thoughts for the new album, Pavement's five members--Kannberg, Malkmus, drummer Steve West, percussionist/odd jobsman Bob Nastanovich, and bass player Mark Ibold--patiently waited for the hoopla to simmer down. And the relaxed atmosphere shows in the (relatively) tidy arrangements of the new album's 13 tracks.

However, long-time fans, need not fear that the band's shambling, clattering jalopy style has been irrevocably streamlined. As always, the band's songs threaten to fall apart, without ever actually doing so. It's not that their playing is sloppy, not at all. It's an exhilarating sense of constant discovery, that what they've stumbled onto has been patched together serendipitously and might not stay that way for long.

It's always been that way for Pavement, ever since Kannberg and Malkmus--friends from high school--began cutting tracks with long-time Stockton loafer and drummer Gary Young, who provided the recording studio.

"Steve moved away to college in 1985 or so," Kannberg recalls. "But he would come back for vacations and summer break, and that's when we'd make those records. He moved to New York after college, and I moved to Sacramento," later living in San Francisco for more than two years. Although the band has always worked from a geographical disadvantage--Malkmus now divides his time between New York and his parents' new digs in Idaho while Nastanovich lives with Sebadoh's Jason Loewenstein in Louisville, KY--"We've always had a base in Stockton, at least up until Gary left [the band]," Kannberg says. "We still call Northern California our home."

Young, whose loony antics both onstage and off contributed to his dismissal/departure, once told this writer that "this Malkmus idiot is a complete songwriting genius," though it took him a while to realize it.

"I remember Gary saying that," Kannberg laughs, agreeing wholeheartedly with his former bandmate. "Steve can just hear things, take things and mold them into his own sound, you know? He can hear any song and five minutes later, he can figure it out and play it. He's always been that way," going all the way back to the fresh-faced duo's first, barely-post-high-school band, Bag o' Bones.

The earliest Pavement tracks, including such rough gems as "Debris Slide" and "Summer Babe," still sound pretty good to the guys who made them. "They're great songs," says Kannberg, without crowing. "It was a great experience to do that. We had no idea what we were doing--we'd just belt out a punk rock single. It's kind of the same now--each record we kind of get the same feeling. But yeah, those early singles were great."

In fact, the band's very first 7-inch single was the first token of young Kannberg's affection for the woman who became his bride just a couple of months ago. "That's how I courted her. The first time we met, I gave her the first single. She didn't really understand it, but she liked the idea of putting a record out. She thought it was kind of, uh, arty."

Four albums, several nonsense-syllable backing vocals, and many dozen critical paeans later, the band is doing much the same thing musically. Leaving room for growth, of course.

Brighten the Corners, in Kannberg's mind, has fewer "traditional" Pavement songs, "the ones we can write in our sleep... A song like 'Transport Is Arranged' or 'Type Slowly' is a song that's a lot harder for us to do, and I think we're more into the challenge of writing songs like that. They're better songs," he laughs--as if it's awfully presumptious to say so--forging on nevertheless.

"There's more arrangement with these songs than any other record. We took time and tried to figure different instruments into the equation," such as the dainty harpsichord that opens "We Are Underused," a song that unfolds into a classically majestic rock anthem. "It's more like a Kinks-Beatles-Stones thing than, I don't know, Black Flag or whatever," Kannberg says. "We've been listening to those records more than we've been listening to the Fall, or the Swell Maps, or Can," naming three bands that astute critics pegged as Pavement favorites early on.

Although there are few catchphrases here that are as immediately memorable as "Range Rovin' with the cinema stars," or "goodnight to the rock 'n' roll era," or even "no big hair," Malkmus continues to stretch his "idiot genius" as a lyricist. "One of us is a cigar stand/and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine," he warbles dementedly on "Type Slowly," messing with the inflection of "incandescent" to squish it into one line.

Would his partner say that Malkmus's songcraft is influenced to any degree by the spontaneous writing of Beat poetry? Kannberg replies: "I think it comes more from artists--cut-and-paste artists--than any Beat poetry. But maybe so, we've never really talked about that."

Musically, Brighten is full of the prickly ideas the band has become at least modestly famous for. One of Kannberg's two compositions on the record, "Date With IKEA" ("the Swedish furniture warehouse") begins with a distinctly Byrds-y guitar part, the first few plucks of which actually mimick the intro to the Split Enz hit "I Got You." Indeed, the album is full of obviously well-planned guitar parts.

"Steve does cool things with different tunings," Kannberg reports. "He tunes all the strings down and makes them both rhythm and lead at the same time. It's kind of like a blues thing they used to do, and there was this band Dr. Feelgood--their guitar player used to do it, too. It adds a different element to the song. I haven't figured out his tuning yet," he laughs. "I figured out my own tuning, but he's a little more into it than I am."

In celebration of the album release, the band is currently in the middle of a low-key mini-tour of small venues in seven major-market cities, including San Francisco (Kilowatt, February 22nd; Bottom of the Hill, February 23rd) and Los Angeles (Spaceland, February 26th; the Roxy, February 27th). All the shows sold out in a matter of minutes through Matador's website. Like many of their "alternative" counterparts, lately Pavement have been getting back to the club circuit on which they grew up. That is, whenever possible.

The night before their appearance at last summer's Tibetan Freedom concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the band played a clandestine show in front of 150 people-in-the-know at a club in the East Bay. "It was kind of secret," Kannberg says. "We went under a different name--Eerie Canal, with two e's."

Despite demands on the band that necessitate sneak engagements like that one, Kannberg doesn't think expectations have become unmanageable for Pavement. "We still don't have that much pressure on us--we're not Beck or anything," he laughs. Funny he should say so-- at this point, Beck Hansen is probably Pavement's chief competition for the decade's Critics' Choice award, in the "Ironic Detachment" category.

First appeared in BAM magazine, 02.07.97.
Courtesy and © BAM magazine, Internet © Synthesis Network.

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