Ryan and Nicole Try to Explain Pavements (2025), the Pavements Soundtrack, & Their Pavement Fandom

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:24) Who is Alex Ross Perry? What is Pavements?
(00:12:46) Slanted! Enchanted!
(00:18:24) Catchy Songs, Distant Lyrics
(00:21:24) Range life
(00:27:03) Wants For the Pavements DVD/BluRay Bonus Features
(00:30:52) The Pavements Soundtrack
(00:32:51) What We Wanted to See More Of
(00:37:43) Pavement Needle Drops Not Covered in Pavements
(00:42:57) The Harness Your Hopes Phenomenon
(00:47:44) Blurring the Lines Between Reality and Fiction
(00:51:04) What's Missing From the Film and Questions Not Answered
(01:01:03) Farewells

Nicole Barlow and Ryan Pak talk about the just released 2025 Alex Ross Perry Film, Pavements and the Pavements Soundtrack. It's not a documentary, it's not a biopic, what is it? Nicole and Ryan try to get to the bottom of it and talk about the songs for the soon to be released soundtrack (it wasn't out when they recorded but it is out now). They dicuss Slanted! Enchanted!, Range Life, and all the different components of this very unique film.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Ryan pat and I'm Nicole Barlow, and
this is Soundtrack Your Life. And today we are going
to deviate from our normal format a little bit and
we're going to talk about the twenty twenty five Alex
Ross Perry film Pavements. So instead of asking a guests
why we're talking about Pavements, I guess I'll just say

(00:37):
Pavement is my favorite band and the fact that this
movie exists is kind of ridiculous, and I jumped at
the opportunity to get a screener of it so we
could talk about it.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, we're very fortunate to get this screener of something that,
you know, not a lot of people have gotten to
watch yet outside of festivals. And like Ryan said, he
is our resident Pavement skull, and I think it's fair
to say that you take that task very seriously. How
many times have you seen Pavement and or Stephen Malkmus live.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
I think like eight times, which is probably not a
lot for well, I would say for when I grew up,
it was very hard for me to watch Pavement because
I think they played a lot of like twenty one
and up shows, and I was not twenty one at
the time when Pavement started.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, you're also not very old, so Pavement was not
a band really during your formative concert going years. But
you did see them what twice back to back during
the twenty twenty two reunion shows.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah. So I first saw them in ninety seven because
they finally played an all ages show. Had to leave
the show early because I was a teen and I
had like school the next day. Saw them on the
twenty ten and tour and then the twenty twenty ten
So I've kind of seen them like in active band
and then reunion band. I mean, it's the same people,

(02:08):
but I've seen them as like an active unit and
kind of on this reunion tour. Kick. We saw them
together in twenty twenty two, Yes, we did, and that
that is relevant because the film kind of takes place
there's a story of the band sort of angle and
then it kind of leads up to their first show

(02:28):
on the twenty twenty two reunion. That's kind of the
timeline of the movie. Of the timeline is kind of
there's kind of alternate timelines as well.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
The narrative is loose and the movie is experimental. So
I think the first thing that we should say to
people who have not seen it, And obviously these are
spoilers for the movie Pavement, so don't come for us.
That's what this show is about, is to talk about
the film. It is very experimental and there is there
are multiple sort of fake stories going on within a
real story, and it kind of exists in this another

(02:59):
space between irony and sincerity, which is not dissimilar to
Pavements music I find, but tonally and in terms of
what it tries to achieve or what the director tries
to achieve, it's very ambitious. There's a lot going on.
So the narrative of them preparing for their reunion shows
is it's very loose. It's kind of the only through
line from start to finish, but a lot is happening

(03:22):
in between.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, and it's very clear that Alex ross Perry is
a huge Pavement fan. You can tell that there's a
lot of care taken. There's a lot of deep cuts
throughout the movie music wise. But before we jump really
deeply into the movie, I just wanted to bring up
some Pavement connections we've had with guests in our past episodes.

(03:45):
So Daniel Ephram, who is the curator of this Steve
Keen Art book. He's also the Apples and Stereo manager.
He's been on a couple of our episodes, Gross point
Blank and the Elephant six Recording Company documentary. He's actually
thanked in the special thanks in the end credits. I
tried to ask him what he did, and in a

(04:07):
very Pavement to the answer, he said, I just helped
a little.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
It's also a very Daniel answer. I feel it's very.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Very humble, but also like a little obtuse, and I
don't know if that was like intentional or not, but
you know, we love to see Daniel's name in the credits.
We know he's a huge Pavement fan, and obviously the
Steve Keen art connection, I assume he probably helped out
with the museum stuff. So awesome to see our friend

(04:39):
of the podcast, Daniel in the credits and in early
episode I think is our tenth or eleventh episode. We
did an episode on Xanadu with Tracy Lane and so
she runs a festival out in Missouri. I was connected
with her through a friend, so it was like my
first time like interviewing someone like I didn't really know,
which was a little bit nerve wracking. But she was

(05:00):
super cool, And my friend connected me with Tracy because
once you would be a great guest, and also because
my friend hates Pavement but knows that I love Pavement,
and Tracy has a really cool Pavement story. So her
ex husband was a Pavement's tour manager in the mid

(05:20):
to late nineties, and so after their wedding, he basically
had to like immediately go on tour with the band,
and so at their wedding, from in front of the
tour bus or tour van or whatever, they sang Tracy
Lane a capella to her and then they jumped in

(05:41):
the van and hit the road.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
I mean that should have made pavements the film, because
it's a great story.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, I was a little jealous, but also she said
ex husband, so I didn't want to like the well
on that too much.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
I mean, it didn't help the marriage apparently.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
But no, that's okay. And then obviously with our music
composer for our show, Phil he uh wanted to talk
about brain Candy, which Mattador records to the soundtrack. Pavement
has a song painted Soldiers on that, so you know,
it was just an excuse for us to talk about
Pavement and kids in the Hall. So those are kind

(06:19):
of how we've talked about Pavement in the past, but
today we're just gonna directly talk about Pavement for the
entire episode.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Even if Payment doesn't want to directly talk about themselves,
we are in directly talk about Payment.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yes. So, what I thought was really funny when I
was going through the press materials that we got with
the screener, they listed alex Ross Perry as you know, oh,
I directed her smell and I directed you know, the
Harness your Hopes video blah blah blah blah blah. And
then it said and I also wrote the screenplay for
Christopher Robin, And I thought that was a joke.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
No, it's it's real, but it's.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
I thought it was like one of those meta jokes
like the movie. And I was like, wait, did he
really read the Christopher Roubbin movie for Disney and he
is one of the screenwriters.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Hey, the artists got to make money too.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Heany, Nope, I have no problem with it. It just
seemed like like it was just like him being a
like make like a Malcelmis sort of joke.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
You know, you know, you're right. And I think one
thing about this film is that it does kind of
make you question what's real versus what isn't. I think,
almost to a frustrating degree, if you knew nothing about
pavement going into this, you would assume that a lot
of the things that they feature in this film are
either real fox or real artifacts. Do you think that's
fair to say?

