DOWNLOAD: Pavement

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 17, 2010 5:40PM

At first the notion of a Pavement "best of" album made no sense to us, but then we realized not everyone owns every single thing the band put out like we do. in Pavement's ten years as a working band it's fair to say they birthed the final wave of the truly independent movement in music and it's hard to understate their influence on the generation that followed.

Personal aside: I honestly didn't "get" why everyone was stoked about the Pavement reunion, but that's because I'm a spoiled brat that got to see the band throughout its entire career. My favorite memories of the band are rooted in their Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain touring hey day, and my final memories is of a bunch of guys who didn't really seem to want to be around each other during the Terror Twilight tour. But most people that have grown to love the band never saw them in any of those incarnations. It's like when I saw The Police during the first leg of their reunion tour: Yeah, the band I saw was no longer the band that influenced me so much as a kid but SO WHAT? It was THE POLICE?

O.K., Pavement doesn't totally fit that example. I mean, Stephen Malkmus' solo work has only gotten stronger in the last ten years since Pavement parted ways, and Scott Kannberg's albums can be uneven but are still rather good over all, so the prospect of Pavement creating new material or at least rekindling that spark onstage I fell in love with way back when is actually pretty strong.

So that's how I went from being a fan skeptical of a reunion to an enthusiastic supporter. It's why I'm excited that Quarantine The Past: The Best Of Pavement may provide an entryway for a whole new generation of fans to discover Pavement and subsequently dig deeper into their catalog. And it's why I can't wait until the hit the stage in Union Park this summer at the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Never heard Pavement before? Download "Gold Soundz" and let's get you started.

MP3: Pavement "Gold Soundz"