Pavement

Review: Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, for performer as much as audience. The announcement that Pavement were reforming on the (sort of) tenth anniversary of their split was a surprise, but hardly a shock: the once-bickering co-founding guitarist/singer/songwriters Stephen Malkmus and Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg had long since buried the hatchet and collaborated on the sleevenotes for a series of deluxe reissues of Pavement's back catalogue - and, as the Pixies have demonstrated, there’s no indie-rock shame these days in belatedly collecting dollars for one’s influence.



Also, at the risk of appearing bitchy, it’s not as though the pair are huge commercial drawcards in 2010: after coming out of the split with two superb 2001 albums - Malkmus’ self-titled solo debut and Kannberg’s All This Sounds Gas under the nom de rock Preston School of Industry - both had been relegated to cult music footnotes by mid-decade. As for the others, percussionist/screamer Bob Nastonivich had an occasional gig as drummer for Silver Jews, and drummer Steve West formed little-heard indie band Marble Valley. In fact, in recent years the most visible Pavement member has been bassist Mark Ibold, who joined Sonic Youth as auxiliary member in 2006.



The one time I’d seen Pavement was a dozen or more years back at a gig in Adelaide, when they played a show that was both utterly awesome and drunkenly loose. Flash forward to Friday night at the Enmore and it was clear that little had changed: Ibold’s a little more stocky and Kannberg’s gone thin on top, but the band look remarkably similar to their 90s incarnataions. Also, Malkmus is clearly drunk as hell, and Nastonovich seems to be wiping his nose an awful lot.



And they’re brilliant. The songs sound wonderful: like the recent compilation Quarantine the Past there’s a heavy focus on the earlier albums - although that might just be because that’s what the band find easiest to play automatically when trashed. Malkmus is stage left, writhing and dancing, trying to spin his Jazzmaster around his body ala Richie Sambora during the Kannberg-sung ‘Two States’ and diving through West’s kit. Kannberg is stage right, looking proud and authoritative while pounding barre chords from his Telecaster. Ibold is beaming quietly in the middle of the stage. Nastonovich and West bash things and provide most of the banter, and all five of them just look so gosh-darn happy to be playing these songs again.



And what songs they are: ‘Gold Soundz’, ‘Cut Your Hair’, ‘In The Mouth A Desert’, ‘Frontwards’, ‘Grounded’ (in which Malkmus, Ibold and Kannberg lined up front of stage for unison guitar sweeps), 'Unfair', ‘Fight This Generation’, ‘Range Life’, 'Here', ‘Stereo’, ‘Rattled by the Rush’, ‘Silence Kit’, ‘Trigger Cut’, ‘Stop Breathin’’ and ‘Shady Lane’ received rapturous receptions and the encore - which was long enough to make the break qualify more as an intermission - even included the first EP’s ‘Box Elder’. For two hours everyone on stage and off was grinning like a loon. Yes, nostalgia is a powerful emotion. Andrew P Street