A discography film
Pavement
Five albums in seven years, from a home studio in Stockton to a Nigel Godrich production, and the long second life that followed.
Scroll to play the film. The pictures are made of dots: move over them, and play a sample to see them move with the music.
1989
Two friends in Stockton
Pavement began in Stockton, California, in 1989 as a recording project for two friends, Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, who called themselves S.M. and Spiral Stairs. They recorded at Louder Than You Think, a home studio run by Gary Young, a local drummer about 13 years older than them, and he became their drummer.
Bassist Mark Ibold and a second drummer, Bob Nastanovich, joined in 1991. Steve West took over from Young in 1993, and that five-piece made the rest of the records.
- Their first release, the Slay Tracks EP, cost about $800 to make and came out on the band’s own label, Treble Kicker.
- Nastanovich was brought in partly to keep time steady around Young’s playing.
- Young was famous for his stage antics. When he died in 2023 the band shared an old photo of him doing a headstand mid-show.
Sources: AllMusic, NME 2023. Photo: Masao Nakagami, CC BY-SA 2.0.
April 20, 1992
Slanted and Enchanted
Matador · produced by Pavement, recorded mostly at Louder Than You Think, Stockton
“I was dressed for success / But success it never comes”
Malkmus and Kannberg made their first album before Pavement had really worked as a live band, with Young drumming along to their guitars as they went. Most of it was recorded in Young’s home studio in Stockton in early 1991.
Critics were praising it before it was even released, and it became one of the defining records of 1990s indie rock. It is the only Pavement album with Young on drums.
- Rolling Stone ranked it No. 24 on its list of the 100 best albums of the 1990s.
- Around this time Malkmus worked as a security guard at the Whitney Museum in New York, alongside Steve West, the band’s future drummer.
Sources: Magnet 2015, AllMusic, Matador: Slanted, Artnet 2022, Genius. Sample: a 30-second preview from Apple Music.
February 14, 1994
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Matador · produced by Pavement, recorded mostly at Random Falls, New York
“Songs mean a lot when songs are bought / And so are you”
The second album was a clean break. Young was gone, Steve West was in, and the band moved from Stockton to a studio in New York. The songs were sharper and more melodic than the debut’s.
“Cut Your Hair” became a modern-rock radio and MTV hit, although Matador later admitted that getting radio to play it had been a struggle.
- It reached No. 121 on the Billboard 200, and Pitchfork later named it the eighth-best album of the 1990s.
- “Range Life” gently mocks the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. Years later Matador was still being asked whether Billy Corgan held a grudge.
Sources: Matador 2019, AllMusic, Matador: Crooked Rain, Genius. Sample: a 30-second preview from Apple Music.
April 11, 1995
Wowee Zowee
Matador · produced by Pavement, recorded mostly at Easley Recording, Memphis
“Boys are dying on these streets”
With the industry hoping the follow-up to Crooked Rain would be their breakthrough, Pavement made their longest and strangest album, 18 songs and close to an hour long.
At the time some critics found it directionless. It has since come to be heard as the last of three masterpieces in a row.
- Malkmus picked the gentle “Father to a Sister of Thought” as a single, and later put the choice down to how much he was smoking at the time.
- On the 1995 Lollapalooza tour a crowd in Charles Town, West Virginia, pelted the band with mud until they stopped playing.
- The cover is a painting by the artist Steve Keene.
Sources: Stereogum 2015, Stereogum 2016, Matador: Wowee Zowee, Wikipedia: Wowee Zowee, Genius. Sample: a 30-second preview from Apple Music.
February 11, 1997
Brighten the Corners
Matador · produced by Mitch Easter and Pavement, recorded in North Carolina
“What about the voice of Geddy Lee / How did it get so high?”
After Wowee Zowee, Pavement tried something new: rehearsing. They spent three weeks working up songs Malkmus had written at home in Portland before recording with Mitch Easter in the summer of 1996.
The result was more focused and approachable, and it became their highest-charting album in the US.
- It debuted at No. 70 on the Billboard 200.
- Spike Jonze directed the video for “Shady Lane”, in which Malkmus appears headless.
Sources: Houston Press 1997, AllMusic, Matador: Brighten, IMVDb, Genius. Sample: a 30-second preview from Apple Music.