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah? I even questioned some of some of the things
in the artifacts in the museum, Like some of them
were like obviously okay, like you don't really have a
toenail from Gary Young.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
You don't really have Gary H's toenail. You don't really
have which is it's such a funny way to refer
to him, Like it's so oblique and so pavement. You
don't really have, like you know, an apple with pavement
in it, you don't really have it. A macban Fitch.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
App right, absolute vodka.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Absolute vodka. So there is there's definitely like you have
to question are they being silly or are they being
over the what is this exactly? If you know and
come in completely cool, which thankfully I don't. Well, I'm
not a pavement scholar. I certainly don't you know, know
them to the degree that you do. I know enough
to know that like that was all bullshit, but in

(08:26):
kind of like a brilliant way. It was like brilliant bullshit, right,
I could really enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, So the backstory on the movie is that Matador
hired Alex Ross Perry to do some sort of you know,
Pavement documentary with this twenty twenty two tour coming up,
and he went to Stephen Malcolmus, who said, I don't
want a documentarian, I want a screenwriter who's not going
to write a screenplay. So basically Alex Ross Perry manifested

(08:56):
what he thought malcolmust wanted like there was no follow
up question, and Malcolmus, I think also said like he
didn't want like one of those legacy things like they
do for like classic rock bands.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Right, so you know what Bohemian Rhapsody, which right, sure
it's not that kind of band.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Which makes sense. So Perry kind of went extra hard
on the legacy and manifested this world where Pavement is
the most important band because it's the most important band
to him, and so he gave Pavement the important band
treatment by creating a jukebox musical called Slanted Enchanted. He

(09:40):
created a Pavement museum, and he made a fake biopic
called Range Life, and all of these things run kind
of concurrently with, you know, just the story of the
band through like archival footage and talking.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Heads, right, And I think it's important to say that
these things exis as physical experiences in the world, at
least other than Range Life, the sort of fake biopic
slash mockumentary moments that happened in the film, the you know,
the thing that happened to the way and it was real,
all the performances from you know, people like snail Mail,
that that's all real. It was a real experience. What

(10:18):
happened was slanted and enchanted was real, that was actually
like performed for people. And these things became content for
the eventual Pavements film. So this was all It all
had to be orchestrated right, way in advance and in
a way that you wouldn't normally make a film. And
I think there are some pieces of the of the

(10:40):
press material right that are like, we didn't really set
out to make a film. It's a film, but it
isn't right.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
And you have the band reacting to these newly created experiences.
You have Joe Keury meeting Steve Malcolmus, Joe Carey playing
Stephen Malcolmus meeting Stephen Malkmus. You have behind the scene
of joke Herey trying to become Stephen Malkmus. So there's
a lot of like layers. It's like an inception sort

(11:08):
of documentary film about.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Pavement, absolutely, and I think you could compare it aspects
of it to other things, you know, like even Weird
the Weird Al documentary movie, which is totally different tone.
It's sort of the same gimmick of we're going to
refuse to mythologize weird Al and instead we're gonna, you know,

(11:32):
cast Daniel Radcliffe is weird Al and make it all,
you know, really ridiculous with all of these fake stories
and facts, and that's kind of our way of confronting
whatever our legacy means. This does kind of some similar things,
but it is so ambitious and it does all of
them at one time, right like that, this is all

(11:52):
again happening concurrently. So you are when you're watching Pavements,
you're moving in and out of the way they're curating
this experience. Whitney, you're moving in and out of The
rehearsals for Slanted Enchanted, which take on this very kind
of Nathan Fielder tone, like you don't really know.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
I feel like all these experiences have a very Nathan
Fielder tone.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Very Nathan Fielder. It's very like the rehearsal, it's very
you don't really know actually, or I didn't for a while,
and like, is it are people in on it that
are performing this musical or di it? Like because they
they're very serious right about their job and that you know,
you see them talking about like how atonal some of
the songs are and how they translate you know, the
song to the stage and do these arrangements and they're

(12:35):
struggling with the arrangements and the dance and you're just
kind of like, wow, this is they're really taking this seriously.
I meanwhile, like members of the band, who's kind of
like bemused watching this.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, let's start with Slanted Enchanted because there's some really
fun facts about the casting of Slanted Enchanted. So there's
three leads, one, I guess the main lead. His name
is Michael Asper, and so he has like a legitimate
Broadway career, like he was an American Idiot, the original

(13:07):
cast of American Idiot. He was also Lazarus and the
David Bowie Black Star sort of musical that they worked
on right before David Bowie passed, So you know, like
he's not like just some like random guy who like
did musical theater for like a semester in.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Call, right, it's serious, like it's they're making real theater.
So just just to clarify, like there are aspects of
it that are definitely mocking, but that then the musical
is not one of those things. It is real.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
And then Catherine Gallagher, who is one of the other leads.
She I think was nominated for like a Tony for
the Jaggy Little Pill musical.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
I think that's also important to point out that they
both come from jukebox musicals, right. The third lead is
Zoe Lister Jones. She's been on a lot of TV stuff.
He also writes and direct stuff that I'm not familiar with,
but she's probably best known for being on like New
Girl and Life and Pieces and the Whitney Cummings sitcom.

