walking upstream…
Pavement
photo: niwi6 · cc by-sa 3.0 ↗Pavement
Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg built Pavement out of a Stockton, California, garage and a deliberate indifference to polish, turning tape hiss, detuned guitars, and non-sequitur lyrics into the sound that defined American indie rock's slacker decade. Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain made a virtue of looseness, prizing crooked hooks over careerism, and the band's mix of irony and unresolved yearning still runs through underground guitar music.
the sound in question
1994
Gold SoundzPavement
walk the tributaries ↓
The Fall1980s · post-punk / art punk
Malkmus has directly credited Mark E. Smith's ranting, semi-spoken vocal delivery and structural looseness, saying outright that a chunk of Slanted & Enchanted "messes with his way of doing stuff" — critics have specifically compared Pavement's 'Conduit for Sale!' to The Fall's 'New Face in Hell.'
listen: upstream & heresource: Far Out Magazine — the Pavement songs inspired by The Fall ↗
1980
New Face In HellThe Fall
1992
Conduit For Sale!Pavement
listen forA yelped, off-the-cuff vocal cadence that barely resolves into melody, riding a lurching, almost-collapsing band groove — straight out of The Fall's playbook.
R.E.M.1980s · Alternative rock / Jangle pop
Pavement's affection for R.E.M.'s Reckoning ran deep enough that they recorded a song, "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence," as a direct tribute to it for an AIDS-benefit compilation, and critics have heard the same echo elsewhere on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.
listen: upstream & here
1984
Pretty PersuasionR.E.M.
1992
Unseen Power of the Picket FencePavement
listen forA jangly, major-key guitar figure and plainspoken vocal melody — brighter and more straightforwardly pretty than Pavement's usual scrawl.
Sonic Youth1980s–1990s · Noise rock / Alternative rock / No wave
Years spent touring alongside Sonic Youth left Pavement with a taste for detuned, dissonant guitar interplay and noise-as-texture — Malkmus has credited the band's DIY ethic directly.
listen: upstream & heresource: The A.V. Club — Pavement on what they learned from Sonic Youth, R.E.M. and Echo & the Bunnymen ↗
1988
Teen Age RiotSonic Youth
1992
In The Mouth A DesertPavement
listen forGuitars that clash and ring slightly out of tune against each other rather than locking into a clean riff — controlled dissonance standing in for a solo.