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PAVEMENT ARE THE ULTIMATE ROCK RORSCHACH TEST. To one set of observers, they are demigods of the 90s American underground; the most durable and casually brilliant act to rise from a generation that wasn’t short on bands who married guitar scree to honeyed melody. To another, they’re a speck. The band began in California circa 1989, originally just a pair: singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Stephen Malkmus flanked by co-writer and guitarist Scott Kannberg. Soon a fully expanded unit, Pavement’s first two albums, Slanted and Enchanted (1992) and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994), became standards, codifying where the sound of the genre was travelling in the decade ahead: louche, fuzzy, wry, bittersweet, a little bit jazzy, a little bit peppy, cloaked in obfuscation yet somehow clear of intent. Malkmus had a gift for matching tone and conviction to whatever cryptic swish of the pen he had taken in to the booth on the day of recording, and the band dovetailed beautifully.

nd yet, much of Pavement’s arc is caveated with the coulds, woulds and shoulds. As received history goes, when the major leagues came