(14:10):
And she's just a big Pavement fan who I think
knew Alex Ross Perry and when she found out that
he was working on this was like I want in,
but you know, like these are like real people who
are really trying to make this musical work.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
It seems genuinely they're genuinely trying to crack this jukebox
musical and they are genuinely very talented at what they do,
so it is not really a joke in that way.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, So there's a narrative where Michael Esper is a
character named Essam and he has he's basically caught between
two worlds. There's Anne who is a Zoe Lister Jones
and that is a reference to and Don't Cry from
Terror Twilight. And then you have Cat Gallagher as Loretta,

(15:01):
who is from Loretta Scars from slanting and Enchanted, which
sounds like a terrible idea, but that's kind of what
they went with. We don't really know what the plot
is outside of that, but you know, they use pavement
songs in jukebox musical form. There's dancing. There's dancing Santa's

(15:22):
for sure, which I assume is from Adult Towns videos.
I did find out that the choreographer is not like
a big time Broadway choreographer, but like someone who does
some choreography but is also a comedian, So I think
she not that she's not qualified, but she doesn't have

(15:42):
the credentials that the that the talent has for sure.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Tim Highdecker also pops up in this film, who I'm
sure is also a pavement band and wanted in on
you know this spectacle. But there are a lot of
things in it that get it kind of this, like
dott I as you know, feel like they're just going
for some kind of weird performance art. It's almost like
somewhere between a real jubox musical and like a piece

(16:10):
of performance art. And if you were lucky enough to
see it, I actually would love to know more about it,
because the only complaint that I have about this portion
of the film is that you actually don't get to
see much of it performed. You get to see clips
of it, and that, you know, the style of the
edit cuts pretty quickly between archival footage and you know,
footage from these content experiences, and you don't get to

(16:32):
see it all. Right. There's no cast recording, right and
I were saying how we would love to have a
cast recording of the Slanted Enchants with musical.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Well, we will get some of it on the soundtrack.
If you look at the track listing, there are songs
from the Juwbox musical, But I don't think it's in
a specific order where you get to like really get
a feel for the narrative. But it's real. It was
really captivating to watch the for the musical. So you
have a lot of actors and actresses who, you know,

(17:05):
I assume, do musical theater for for a living, and
they're trying to sing Pavement the best they can, but
not as not as Joe Kierrie would, as Stephen Milk is,
but as a musical theater performer, right in the style
of Yeah, in the style of Pavement. So you have
people sing gold sounds, you know, as beautifully as they can,

(17:28):
as on key as possible.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah. I mean it's because there's something about musical theater
that I think is a nice juxtaposition to Pavement songs,
because musical theater is inherently it's very vulnerable, it's very earnest.
If you're in musical theater, you know that you have
to really mean that shit, whereas I think Pavement gets,
you know, branded as this band of irony, and so

(17:51):
the juxtaposition of the irony versus this really people are
digging deep, right to try to like find the right
way way to perform these songs was kind of great
for me. And then also I think just revealing some
of the great, like truly hook Leyden songs that they
have is I mean, they just have some great hooks.

(18:13):
Some of them I think are fundamentally really great pop songs,
and you can't always hear that, you know, against the
production or you know, the original source material of the
way Pavement plays.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, I think I don't know if it was Steve Hayden,
but there I remember some music critic that I really
like was like, you know, like Pavement is a pop
rock band, like Stephen Malcolmus is a great pop songwriter,
but people, you know, talk about them in different ways.
You know, Oh, they're slackers who like he had a

(18:46):
great ear for melody. Yeah, and that's kind of you know,
as an Asida, that's kind of I think the difference
between his stuff with the Jicks and with Pavement.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
M yep, all the stuff really brings that for that
part of his skill set. I also think it's something
that sets them apart from some of their contemporaries, which
don't get talked about a lot in the film, but
you do have people like Kim Gordon that show up
on camera, you know, And to me, I think that's
what's always set them apart from a band like Sonic

(19:17):
Youth is that they're not strictly noise. You know. There
are things that they were able to capture and do
that that really nobody else was doing. There was a
sound that they could make that nobody else was bringing.
And I think that's always been the case and why
people tend to love them. It's certainly why I love
them despite I think this movie and them could they
kind of keep you at arm's length, right. They're not

(19:39):
a big, hard on their sleeve type of band, but
they're a wonderful band.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
They're a fascinating band, yeah, And I think that's captured
throughout the film. You know that there's this kind of
weird distance. One of my other favorite bands of their Spado,
which was completely hard on the sleeve. Like Malcolm, there's
these walls that he has put up and he's able

(20:04):
to kind of connect with you despite that the fact
that you like almost know nothing about.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Him, right and you don't, and it's you know, it's intentional.
And if you go into this film quite frankly thinking
I'm going to know more about Steve and Alchmis, you
will not. You will know less when you come out
of this. Potentially you will know less or you will
be more confused or more in a state of confusion
about like what's real about his mythology and what is it?

(20:30):
And that's completely intentional, but you may come away thinking like,
those are some really dope tracks.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
So Steve Hayden wrote a article on his fifty favorite
Pavement songs to celebrate pavements and for the song Stop
and Breathing, it perfectly encapsulates the pavement experience. He said,
the song is about fathers in Tennis, but knowing that

(21:00):
it's Malcolmus, the song is the only true part of
the song is probably about Tennis. It's probably not really about.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
His father, right. That's such a good point.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
And so because there's these walls of a lack of
like biographical information, I think that's kind of where Range
Life kind of comes in. Yes, and Range Life is
I think a lot less sincere than the musical. It's
definitely everyone kind of in on the joke of what

(21:32):
Alex Ross Perry is trying to do. Perfectly encapsulated by
one of the last scenes where they show the infamous
La la plus incident where they get pelted by mud,
and in the Range Life biopic, you know, they have
this big fight about you know, you don't care and
you say it doesn't matter. The spiral is yelling at

(21:54):
Stephen Malcolmus in this in this very dramatic scene after
getting nailed with mud, and then they cut to like
what I actually happened backstage and they're just like laughing
it off.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Right right, So it's kind of the deflation of that.
You know, arguably like the biggest piece of like pavement
mythology from the nineties is that lollapoloose a moment and
it's like, no, actually, maybe it wasn't as big a
deal as you thought. But at the same time, I
think something that the biopic does do is give you

(22:27):
a better idea of what it might be like to
be in a band with someone like Stephen Malkmus. There
is like sort of a there's sort of something there
where when you see Joe Kirey start to inhabit him,
even even though you can tell he's its tongue in
cheek and he's only taking it half seriously, he is
still getting legitimate leads and advice on how to be

(22:48):
him in his twenties and in the nineties, and you know,
he seems frankly like kind of a pain in the
ass to be in a band with, you know, very obtuse,
very shy, very much not wanting to be on you know,
MTV's one hundred and twenty minutes, like not somebody that
ever wanted to be a star in that way.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Fucking around on the Tonight Show.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Fuck them, and around the Tonight Show I read somebody
saying that they were like analyzing and Stephen Malkmas shaking
Jalno's hand on Tonight Show like it was the Zapruder film.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Oh yeah, I was like, Oh, how's this gonna go?
Exactly range life? I think is it's like entertaining. I'm
glad that it's used sparingly. I like how it kind
of like pans out at the end and he's like, Oh,

