It was announced a while back that Pavement would be playing a couple shows in 2020, which will be their first performances since their 2010 tour, which were their first performances since their breakup in 2000. When a band reunites like clockwork once a decade, I have to imagine they don't really love getting together that much, but those big festival paydays help everybody live comfortably without being in their old famous band most of the time. Or maybe they look forward to it, I dunno. But I've always had a love/hate relationship with this band, probably more than any other who I bought every album by, and I kind of wanted to revisit their catalog and try to cherry pick the stuff I still like in a context that appeals to me.

Pavement deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Grounded
2. In The Mouth A Desert
3. Unfair
4. Frontwards
5. Date w/ IKEA
6. Black Out
7. Folk Jam
8. Harness Your Hopes
9. Loretta's Scars
10. We Dance
11. Elevate Me Later
12. Heckler Spray
13. Two States
14. Grave Architecture
15. Silence Kid
16. Greenlander
17. Perfume-V
18. Transport Is Arranged
19. Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence
20. Kennel District
21. Here
22. Texas Never Whispers
23. 5-4=Unity
24. Blue Hawaiian
25. The Hexx

Track 12 from Perfect Sound Forever EP (1991)
Tracks 2, 9, 13, 17 and 21 from Slanted And Enchanted (1992)
Tracks 4 and 22 from Watery, Domestic EP (1992)
Track 19 from No Alternative (1993)
Track 16 from Born To Choose (1993)
Tracks 3, 11, 15 and 23 from the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)
Tracks 1, 6, 10, 14 and 20 from Wowee Zowee (1995)
Track 5, 18 and 24 from Brighten The Corners (1997)
Tracks 7 an 25 from Terror Twilight (1999)
Track 8 from the "Spit On A Stranger" single (1999)

Pavement were at one point kind of the standard bearer of '90s indie rock -- they probably still are, and really it's rare for a band's output to be so perfectly contained almost entirely within a particular decade. They were a gateway band for a lot of kids that invited them into an obsession with unpolished lo-fi recordings and a sprawling discography of EPs and other obscurities beyond the albums. But for me Sonic Youth was the band that I worshiped like that, and even after I started listening to Pavement, I kind of looked down on them as kind of a minor band that had been elevated too much by critics. I felt like a proudly casual fan who enjoyed "Cut Your Hair" during the band's fleeting summer of real radio airplay, then was hooked by "Stereo" enough to start buying their albums. After all is said and done, I would be comfortable calling those 2 songs my favorite Pavement tracks, and though I like plenty of their other songs, I often feel like I'm chasing the silly catchy sugar high of those songs.

There are some pretty well-loved Pavement songs that I just found annoying and didn't include. Still, I do have some memories tied to these songs. I remember the first time I went into a hipster college bar and heard "In The Mouth A Desert" and got a handle on this stuff as fun social drinking music and not just as something for headphones at home. "Transport Is Arranged" was the first of 3 songs where Malkmus shouted out Baltimore. Most Pavement songs and all of their singles were sung and primarily written by Stephen Malkmus, but Spiral Stairs maintained something of a cult following within the band's cult following for his one or two songs per album. So I definitely wanted to spotlight the most memorable of those, "Date w/ IKEA," "Two States," and "Kennel District."

I thought about just drawing this playlist from their 5 proper albums, since I'm not one of those obsessive superfans who collected the non-album stuff in the '90s or even listened to the expanded reissues of the albums that were released from 2002 to 2008. But given the way that some of those non-album tracks have become a major part of their legacy, it seems right to include them. Pavement's #1 most streamed song on Spotify is "Harness Your Hopes," a Brighten The Corners outtake released as a B-side in 1999 and then as a bonus track on the album's 2008 reissue. Their Spotify top 10 also includes the early EP track "Frontwards" and a compilation cover of Echo & The Bunnymen. But I always really liked "Greenlander," one of the only memorable songs from the classic '90s mediocre-compilation-for-a-good-cause Born To Choose, so I had to throw that in too.

I remember for years I'd see people quote "Harness" ("show me a word that rhymes with pavement and I won't kill your parents"), "Frontwards" ("I've got style, miles and miles"), and the extended riff on R.E.M.'s discography on "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence" and be kind of confused like, I have all their albums and I don't know these songs, what the hell? It feels a little silly to make a deep cuts playlist that has about 8 tracks in common with their only best-of compilation, 2010's Quarantine The Past, but they were kind of playing to the fans anyway with a comp that had "Frontwards" but not either of the great Wowee Zowee singles.

Speaking of Wowee Zowee, it might seem counter to my assertion that I'm a casual singles-oriented fan of the band, but my favorite Pavement album is the big long 18-track one that's full of short inscrutable tangents that's most loved by a certain strain of diehard fans. But it really just has the most songs I like, and even the lesser songs strike me as more fun than the abrasive filler on early albums or the sleepier stuff on later albums. I also just love the relaxed sound of Wowee Zowee, which was recorded at Easley Recording Studio in Memphis. There was a point in the mid-'90s when every other big indie band was going to Memphis to make an album with Doug Easley, including Sonic Youth, Guided By Voices, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 10:06 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.