It’s not easy to describe the pleasures of art-rock heroes Pavement, so with a laid-back, unfussed attitude that the band would probably appreciate, Australian megafan Steve Bell doesn’t really try. “The beauty of music,” Bell says, sighing. “You can’t really articulate it sometimes.”
Sure, you could point to the nonsensical, defiantly cheeky lyrics of bandleader Stephen Malkmus, a gangly guitar god who appears onstage seemingly composed entirely out of knees, elbows, and slacker indifference. Or the rich, strange pleasures of their hit singles, songs like Cut Your Hair and Gold Soundz, which seemed at once part of the grunge revolution and as though they were regarding the whole movement with one raised eyebrow. Or, their endless reinventions, which saw the band morph from the hard edges of their second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, to the splatter-punk mess of Wowee Zowee.
But as Bell knows, listing these merits wouldn’t really get you closer to Pavement. He’s followed the band across the world over the last few decades; bought the records; even named both his record label, Coolin’ By Sound, and his beloved border collie, Zowie, in homage.
The band are currently touring Australia for the first time in 12 years – a break between gigs that has become the agonising norm for local music fans. Lovers of more obscure American rock have learned that even if a band reforms – as Pavement have, twice – a stop down here is never guaranteed. The longing, in this instance, applies both to those who have been fans since Pavement’s inception, and to the younger devotees who joined the bandwagon only recently, after the group became a surprise TikTok success with their B-side Harness Your Hopes.
Bell – who travelled from Brisbane, to Hobart, to Sydney to see the band on this Australian tour – came to Pavement before the ubiquity of the internet, so his “mini-obsession” with them was decidedly analogue. He got his housemates into the group by blasting their records at all hours of the day, and he scoured record shops for whatever he could get on them.
“There was a bit more mystique about bands back then,” Bell says. “You could only get information in dribs and drabs. I’m a bit of a luddite, so I miss those days when you had to find your music, and dig. I know it’s swings and roundabouts – it’s great to have everything at your fingertips. But I think you don’t appreciate it so much when it’s all just there.”
Bell was lucky that his love for the band coincided with an explosion in American acts touring this country. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Australia established itself as a surprising home away from home for the experimental rock acts of the US. That was due in part to the international connections forged between bands like The Lemonheads and Australia’s Smudge, and the hard work of touring agents who were able to sell US superstars the promise of a financially successful and sold-out tour around the country.
Nowadays, touring’s not the same. Music’s not the same either. Tours are an economic necessity, after streaming dislodged record sales as a primary way for musicians to make money. But they’re loss leaders, a way to move merch and garner attention, and for most American bands, a long trip away from home has to be a sometimes food, rather than the staple that it once was.
Guardian contributor Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is another megafan; she got into the group after reading a piece of fan fiction on LiveJournal, and connected with a group of other fans at uni over Facebook messenger. “They played at Golden Plains, and I saw them at the Enmore twice,” Nguyen says of their 2010 comeback shows. “It was a long time ago, but it was really exciting.”
On the second Enmore show, she came away with one of their setlists, a memento to hold on to between long Pavement droughts. There were times, after all, when it seemed like the band might go quiet for good. “They’re not one of those bands that have reformed and then put out another album,” Nguyen says. “And I doubt they’re going to.”
That sense of precarity added to the atmosphere at the band’s Sydney show on Thursday night: one of the last stops on their Australian tour. Who knew when Australian fans would ever see them again? Who knew if they’d go silent? The setlist, which swooped between obscurer tracks to the hits, was freeform and messy, as Pavement always are. But as each song finished, and the two-hour show moved towards its end, there was a strange poignancy to the proceedings.
The band themselves seemed to acknowledge this. They left the stage before playing some of their most defining classics, and the audience howled. When they returned to rapturous applause, the band’s guitarist, Spiral Stairs, took to the mic with one of the night’s few asides to the audience.
“You’ve had a hard time between these shows,” he said. “Covid, all that.”
Malkmus, who had barely spoken, dressed in a crisp blue shirt, guitar between his knees, poked fun from the sidelines. “Spiral Stairs for president,” he said.
“We didn’t play this one last time we were here,” Spiral Stairs continued. “Aren’t you glad we let it grow?”
Then, while the audience cheered, the band launched into Cut Your Hair, the song that spawned a thousand Pavement obsessions, both here and overseas. A group of middle-aged men to the left of the stage embraced.
And even then, there was a little melancholy to it all. The Pavement song Here, which the band had played earlier, sums it up. “We’ll be waiting,” Malkmus drawls. “Waiting where / Everything’s ending here.”
Pavement’s Australian tour continues at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne on Friday night, before the band headlines Tent Pole festival in Geelong on Saturday