(23:39):
I'm just gonna stay back, guys, and then he just
immediately like starts playing stereo.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Right. There are elements of it. There are elements of
it that I actually found really funny and entertaining, and
even just the like you said about the casting moments
that they show you for the musical, it's the same
thing for the biopic, where they kind of show you
these little casting moments where they're getting people together that
you know, look like members of the band. This actor
Fred Hetchinger, who he probably recognize from White Lotus Season one,

(24:07):
he's the teen boy in that particular season of White
Lotus as Bob Nastanovich, is really funny to me.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
And then he's like on a zoom call with Bob.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah, it's very funny to me because they all do
they actually do kind of resemble them pretty strongly, and
it's pretty funny. But there's also you know, there's something
happening here where like the actors are doing that like
send up of actors thing where they're faking taking it
really seriously. I think like the best example in the
film is Joe Keerrey saying to his vocal coach, like,

(24:42):
I think I'm gonna need a picture of Stephen Malkmus's tongue.
I think we can get that. I think we can
get a picture of his tongue. And it comes back
later like this picture of his you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Well, oh he was about to go play tennis, but
this so you know, we didn't have a lot of time,
but he laid it flat totally.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
And I think again, like I think it's some I
think it's interesting. I think it went on a little
bit long. For me, it's sort of like a gag
that sticks around too long. And I think we've also
kind of seen, you know, through things like pop Star
and you know, Walk Hard or you know, we've seen
some of these things I think be played out before.
So to me, it's kind of the weakest link in
the movie. There are other things that feel a little

(25:18):
more interesting or a little more I don't know, like
they're a little more new, but it's very big meant.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Also, I do love the drummer. I think the drummer,
I forget which it was. G Griffin Newman, I think
is the drummer. Yeah, And he says, I'm not going
to have enough time to learn drums. I've got other
things going on, so I'm going to have to just
inhabit the soul, figure out the town to inhabit the
soul of a drummer.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Right. That part was really funny.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
It does go a little long, but I think it's
meant to go on a little long.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
I think so too. I think it's like meant to
be that joke that just overstays. And I think you
can also tell that it's maybe the part of it that,
if I had to speculate, it's the part of it
that mouthmus is probably the most into or the most product,
because it really does fuck with that sense of like
real not real, and it's a total middle finger to
any kind of traditional piopic.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, I mean you can tell like how heavy handed,
like some of the uh, the dramatic moments are like
what the fuck is this? It's an LP with only
three sides totally.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Jason Sworson is there like hamming it up as their manager,
like it's not great elements. And you know, again, maybe
maybe for me, if it had swapped between just that
and like the archival footage of the band, maybe there's
something symmetrically that would have worked better for me personally.
But it felt like a lot to have all of
that going on to you. It's like a clown card ideas,

(26:54):
And you might love that, and you might also find
that like really exhausting. It's two hours and eight minutes long,
so it's a really it's long. They give you a lot.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
I think I loved it, but I think I wanted
it to be like twenty minutes shorter.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
I think I wanted it to be twenty minutes shorter
or even like a half an hour shorter. And then
I went in companion pieces. I wanted to see like
more of the things that they actually went and made
that they don't show you in full or even really
like in you know, an extended.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well. That brings me to my next question, Nicole. So,
I mean, obviously this movie is still getting ruled out
to theaters, but I'm sure most Pavement fans are also like,
when is this going to come out on some sort
of physical media for me where I can watch it
as many times as I want or at whatever order
I want to What you think or what would you

(27:48):
like them to put on this Pavement DVD Blu ray
for bonus features?

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Ooh, I mean it's so rich for bonus features, right.
I would love like a virtual tour of every weird,
fake and not fake thing that's in the museum collection.
I would love I would love like a full recording
of this Slanted Enchanted musical. I think that would be
wonderful because I imagine never going to get performed again,

(28:19):
so it'd be great to have that. I think it
also would be great and maybe they exist, maybe they
already exist for streaming and I didn't check, but it'd be
great to have the band performances from the Whitney thing
as well, because there were some really cool ones. They're
really great covers of Pavement songs.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah, I think I know that when it happened live.
I think there were performances that popped up for a while.
I don't know if those are still up, but it
was a really cool concept. It was basically like a
super group of like the girls from like Bully and Speedy, Ortees,

(28:57):
Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy. I would love to see
that set on some sort of you know, as a
bonus feature. I would love to see visually what Slanted
Enchanted is like, you know, I don't know if I
don't know if they have like a full film production

(29:18):
of it, but I would love to see that obviously.
I would love to see more like of the rehearsal footage,
like full songs. I would love a Pavement live album
of this twenty twenty two tour because I thought they
sounded great. But I think part of The reason that
Pavements exist kind of in this form is because Lance

(29:42):
Bangs made a documentary on them in two thousand and two. Right,
it's Slow Century, so right. I'm sure Alex ross Perry
has seen that and was like, well, I can't just
do an updated version of Slow Centry right exactly.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
And I was going to bring that up as well.
And I think that's probably the for people seeking a
more traditional entry point for pavement. If you want to
actually you know, know or learn a little bit more
about their historical context or who they are as a band,
that would probably be, you know, more of your go
to And you have to give I think Alex ross Perry,

(30:17):
the director, a lot of credit for trying as hard
as he could to take a route that nobody has
taken before. Because look like the rock documentary is a
format that's been around for a really long time. It's
been done a lot of different ways. You know, you
have your gimme shelters, and you have dig and you
have things that are they're innovative and interesting, but you

(30:38):
can't take those paths directly. So I think it is
in a way the perfect pavement documentary, if not the
perfect you know, film. It's the perfect pavement artifact.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Right, And so we are a soundtrack podcast and Matador
is putting out a sound track for it. We don't
have an advanced copy of that, but if you watch
the movie and you look at the soundtrack, like ninety
percent of the soundtrack comes from stuff that you see
in the movie.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
So o while live material as well, Like there's a
lot of a lot of live performances that are they're
not seen in full, they're kind of seen in like impressions.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, we were promised one new song on the soundtrack
is not an original song. It is a cover of
Witchy Tito, which they played on the twenty twenty two tour.
I kind of don't understand. I kind of don't know
the origin of the song, like it's been covered a lot,
but but that's a new song. People speculated that they

