Pavement

The Stockton, California band of Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, who made five albums for Matador in the 1990s and helped define the sound of modern indie rock.

Origin
Stockton, California, United States
Years active
1989-1999, 2010, 2022-present
Genres
indie rock, alternative rock, lo-fi
Labels
Treble Kicker, Drag City, Matador, Big Cat, Domino

Stockton

Pavement began in January 1989 as a studio project of Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, friends from Stockton, California, who had known each other since grade school and played on the same soccer team. At first they went by S.M. and Spiral Stairs, and they took the name of a band Kannberg had started earlier, which had played a single show in 1987. They recorded at Louder Than You Think, a small Stockton studio run by Gary Young, a drummer more than ten years their senior, who became their drummer.

The Slay Tracks: 1933-1969 EP came out on their own Treble Kicker imprint in 1989, and they played for the first time on KDVS-FM in Davis that December. Drag City released Demolition Plot J-7 in 1990 and Perfect Sound Forever in 1991. Mark Ibold, one of their earliest fans, joined on bass, and Bob Nastanovich came in as what he called an assistant time keeper to Young.

Slanted and Enchanted

Malkmus, Kannberg and Young recorded most of Slanted and Enchanted in a week in January 1991, on a tight budget in Young's home studio, including the shouted Conduit for Sale!. It circulated on cassette for nearly a year before Matador released it in April 1992, and Rolling Stone later called it the quintessential indie rock album. Around the same time the band became a full-time live act.

Young left after the 1993 European tour, and accounts of why differ. His replacement was Steve West, a friend of Nastanovich's from Richmond, Virginia, who had worked as a guard at the Whitney Museum with Malkmus and David Berman. Malkmus said later that any concept of punky left the band with West.

The Matador years

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was made in New York in the late summer of 1993, mostly by Malkmus and West, with the others adding overdubs. Released in February 1994, it reached 15 in the UK, and Cut Your Hair went to 10 on the US Alternative chart and took them onto The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Wowee Zowee followed in 1995, recorded in Memphis with what Malkmus called an approach of pure sprawl. That summer the band were pelted with mud and rocks at Lollapalooza in West Virginia.

Brighten the Corners (1997), cut in Winston-Salem with Mitch Easter and Bryce Goggin, was the first record they let someone else guide, and Shady Lane became their first UK Top 40 single. Terror Twilight (1999), produced by Nigel Godrich, was the last album. After Coachella that year Malkmus told the others he did not want to go on. The final show was at Brixton Academy on 20 November 1999, and the split was made public in mid-2000. West said he found out from the internet.

Afterlife and return

Malkmus formed the Jicks, Kannberg led Preston School of Industry, and Nastanovich played in Berman's Silver Jews before a career in horse racing. The first four albums returned in expanded editions between 2002 and 2008, and Lance Bangs's documentary Slow Century appeared in 2002. A 2010 reunion ran from Auckland in March to the Hollywood Bowl in September, and Young sat in for an encore in Stockton.

In 2020 Harness Your Hopes, a B-side from the Brighten the Corners era, went viral on TikTok and was later certified platinum in the US. Kannberg said it breathed new life into the band. They returned to the stage in 2022 with Rebecca Cole on keyboards and have toured since, though Malkmus said new recordings would be total cringe. Young died in August 2023, aged 70. An off-Broadway musical, Slanted! Enchanted!, opened in 2022, and Alex Ross Perry's film Pavements followed in 2024. Robert Christgau and Stephen Thomas Erlewine have both called them the best band of the 1990s.

Members

Records

Songs

Silver Jews, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Preston School of Industry, The Fall

Where to go next

Official

Reference

  • Pavement A full history, including both reunions.

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Film and video

Sources

  1. Pavement (band), Wikipedia
  2. Pavement discography, Wikipedia
  3. Sunday Review: Slanted and Enchanted, Pitchfork (2025-08-24)
  4. The Oral History of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Stereogum (2014-01-16)
  5. Pavement interview: reunion tour and Harness Your Hopes, NME (2022-11-08)
  6. Bob Nastanovich, Wikipedia