Love And Theft #3: Pavement
This is a series where I talk about my biggest music influences, and what I have taken from them. It has been a while since I wrote a column in this series, so I will link to my introductory post and my first two pieces about George Harrison and Carole King.
I cannot remember exactly when I was introduced to Pavement, but it must have been early in high school when I began to deliberately read about music and actively search for interesting shit that I had never heard before. Looking back, when I got to high school, I became less interested in forming my identity within a group like middle school kids tend to do, and I began to learn more about myself. Most people do not realize it, and I definitely did not understand it then, but this is the outlook for most kids starting high school. Everyone goes about it differently and channels their self-discovery into sports, drama club, film club, debate team, or any other extracurricular activity from which you source much more knowledge in your adult life than some of what you learned in the classroom. Music was my method, whether it be listening, joining the Montville School of Rock, or beginning to write my own songs.
My purpose for finding music to listen to was two-fold. The first aspect is what most music lovers seek to do; I wanted to enhance my listening, find inspiration, challenge my intellect, and add a little more joy to my life. The second aspect involved using my developing artist brain to look at what I could take from what I was hearing and apply it to my process of making music. Pavement was instrumental in both facets. As a student of classic rock, I recognize that Pavement was influenced by early punk music, as well as Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead. I had a reference for the sound, but Stephen Malkmus’s voice sounded like no one else. The earnestness moved me; he cannot really sing but he desperately wanted to and did not let his vocal limitations stop him. I listened and heard someone comfortable in his skin. His lyrics are strange but evocative; fun and nonsensical, but earnest and radiating the type of individuality that I was talking about earlier. I think during the late 90s and early 2000s after grunge, rock music began to take itself too seriously and Pavement was a great break from that. Bob Nastanovich hollering in the background and running around onstage like a hype man did not devalue the seriousness of some of the songs, but reminded us it’s only rock and roll at the end of the day. That is an important thing I remember not to lose sight of in my music.
Pavement only has five albums, but over the course of their relatively short stint, their sound became increasingly polished with the first album Slanted and Enchanted being amateurishly self-recorded and the last album Terror Twilight being produced by one of the geniuses behind Radiohead’s most classic work, Nigel Godrich. The sound and character of the band never lost its edge despite how it was produced which always inspired me. Meanwhile, the first couple of albums proved to me that not having access to state-of-the-art recording equipment and engineers is not a roadblock considering all I had was Garageband on my phone and a cheap interface at the time. I still do not have much more.
As I began work on my second album, Need A Vacation, I found myself pondering “What would Malkmus do?” at several turns. I wanted to make one of the coolest indie rock albums you have ever heard in your life. Whether I succeeded in that or not, I can point to specific parts of the album where Pavement crept in. The second track, “Something That People Don’t Walk On” opens with an explosive riff and the verses cut to pure ‘90s “slacker rock” with unannunciated talk-singing and an off-kilter lazy drumbeat. The first line is literally “Writing my name in the wet pavement” marrying the literal and figurative meaning of wanting to be something people did not walk on. But, it is equal parts a nod to the band Pavement. I always enjoyed outwardly expressing my influences within my music like this. I went one step further when I alluded to the Pavement classic “Shady Lane” borrowing lyrics in the song in Brandon’s Accident where I sing “Brandon’s accident was so long ago he’s fine now, he’s naturally readjusted to his shady lane, and now the sequel to his life will burden him with a knife in his back.” I was singing about a person who had a near-death experience and felt like he was living a sequel to his life once he fully recovered. “Shady Lane” felt like a gift to me to help express that. Then the song absolutely falls apart and descends into cacophonous noise like a Pavement record would. You can also observe my “What would Malkmus do?” approach in the messy drum fill before I kick into “Next Time.” I knew I had written one of my catchier songs and I needed something to weird it out a little.
You've made this so clear and enjoyable, music has so many layers. Thank you for your explanations.
I love reading this column.