(31:48):
song called an intro to a Motion Picture Soundtrack was
a new song, but I guess matted or clarified to
Stereogum that it is just twenty five seconds of.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Noise, yeah, which again like totally appropriate.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, and it's got a lot of deep cuts. There's
not a lot of like, oh, here's a live version
of Shady Lane, right, which is probably also because you know,
they did a best of in twenty ten, so they
kind of wanted to avoid like just putting more of
those songs on there. I did appreciate a lot of
There's a lot of deep cuts and pavements. I think

(32:26):
Greenlanders played in like Circus seventeen sixty two, which is
like a BBC session that ever came out on any
of their albums. So it's got a lot of I mean,
obviously you're gonna hear your cut, your hairs, and your
gold sounds because it's important to the Pavement story. But
there's a lot of songs that are interspersed throughout the
film that you know, are really deep cuts, which I

(32:47):
think is what a Pavement fan would want.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
And speaking of that, it is something that I wanted
to ask you, as our resident Pavement scholar or slash
super fan, were there any moments in this film that
you either hadn't seen before, like those deep cuts or
those live moments that you hadn't seen presented in this
way or and or like things that you really wanted
to go on longer, or that you really wanted to

(33:11):
see more of.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Anything live from the twenty twenty two rehearsals or tours
I wanted to see more of because I love reliving
seeing them live on that tour. I was surprised that
they had so much of the footage from like the
early days, like with Gary Young. I don't know if
I had seen all that footage of them, like opening.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
For Sonic Youth, right, that was super cool.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
And because Pavement is a band that ended in the nineties,
I don't think I ever went back to learn exactly
like the origin of everything, Like I had an idea,
like I know when the albums came out, and I
know roughly, like okay, like the first Satan and Enchanted
is just them with Gary Young and that's Steve West

(34:02):
joined with a Crooked Ring Cricket ame. But I don't
think I understood like exactly when people joined and like
what the lineups were. I think I knew that Steve
and Bob knew each other. I didn't know that they
knew each other since they were like thirteen, right, So
it was good to get some of that stuff flushed out.
I know there's not like a ton of like stuff
about like family, but I think you see Spiral's daughter

(34:25):
like oh he's got a kid.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
And you learn that, right, Yeah, you kind of see
these brief sketches of their personal lives, these little like
fringe moments where you know, like, okay, well they've like
they've got kids to send a college stuff. Now.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
I think there's a quick cut near the end of
the film where it shows them at Primavera and you
see Malcolmus like holding his wife's hand and it's like
really weird to see.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Feels illegal.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, it's like like I know he's married and has kids,
but it's just like this kind of like physically like
see like oh yeah, like in some way he's a
normal person.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
In some way, he's a normal person and not just
like the idea or concept of a person right for sure.
And I think other members of the band again, this
is where I kind of always wonder, like the malk
miss of it all versus the pavement of it all.
You have to wonder if the other members of the
band were it's bent on doing this this way, or
if it would have wound up this way if not

(35:25):
for Malkmus saying like no, this needs to be weird
as hell. And if it's not weird as hell, I
don't want anything to do with it.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, probably not. I would assume that the only one
that would have had any sort of other opinion would
have been Spiral, because he's the only other creative force.
I feel like the other guys are just kind of
like they're they're just there to hang out and enjoy
the ride.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, and you brought up you know, we were brought
up clips And it was so great to see like
things from the Fonda, because we went to those shows
in LA and so it was nice to see them
perform Grounded at the Fonda, really cool. It was cool
to see a lot of those sort of behind the
scenes sessions. It was really cool to see a lot
of those archival clips because I don't think that they

(36:14):
get circulated very often, and some of them are probably
really hard to find, like really hard to dig up
some of those earlier pieces of footage. One of them
was that Beavis and butt Head moment or bibs in Budheader,
like giving them shit for being a terrible band. Try harder,
try harder. But it's great because, like so much of

(36:36):
the Beavis and butt heead material alone has a bunch
of you know, whatever rights issues attached to it, so
you can't watch them bust on bands and songs much
these days, so that was kind of fun. I would
have loved actually more sustained moments of all of that,
just because selfishly, like I really get into those things
and they're so hard to find about the bands that

(36:57):
you love. It would have been great to see maybe
a little bit more no more room for it.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
I always love when they refer to the Space Coast
Coast to Coast episode.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Right every time, like any kind of Space Ghost Coast
to Coast episode, and like.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I'm in but have you seen that episode?

Speaker 2 (37:13):
I have. It's been a really long time.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
Though it is the best episode ever.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
But again, like I think maybe it made as a fan,
it makes you want to go back and be like, Okay,
I'm gonna have to like watch that whole thing, right,
I'm gonna have to see.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
That, because the whole premise is that Space Cohast is like,
oh I wrote today's episode, and Zorak and mult are like,
oh shit, and then he's like get me the Beatles,
and he's like the Beatles are dead. Get me the Beatles.
You just they just get him Pavement. So speaking of

(37:45):
like these little pop culture things like Beavis and butt
Head and space Ghosts. I wanted to bring up some
needle drops that I remember of Pavement that are not
in the film. And uh, I don't know if you're
familiar with any of these, or maybe maybe it'll ring
a bell, but I remember hearing cut your Hair in

(38:06):
a very Brady sequel.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yes I don't, but I believe you. It's probably their
most commercial sounding song arguably.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, And it was like the most on the nose
use of it, like.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Somebody who was actually getting their haircut, like Marsi's getting
your haircut or what the mom oh in the weird
Carol Brady cut.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, so Carol's getting her haircut.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
But you can't see anything else? Is that the scene?
I deah that scene?

