Pavement: More Than Just a Band – Discover Their Unique Musical Journey!

“We remain an amateur band, even though we live off our music. We wish to exist in a world that reflects who we are. True ‘professionals’ lose their taste for everything, eventually growing to despise music”, Scott Kannberg revealed about Pavement in an interview published in April 1994 by Inrocks. The co-founder of this Stockton, California based band, perhaps unknowingly, foresaw the path this beloved group would take, which would ultimately disband in 1999 following the release of their final album, Terror Twilight, exactly a decade after they formed.

“I can’t remember who said it, but a rock band shouldn’t last more than ten years. Beyond that, they generally have nothing left to say”, journalist Stéphane Deschamps commented during a roundtable discussion we hosted at Point Ephémère on July 1st, coinciding with the Mubi release of the film Pavements. Part documentary and part something else, the feature film by Alex Ross Perry, through the use of archival footage, pretense, and fiction, manages to come close to capturing the essence of a band that resisted the music industry’s game for as long as possible amid the rise of grunge and straightforward rock like Guns N’ Roses. It leaves us pondering whether Pavement was ever really more than just a figment of our wildest fantasies.

10 Years, 5 Albums

Labeled as slacker and lo-fi, even downright lazy, Pavement’s rock is anything but trivial or half-hearted. Brilliantly melodic, perpetually cool, creative, and hugely influential, the quintet, with just five albums and two stage reunions in 2010 and 2022, became an existential equivalent for a generation that no longer saw itself in the worn-out clichés of rock, akin to a figure as enigmatic as Bob Dylan.

In the fun little game of “who do you prefer, Blur or Oasis?”, the clever ones always answer Pulp. Transfer this question to the American scene and ask the same about Pixies and Nirvana, the cool kids will invariably respond: Pavement.