Pavement
Quarantine The Past: The Best Of Pavement
(Matador/Remote Control)

More than any band I’ve ever written about, I don’t know where to start with Pavement. It would be my favourite band - if I had to choose - though I’m certainly not blind to their faults. How could you, when they’re worn so proudly on the band’s ragged sleeve? And as much as I appreciate Stephen Malkmus as a songwriter, Pavement is very much a band to me. So to go tugging at the various parts – the referential guitar work, the airy yet stumbling drums, the babbling lyrics – you lose sight of the whole. Likewise, the band’s five studio albums are so frozen in my mind that I was wary of Quarantine The Past, the inevitable collection cherry-picking of 23 songs from a 20-year career.

The essence of Pavement could never be reduced to a single disc, and of course the band’s most dedicated fans will nitpick. But with this clumping together of songs from the band's decade of activity, what emerges are the inseparable layers of friction between sincerity and irony; between pop instincts and esoteric distance; between sloppy cool and studied talent; between affection and the angst housed in Malkmus’ singular voice.

Quarantine The Past opens with ‘Gold Soundz’, a lyric from which gives the collection its name (“You can never quarantine the past”). Taken from the band’s second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, it’s the most pop Pavement ever got - even more so than minor hit ‘Cut Your Hair’. It’s certainly the most outwardly sincere: “You’re the kind of girl I like / because you’re empty and I’m empty,” sings Malkmus, awash in Bunnymen jangle. Crooked Rain is elsewhere represented by the splintered ‘Unfair’, diverting ‘Heaven Is A Truck’, sprawling ‘Range Life’, and of course ‘Cut Your Hair’, a parody of the buzz-band cycle that Pavement flirted with (“I saw another one just the other day / A special new band”).

Crooked Rain... (1994) often competes with Pavement’s first album, Slanted & Enchanted (1992), as my all-time favourite album, but even I think five songs from it is excessive. There are just two songs off the White Album-style free-for-all Wowee Zowee (1995); one of which – this collection’s closing ‘Fight This Generation’ – plays weakly outside its original context. Fans of the swan song Terror Twilight (1999) get only ‘Spit On A Stranger’, an okay tune that pales in comparison to that album’s ‘Major Leagues’. Brighten The Corners (1997) was affable enough, but the off-the-cuff singles ‘Stereo’ and ‘Shady Lane’ cancel each other out and ‘Embassy Row’ could be a Wowee Zowee castoff. Written and sung by guitarist Scott Kannberg (a.k.a. Spiral Stairs), “Date W/IKEA’ isn’t as strong as Kannberg’s ‘Kennel District’, which didn’t make the cut.

Apart from the R.E.M.-dedicated non-album track ‘Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence’, the remaining 10 songs are taken from either Slanted & Enchanted, its following Watery Domestic EP, or the pre-Slanted singles/EPs collection Westing (By Musket And Sextant). That shows a glaring preference for the band’s oldest material – and Pavement compiled this collection itself. Still, I envy someone just now hearing Westing’s ‘Debris Slide’ and ‘Box Elder’, each a catchy catalogue of the band’s later strengths.

That leaves five songs from Slanted & Enchanted, the band’s most enduring calling card. It’s still an eerily unique album, caught between so many influences and yet brimming with fresh ideas. I relish the tension between the fuzzed-out melodies, stiff bass line, and monotonic drums of ‘In The Mouth A Desert’, and even Kannberg’s Fall-inspired lark ‘Two States’ now comes off like classic Pavement: wobbly, smart-alecky, and conceived on the fly. ‘Here’ is close to a ballad, a deadpan marvel that nails brainy disillusionment: “I was dressed for success / but success it never comes.” The timeless single ‘Summer Babe’ front-loads its loping verses and fractured imagery with a hook that’s as much as CCR as My Bloody Valentine, and ‘Trigger Cut’ has as much bitterness as ever.

Even if The Vine had a rating system, I wouldn’t slap a perfect score on this, as Pitchfork has simply for showing up. Quarantine the Past is vital but flawed, as a compilation of album cuts can only ever be: there are weak patches, dizzying highs, abrupt shifts in mood and tone. But ultimately, this collection serves as a key to reflect on and celebrate a fabulously unique and influential band.

Doug Wallen