Speaker 1 (38:35):
So that that was like the first like Pavement needle
drop outside of like brain Candy. I was like, Oh,
they're using Pavement in.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
A movie.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
And a Brady Bunch movie, which I guess kind of
makes sense because it's like this very meta satire or
the Brady Bunch. Right. So the second one is from
a cartoon called Mission Hill. Do you remember Mission I.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Not remember Mission Hill. That rings zls for me.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
So it was one of those like WB like adult
cartoons that they were trying to push when they started
that network, or is it the c W. That's the
W became the.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
C W right or something. Yeah, let's just call it
the c W. That's how I remember it.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
So, you know, I think for a while they were
trying to like figure out like, oh, let's let's make
a primetime cartoon for adults, kind of like our Family
Guy or our Simpsons, our King of the Hill. So
they got a Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein who worked
on The Simpsons during the you know, the golden era
of the Simpsons, and they made this cartoon called Mission Hill,

(39:42):
which is about like this cartoonist Andy and I guess
his little brother from high school like has to move
in with him. And it ended up going to like
Adult Swim, like lasted a season, went to Adult Swim.
And I think that's when I started watching it was
I was in college, so like you have endless time

(40:04):
to watch things that, oh yeah, I heard about that once.
Let's just watch it for sure, And so I would
watch it with my roommates in college and they would
be like, what is this? And I think my roommate
was like, it's amusing, but like the show's not funny,

(40:27):
and it was like in this weird gray area, like
cartoons are always supposed to be funny, like even if
it's a Pixar movie, even if it's an anime, like
it should be funny at some point, but it's like
a show that never made you laugh. And the last
episode I think of the season, and I don't think
they had any idea that they were probably gonna get canceled,

(40:50):
as I think the little brother has prom and his
older brothers like forced a chaperone, and like the music
being played at the prom that's just kind of playing
throughout the prom is like the guitar part from like
Major Leagues, you know, which is like kind of like
this melancholy, like very pretty song. But I was like,
oh shit, it's spring on the Major Leagues. It's Pavement.

(41:14):
And then probably the most famous use of Pavement was
in How I Met Your Mother, So they don't use
the actual Pavement song, but they used two different covers
a spit on a stranger and I believe it's to
kind of bookend a relationship. So for the event, diagram
of people who are of How I Met your Mother

(41:35):
in Pavement fans, if you want to learn some how
I Met your Mother law. So there's a character introduced
in the first couple seasons named to Victoria. She is
a baker. I think if you watch the show from
the beginning, you kind of are sad when Ted breaks
up with her, and so I think when he first

(41:57):
meets her that you get the Nickel Creek Spit on
a Stranger when they break up. There's a Catherine Williams
cover of Spin on Stranger, which is like less way
more sad. And so apparently Victoria was supposed to be
like the mother character if kW I Met your Mother
was gonna get canceled after like two or three seasons.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Interesting, so that was kind of gonna be their song
in a different universe for the show.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, so if they was gonna get cut short, there's
gonna be Victoria as the mother and you know, so
it ended up being Christina Melody. But anyways, so it
was interesting to hear those two versions of Spit on
a Stranger. I know a lot of people who like
Nickel Creek and have no idea that Spin on a
Stranger as a cover.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, I mean that happens a lot, right with songs
like that, and Pavement's one of those bands where because
I think they are relatively low key, it's easy to
skip you know, a generation I think with their music.
This is maybe a good segue into what happened with
Harness Your Hopes. Harness Your Hopes is a song that apparently,

(43:06):
by some algorithmic quirk on Spotify, it gets served to
a lot of people that like a lot of different
genres of music and for whatever reason, has like hundreds
of millions of listens and kind of viral theme on TikTok,
which if you had to pick a Pavement song to
get that kind of fame, like Harness your Hopes. It's great.

(43:29):
I love Harness Your Hopes. But it's crazy, right, It's crazy.
And they mentioned it in Pavements the film. Actually it
comes up briefly and you see some like TikTok clips
of people using it.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, so it's it's a weird story. I think Stereo
Gum did like a story on a deep dive, a
deep dive on kind of why that happened, Like why
is this Pavement B side, Like why does it have
like hundreds of millions more streams than any other Pavement song,
and like it's it's been like a fan favorite for
a long time. There's a BBC session of it from

(44:06):
like ninety nine or something like that that that the
that the hardcore fans love, and so you know, we
were happy when they re recorded it for it ended
up on the Spin on the Stranger EP. And I
remember like in twenty ten when they were united, like
someone like behind me, like ye'd like play Harness your Hopes.

(44:30):
But it wasn't like you know, like when we saw
them in twenty twenty two, like people who were like
sitting in the belk and you like stood up for
Harness your Hopes.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, it was like a huge moment.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
And so like that is weird to me, like the
fact that like people like it, Like that's not a
surprise to me.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Right, it's a great song. I'm no surprise. What's the
surprise is that it has such a lead or for
any other PAYPMO.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah, that it took a life on its own, Like
that's weird, yes, and especially because like the only song
like gen Z knows exactly.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
And so that's kind of my point is that like
this is the one song that gen Z knows it's
really it's funny to me, and I have to wonder
like is there so do you go to the back
catalog and you're like this is great? Or do you
go to the back catalog and you're like nothing sounds
like enough like Harness your homes Me.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
I don't know, like what is this slanted and enchanted bullshit?

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Right, because you would go back to something like slanted
and enchanted and be like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah. So I met a kid at Lego Land. Was Yeah,
at Lego Land, I was with my kids and I
went to get an icy and the kid at the
concession stand, you know, probably like sixteen seventeen years old, right,
I was wearing my Pavement T shirt and he goes, hey,

(45:52):
what's that? What's your shirt?

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Me?

Speaker 1 (45:55):
And I said, oh, this for this nineties band called Pavement,
And I thought that would be the end of the conversation, right,
And he goes, oh, that's what I thought it was.
It's that Harness your Hopes band. Right, that's a good song.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
No Way at Lego Land, Lego Land guy at Lego Land.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, shout out to a sixteen year old icy guy
at the Lego Lands.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
That guy, like I actually want to know if this
guy has will watch Pavements and then I want his
I want to know what he thinks of it. I
want to know what somebody that's only heard Harness your
Hope thinks about the movie Pavements.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
So, speaking of like this weird, like layered thing about Pavements,
Harness your Hopes just became their first gold single.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
And.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Like all the gold records that are in the Pavement
Museum and Pavements are fake, right, but now they actually
have a gold record, And I feel like Alex Ross
Perry kind of like manifested that this would eventually happen.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Absolutely well. Again, there's something kind of weird to this
in a way because I have and I don't think
it's just because I'm a fan, but I am somebody
that you know, follows music and music journalism, and all
of these different events from you know, the Pavement exhibit
to the musical were really heavily covered. And I think
this happening at the same time as this recent algorithm

(47:16):
quirk where everybody is suddenly you know, making tiktoks to
Harness your Hopes I think has sort of weirdly, it's
not just manifesting you know, these are like marketing events,
like these are things that they promoted, things that got headlines.
So in a way they're very stunty, like he manufactured
these stunts and then they became content in the film

(47:39):
in a way that's surprising. I did not know they
were going to be part of this film, but I
knew about them.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Yeah. I don't think we knew at first that the
museum was going to be part of the movie exactly.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
I did not know that. Maybe other people did, but
I was not in on that.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
The biopic for sure. I knew was going to be
part of the movie.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Sure, that for sure. And I had heard about the
musical and I was like, that's that's weird, but sure.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Yeah, I don't know if we knew the musicals can
be part of the movie, But I think people knew
that Alex ross Perry is part of it, so I
think I don't think they knew as much about the museum,
like who is behind that?

