Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we sort through the best and worst of your older cousin’s favorite band.

If any band begs for the Dissected treatment as defined above, it’s Pavement. Not because they like beer (although they do/did) or because we’ve already picked apart Stephen Malkmus’ solo discography (although it seems weird that we haven’t done the same with his most famous work) or because they’ve got a (sorta) new odds-and-end compilation out this week (although yeah, that happened).



No, the reason Pavement warrants, deserves, needs a Dissected article is because the band was loose. They were playful. They were wuh-wuh-wuh-weeeird!

But the more I started delving into their discography, the more nuance and — dare I say it — seriousness I discovered. Being a longtime fan, I of course already knew those things were there, but they often get overshadowed by the yelps, noise, and forgot-my-homework-so-let-me-throw-some-shit-together album art.

So in dissecting their discography, I tried to keep the many sides of the band in mind: their puckishness, their demented lyrics, and the effective, if usually brief, moments of melancholy and emotionalism that shone through it all. In the group’s well-publicized, fairly one-sided beef with Billy Corgan, The Great Pumpkin said that no one falls in love to Pavement’s music. I beg to differ. Not only do people fall in love to their music — they party to it, dance to it, fuck to it, write to it, veg out to it, laugh to it, play with their dog to it, and just about everything else. A couple things to keep in mind:

– I covered all of the extended plays in addition to the albums. To ignore the band’s shorter works — especially the first three EPs — would be skipping over an entire era of their sound. And to only cover their five full-lengths would have made for a really short article.

– Stephen Malkmus and guitarist/occasional frontman Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs) will never be completely straightforward lyricists. The beauty of their transformative vocabularies is that they sing with enough alternating urgency and casualness that the words end up sounding like normal conversation. So while there’s no way to say for sure what most of their songs are about, it’s fun to try. Whenever I offer a theory of what a song is about, it’s just that — a theory (unless otherwise noted).

– In my opinion, Pavement has a near-perfect discography. It’s not without its flaws (especially with their slapdash final EPs), but it seemed pointless to officially rank their work, as the glowing praise would have gotten boring.

Speaking of boring, enough from my critical ass. We’ve got one of the best bands in the world to talk about. So pour yourself a glass of extra dry Lancers, settle into your serpentine pad, and let’s begin (unless you’re too old to do so).

–Dan Caffrey

Senior Staff Writer