Pavement - Quarantine The Past

There is nothing so ageing as muttering the hoary old cliché: “Ahhh, they don’t make them like that anymore”. You might as well drag out your pipe and slippers, develop a crush on Alan Titchmarsh and settle down to the Antiques Roadshow. But just a briefest dip into any of the tracks on ‘Quarantine The Past’ shows you why people were perfectly right to salivate like rabid dogs on heat over California’s finest, the supernaturally beautiful Pavement. To fly defiantly in the face of those clichés: quite simply, there really hasn’t been a band to come close to them since their untimely demise in 1999.

No wonder getting hold of tickets for their live shows this summer is the indie equivalent of getting your mitts on one of Willie Wonka’s Golden Tickets, and for a very valid reason – it’s not often that one of the most influential bands of the 1990s reunite to hit the road, and we’ve been sorely deprived of any hint of Pavement shows for over 10 years now. The need for them to come back has long been tangible, and luckily their reunion is no longer just a favourite pub conversation dream of countless former slackers – incredibly, it’s become a goddam golden reality. You think we exaggerate? Evidence of people’s excitement for the band’s reunion was felt when it was announced they were going to curate this summer’s ATP festival and the event sold out in ultra quick time, even before the rest of the line up was revealed. And this insatiable enthusiasm for the band has been repeated with sold out international shows too. Like fellow reunited musical demigods the Pixies, Pavement have, to the grateful relief of every 90s indie kid in the known universe, decided the time is ripe not only for a bit of a live get-together but also to release a bumper collection of their finest moments, of which there are an embarrassment of riches. We’ve double checked and, yep, not one of the whopping 23 tracks released on ‘Quarantine The Past’ is a clanger which - when you consider this is equivalent to a double album size in old money - is a pretty awesome achievement. Quite simply, these tracks gathered here have stood up to the intervening years and still sound as scuzzily beautiful and delightfully warped as ever.

So what makes people go all out overboard for Pavement, you may ask? It’s a tricky one, but maybe something to do with the way the tracks have a knack of swooping deep into your innards and grabbing you. The enduringly wonky charm of ‘Stereo’ blasts through your speakers like a liberal sprinkling of caustic soda, a perfect pop single in spite of itself, the breezy melody and infectiously bouncy bassline mangled through crunched up distorted guitars and raging vocals. ‘Cut Your Hair’ is a slippery one: the slyly bitter and insightful lyrics about the perennial 90s worry of ‘selling out’ are wrapped in a delicious slowly effervescing melody – perhaps inevitably (and certainly ironically) this track became one of Pavement’s biggest hits. Some of the little gems you may have forgotten nestle amongst the tracklisting to trip you up with surprises; special mention in this category goes to the beautifully grouchy ‘Two States’ with its grudgeful Fall-style pop grimness, the irresistible hurricane onslaught of ‘Unfair’ and the gently rolling slouchy cool of latter day track ‘Spit On A Stranger’. There’s even ‘Box Elder’ hiding shyly in the corner, lifted from the band’s debut 1989 EP, with the roots and shoots of their chipper cynicism and hooky melodies all present and correct in embryonic form.

The only gripe you could level at the release of ‘Quarantine The Past’ might be that if you’re a diehard Pavement fan, you’ll doubtlessly have most of these tracks already. The prospect of Pavement recording new material is, sadly, not currently on the cards, so this is a pretty fine consolation. However long this mightily anticipated reunion lasts, ‘Quarantine The Past’ will stand as a fitting celebration of Pavement’s shiniest, finest moments, thankfully without slavishly chronological tracklisting but more like the effect of sifting through a box of fading well-loved photographs of your loved ones through the years in all their various guises and get-ups.

For those of us lucky enough immerse ourselves in the skewed glory of Pavement the first time around, this is a timely reminder of their trailblazing talent, while for those whippersnappers who were still cutting their teeth (never mind their hair) when ‘Slanted & Enchanted’ hit the racks, this is the opportunity to shake yourself up to speed. Whichever category you are in, apathy is not an option with Pavement, still one of the most electrically and emotionally charged bands of any generation.