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Yeah, I think I think a more casual sort of
follower of these things and of Pavement, which is probably
more where I fall on the spectrum. I thought that
it was mainly the Joe Kiery biopic and that that
would be you know, somehow constructed in a way that
felt really disorientated and weird, and that is part of
the answer to what pavements is. But it's a fraction.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah, they cut a trailer just for Range Life, I
mean yeah, and they thought it was terrible.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
And it's terrible, But now I'm like, Okay, it's data.
It's brilliant. Like it was meant to be terrible, do
you know what I mean? Like, of course it was terrible.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Right, Like Like I think they show that behind the
scenes thing with Mark Ibold where he's with the actors
and he's like, we want to have been in a
place like this, and like the beer cans are like
called gold sounds logger and things like that, so intentionally
supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Like bad, intentionally bad, and and there's you know, even
having watched it, there's a lot of there's still a
lot of unanswered questions, and there is like a certain
amount of inscrutable stuff in this. Even as somebody that
knows a certain amount about pavement, I found myself googling.
I was like, wait, did that happen? Is that real?

(49:41):
Because it's just done in such a disorienting way I
don't think they want you to really know the moments
where people are being sincere versus the moments where they're
mocking something or where they're being insincere. It's very hard
to tell where the line is. Like there's a scene,
for example, on towards the end of the movie where
they are boxed with Greta gerwick I, Noah, Bob Bach

(50:03):
and they were talking about the Barbie movie and pavements,
like you know, minor part in the Barbie movie of
being part of this like example of like patriarchal music culture,
like mentioning pavements and man's plaining pavements, and that moment
seems genuine, but also maybe it's not. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, I mean I would assume that part is genuine,
because I don't because I think I've seen Bob on
Twitter be like, oh, you know, we're big fans of
Greta or I'm a big fan of Greta.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
And it seemed real to me, But it also seemed
like I could just as easily believe that that Alex
Ross Perry was like, hey, Greta, you want to do
this scene? And so you don't really know, and I
think that's the part of what the movie makes you
question a lot of what you're saying. You don't really know,
you don't come away closer to knowing, and you don't
come away closer to knowing really why the band broke up.

(50:59):
Maybe I feel differently. I don't know about some of
what's talked about in that film.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
I think Bob kind of explains it at the beginning
when he's like on the zoom with the actor where
he's like, you know, Steven is like very talented and
the rest of us are just trying very hard. And
I think that's like what most Pavement fans kind of
understand as like the reason the band broke up. It's
just like they couldn't keep up with Malcolmus, and Malcolmus

(51:28):
just eventually wanted to be in like a band with
musicians that were capable. Right, not to say that they're bad,
but I think a recent story came out where, you know,
the twenty twenty two tour, like it sounds like everyone's
so happy with how it sounds, and Malcolmus is like, yeah,
because we actually practiced right and that and that, Like

(51:52):
when Pavement was an active band, they all lived in
like different States, like Malcolmus was in New York, Spirals
and San Francisco, Bob was in Kentucky. I think Steve
Steve West was like in Virginia. So soundcheck on tour
was really the only time they could practice the songs.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Yeah, that and that. You know, again, that makes a
little more sense, I think because it's also told in
such a nonlinear way, and you get pieces of people's
you know, impressions, recollections throughout the entire film, but you
don't get them all at once. You do kind of
sit with yourself trying to you know, put together certain things.
There's a part where they talk about, you know, the

(52:35):
exhibit and the exhibit there's this pair of handcuffs that
I'm sure is not the actual pair of handcuffs, but
it's meant to represent I guess this moment in ninety nine,
We're in this concert in London and Malcomus hings these
handcuffs on the microphone and that's his you know, statement
about how it feels being in the band. But it's
never it's never really like elaborated on, you know, like

(52:57):
why he felt trapped handcuffed to the band. You just
kind of have to infer that it's Malkmus.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Yeah, And I think he even explained in like a
later interview like when he did that he wasn't like
necessarily like trying to tell the band that they were
going to break up. He just kind of felt that
way that day and got a pair of handcuffs. Yeah,
and then I realized.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
That it and that like that's how he operates, Like
he just kind of felt that way that day, and
then things happen, right, and.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
It was kind of like they were going to break up,
but like that's not how he wanted to tell them
they were going to break up. Kind of one of
those sort of things. One thing that I wish they
had mentioned, and maybe Alex Ross Perry couldn't get the
footage for it. But listener of the show and friend
of mine, Dan Dan Vigil, he we were nerding and

(53:52):
out about Pavement on the twenty twenty two tour and
he said, Hey, did you go to Spiral's birthday party show?
And so in I forget what year it was, but
so Spiral stairs when he turned fifty, he wanted to
like throw this birthday party concert in San Francisco, and

(54:12):
so the headliner band was supposed to be the clean
and then he said, because the Cleen had like visa issues.
I think this was probably like a setup. But because
the Kleen had visa issues, who was going to step
in to play Spiral's birthday party? But none other than
Steven Malcolms and the Jicks. So it's Spiral's fiftieth birthday,

(54:37):
Malcolmus is going to be there. You assume they're going
to play some pavement songs, right, So not only did
they get on stage to hammer out some pavement songs
for all these probably hardcore pavement fans in northern California,
but they also reunited with Gary Young for three songs.
And they'd never really like finished the Gary Young story.