June 8, 1999
Terror Twilight
Matador · produced by Nigel Godrich
“Honey, I’m a prize and you’re a catch”
For their last album Pavement worked for the first time with a famous producer from outside the band: Nigel Godrich, fresh from Radiohead and Beck. He wanted a tighter record that could reach more people, and the sessions moved from Portland to expensive studios in New York and London.
They were tense. Kannberg felt his songs were being sidelined, and Godrich and the band clashed over direction and cost. The reviews were strong all the same.
- Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood plays harmonica on “Platform Blues” and “Billie”.
- The band overruled Godrich’s running order. The 2022 reissue, Farewell Horizontal, restores his sequence on vinyl.
Sources: Stereogum 2019, AllMusic, Matador: Terror Twilight, Matador, Genius. Sample: a 30-second preview from Apple Music.
1999 onwards
The second life
Pavement played what turned out to be their last show for a decade at London’s Brixton Academy on November 20, 1999, with handcuffs hanging from Malkmus’s microphone stand. They called it a hiatus; it was a split.
They reunited in 2010 for a world tour that opened with four sold-out nights in Central Park. Then their songs found a new, younger audience online, which brought them back again in 2022, and in 2024 Alex Ross Perry made a film about them.
- “Harness Your Hopes”, a B-side from 1999, became an unexpected Spotify hit in 2017 and went viral on TikTok in 2020. It is now their most-streamed song, and in 2024 it became their first record certified gold.
- Perry’s Pavements, part documentary and part invented biopic with Joe Keery as Malkmus, premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
- Perry also staged Slanted! Enchanted!, a Pavement jukebox musical, for two nights in New York in December 2022.
Sources: NME 1999, AllMusic, Pollstar 2009, NME 2024, Consequence 2024, Stereogum 2024, NPR 2025, BrooklynVegan 2022. Photo: Siegfy, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Sources
- AllMusic · Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Heather Phares, Pavement biography (AllMusic, as published on Qobuz)
- NME 2023 · Surej Singh, "Original Pavement drummer Gary Young has died, aged 70", NME (2023)
- Magnet 2015 · Eric Waggoner, "The Making of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted", Magnet (2015)
- Matador: Slanted · Matador Records history: Slanted & Enchanted
- Artnet 2022 · Artnet News, on Pavement’s 30-year history pop-up show in New York (2022)
- Matador 2019 · Matador Records, "Matador Revisionist History: Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" (2019)
- Matador: Crooked Rain · Matador Records history: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
- Stereogum 2015 · Chris DeVille, "Wowee Zowee Turns 20", Stereogum (2015)
- Stereogum 2016 · Scott Lapatine, "6 Storied Sets From 25 Years of Lollapalooza", Stereogum (2016)
- Matador: Wowee Zowee · Matador Records history: Wowee Zowee
- Wikipedia: Wowee Zowee · Wikipedia, "Wowee Zowee": the Steve Keene cover painting
- Houston Press 1997 · Alan Sculley, "Turning Old Corners", Houston Press (1997)
- Matador: Brighten · Matador Records history: Brighten the Corners
- IMVDb · IMVDb, Spike Jonze videography: Pavement, "Shady Lane" (1997)
- Stereogum 2019 · Chris DeVille, "Terror Twilight Turns 20", Stereogum (2019)
- Matador: Terror Twilight · Matador Records history: Terror Twilight
- Matador · Matador Records, Pavement artist page: Farewell Horizontal and later releases
- NME 1999 · "Cracks in the Pavement", NME (1999): the Brixton Academy show
- Pollstar 2009 · "Pavement Reuniting for 2010 World Tour", Pollstar (2009)
- NME 2024 · Tom Skinner, "Pavement’s Harness Your Hopes goes viral on TikTok again", NME (2024)
- Consequence 2024 · Paolo Ragusa, on Harness Your Hopes going gold, Consequence (2024)
- Stereogum 2024 · "Alex Ross Perry’s Off-Kilter Pavement Movie Will Premiere at Venice Film Festival", Stereogum (2024)
- NPR 2025 · Sasha Geffen, "Darlings on the split screen: Pavements explodes the music movie", NPR (2025)
- BrooklynVegan 2022 · "Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical coming to off Broadway in December", BrooklynVegan (2022)
- Genius · Genius lyric pages, for the exact wording of each quoted line