(55:00):
And Gary Young has passed away since, so it would
have been kind of nice to kind of close that loop,
but maybe that would have been too sincere.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
And so this is the question, right, The question is,
really it does feel like there's a definite side step
away from anything that is vulnerable or that is sincere.
And so Gary Young, their original drummer, doesn't get talked
about in this film except in a very oblique way.
David Berman gets mentioned very briefly, but obviously his life
and legacy and connection to the band and American water

(55:27):
and all these things. They don't get discussed at all.
So if you go in expecting a deeper look at
some of those moments or some of those connections, you're
really not getting any of that at all. That's not
what you should expect going into pavements. And I feel
like that's it. There should be some kind of like
whatever FDA warning, right, Like, if you are unobsessive about
certain types of music documentaries, this is not the one

(55:49):
for you. This is not for complete it's it's not
for people looking for, you know, knowledge, you're on a
quest for things. It's not really giving you that. It's
giving you something else, right, It's.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Giving you two hours of pavement content.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
It is pavement content. And it's a weird thing to
say because I don't consider them a band who you know,
despite this whole hardness your hopes thing right there about
actively courts the content ecosystem that we all live in. Now,
you know, they're very much still this iconic whatever towering

(56:25):
song of Slackrism from the nineties. Like it's so it's weird,
there's a weird tension there, and it's interesting to me
that this is essentially like a monolith of crazy content
that they made. I think that's why it also feels
kind of Nathan Fielder, because there's something that's breaking, like
the Fourth Wall, the Fifth Wall, the sixth Wall. It's
doing a lot.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Yeah, and like to kind of understand how Malchelmus operates,
I think the fact that like Rebecca Cole is playing
keyboards from the band she's from, like the Minders, and
she has had her own like illustrious career as a musician.
But like on the tour, malcolmist just was like, oh, yeah, like,
Rebecca's my neighbor in Portland, right. I think at one

(57:12):
of his shows, you like he's she's my neighbor more
than a neighbor, but not in a polyamorous way or
something like that. Like but it's like, oh, like you
could be like, oh, this is Rebecca like she was
in like the Elephant six, like she was in The
minder She's great, like people have been like, oh awesome.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
You know, like malcous is never He's never going to
give it to you straight. You know. That example of
the song about like tennis and fathers is so perfect,
right because he's never going to give it too straight.
And that's what makes their songs both mystifying but also
so re listenable to me, is this aspect of you
don't really know where you are, And that's first of all,

(57:52):
they're just very listenable songs and they're great bops, but
they're also lyrically like a little bit you don't know
who Stephen Malcolms is and you never will and that
keeps you coming back to try to find out.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of like the point of
the whole range life dis It's like, does he really
hate the Smashing Puvigan's probably not?

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Probably not. You probably just thought it was like a
fun thing to put in the context of that track.
You know, there's a moment where they flash and I
don't even remember the context of it. Maybe maybe you do.
I apologize, but there's a moment where they flash. Pavements
the number one song of the nineties according to Park
Pitchfork in twenty ten, and it's Gold Sounds. They picked

(58:34):
Gold Sounds for that particular era of Pitchfork doing top tens.
For me, if you had to pick one song of Pavements,
I think it might be here, And I think the
reason is because it feels like the closest thing to
the heart center of what that band is. There's something
about that song that feels both I don't know, in

(58:55):
the vein of this thing that they do so well,
which is like slippery, but then also like pretty sincere.
And I would love to see that performed in a
musical context. And its entirety it seems like they.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
I believe they sing it well. I don't know, I
haven't seen the musicals, but it looks like it's something
that comes back.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
It's like a reprise. Yeah, and it kind of makes
sense that it would be. And I love that idea actually,
and I love the idea that that feels like, you know,
maybe the closest.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
You're we're going to get that are front Words. I think, yeah, if.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
That's also a really good choice.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Because that has the line that front Words has the
lyric that starts the movie of you know, the stories
are never going to add up and they never will
ye And also I'm the only one looking for you,
and if I get caught, the search.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Is throat, which again like they're so clever, you know,
Malcolmus is so clever, and the things that they do
are so singular. There's a reason why people are obsessed
with about them. There is a reason why we all
go on goose hunts trying to find things about them.
And there's also a reason why I think this kid,
this might be considered us writing by some people. I think,

(01:00:10):
depending on where you're coming at in your fandom, you
might watch this and be like, well, shit, I'm never
gonna know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Yeah. Well, what I think is funny is like when
they said that you know, this is gonna have the
first the soundtrack's gonna have the first new Pavement song,
you know, in twenty something years. Like half the people
were like, I bet you it's Witchy Titoe, and the
other half was like, it's probably gonna be like a
minute half of just like instrumental fuckery, right, Like, no
one was like, ooh, it's gonna be a great new song.

(01:00:39):
It's gonna launch a brand new pain like everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Knew because you're not a I don't think you're a
Pavement fan, even in a casual way. If you assume
that they're like giving you something like that, like sincerely,
Like no, no, that wouldn't be very unbranded.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
They're not going to try to meet the.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Moment, No wouldn't be on brand.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
So I think that's a perfect way around on this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
I do too.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Thank you for humoring me with this Pavement episode, Pavements episode.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
I was like, is this for me or just like
the listeners? Yeah, and of course this was great. It's
always great to get to see something that does not
have a wide release yet and then I think will
get talked about and I think potentially unpacked for a
long time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Yeah, the most excite. So when I saw the movie,
I couldn't wait to talk to someone about it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
You will want to talk to somebody about this that,
I will say that. You will want to talk to
somebody about this to almost verify your own memory, right,
you need.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
To have someone else fact check your sanity. Yes, because
like even me, who watched a lot of MTV in
the nineties and listened to a lot of Pavement in
the nineties, I was like, wait, they didn't get a
moon Man from MTV? Did they?

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
I was it was like, I don't think that happened,
and it of course it didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
I was like I watched all those VMAs even though
I really didn't need to.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
I never know who the Pavement fans are going to
be in a room typically.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Oh Colbert for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Colbert for sure, just like in life.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Oh, speaking of Pavement Layer, apparently when he took over
for Letterman, he wanted Pavement to play the first show
really and they couldn't like make it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Well, that's sad. That makes me sad.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
And I believe I saw that first episode and it
was just Jon Batiste like leading his band into playing
everyday people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
And didn't Colbert play like Holland nineteen forty five on
his last Colbert Record show. Yeah, I remembering that right,
Like Colbert has got some good music taste. Yeah, he
knows what's up.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Well, everyone go watch Pavements. And we're not being paid
to say that. We just think you watch it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
We got we had zero dollars to be here today.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
We got paid zero dollars. But if you want to
pay some money to us, you can join our Patreon.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Great seque.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
That's at patreon dot com sas Soundtrack your Life. You
can find more information about us on Blue Sky Soundtrack
Yourlife dot net, Twitter, and Instagram at soundtrack cast and
we should have some writing site up by the time
this episode comes up, so just follow us on social media.
Learn about that well. Thank you again, Nicole.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Always a pleasure tend you know, be here, just the
two of us. Guestless guest list not guest list. Guess
is bless.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
Yeah, guests.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Find us Pavement fans and we'll do another episode with
you sometimes. We'd love to meet you, mummy.