pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Carl Sagan was talking about it in the late 1970s and on his very popular Cosmos series in 1980.

again, nothing has changed

fwiw (probably nothing) Pavement do very little for me. In fact there's a lot to irritate me but this may be a wider problem I have with (specifically) American indie rock. Whatever the case my belov'd R.E.M. avoid every pitfall.

of that epoch that was mentioned of “indie” rock, the band that i love the most is Guided by Voices. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Man, I listened to the first few songs of Crooked Rain earlier (due to this thread)... just the feel of the instruments on those tracks, the way they keep stumbling and tugging forward; it's like the music is this itchy, sloppy, organic thing trying to find its footing, but barely content to hold still. And the dry sound + loose swing of those drums beneath it all... there's really nothing else like it!

I'm fascinated by the microgenerational differences in our collective responses to REM. As a teen in the '90s, REM already seemed like dad music to me and my peers, on a similar level to Talking Heads. Even my older brother wasn't into them - he was into Nirvana etc. I was huge on Pavement, Sebadoh and SY at the time. But I got really into REM (and Talking Heads) after learning more about their post-punk roots on AMG or something. I dunno, wherever I was getting music info while browsing on Netscape Navigator back in the day.

I remember tracking down Murmur and liking it, but I had no idea how this jangly guitar stuff related at all to Husker Du or Pixies or whatever. I know the history and all, but REM just seemed like a world apart from everything else that was happening in the post-punk underground in the '80s. Anyway, I didn't really get them, but I still came to really dig their first few albums. I love Green and Monster, and enjoy many but not all tracks on OOT and Automatic. But I felt like an anomaly. It seemed pretty uncool to like REM as a teen in the mid to late '90s. Maybe not as bad as the time I brought a Tom Petty CD to a pool party, but close.

I guess after all that I was still more of a Pavement girl. Couldn't get enough of Wowee Zowee as a 15 year old. Don't get me started on GBV though, I can't stand them, even though a friend whose taste I generally like swears Pollard is a genius and owns about 10,000 of their records. I'd rather listen to Superchunk or East River Pipe, which is saying something, because I dislike their records too.

I remember hearing R.E.M. on the radio — "Superman," "Can't Get There From Here," maybe one other song. The only album of theirs I ever actually bought (or heard all the way through) was Document. Then I saw the videos for Green or Out of Time, I forget, on MTV and basically dismissed them. The last song I liked of theirs was "Tongue." Earlier today I tried listening to New Adventures in Hi-Fi and lasted five tracks, during which time I came to the conclusion that every major label rock album released between 1996 and 2005 should be recalled and re-edited so it has nine or ten three- to four-minute songs instead of fourteen five- to seven-minute songs.

Not college radio — regular New York rock radio.

have you ever heard "is this it?" ?

probably not fair gumming up your generalization with a perfect record tho

table otm re: GBV, they're my fav too

Pavement were better than GBV at the time and are still 100 times better now. History will be on my side. I don't see GBV having a Harness Your Hopes moment with the yoof.

Gentlemen please, you can’t rank boring indie rock bands in here, this is the pitchfork thread

Not a man. Also Pitchfork is the spiritual home of stupid opinions on indie rock bands so this thread seems the ideal place.

pavement don't quite have any classic albums either

they're famous for having 3 or 4 classic albums

they're all kinda inconsistent

The first Pavement I heard was a bootleg of the Peel Session "Circa 1762" on TCU's college radio station - was very disappointed to find out the rest of their music didn't sound like that.

is there anything on those albums expressing feelings that aren't clouded by several layers of distance or irony or hedging? or is that the point

I put some effort into gaining an appreciation for those albums when I was younger and it sort of worked for a bit and then I realised they weren't actually saying anything to me. but they do seem to be saying something to people that REM isn't anymore so there must be something there. surely zoomers aren't just sitting around thinking "wow sick burn on smashing pumpkins and STP"?

is it fair to say pavement fans are not great at describing why the band is great in terms that are interesting or comprehensible to the non-converted? it seems to be a matter of you either get it or you don't

who listens to indie rock for the lyrics?

in addition to being known for having multiple classic albums, pavement are also celebrated for having great lyrics

probably the easiest to "get" part of their appeal is the guitar playing though

"feelings" is about more than lyrics it's the whole gestalt of the thing

but if I'm not supposed to care what any of it means it's hard for me to care much about the music

if the guitar sounds good then sure it sounds good but what's it saying

it doesn't have to be a message it can be vibes

the main vibe I get is hey it's the 90s and we can afford to be slackers even though we're secrely quite good. which has an appeal but a limited one. like that cartoon "mission hill"

You're overthinking it, they're just really great guitar songs that some guys in California with exceptional music taste and a sense of humour had a lot of fun making. I hear joy and a deep love of music more than irony.

is there anything on those albums expressing feelings that aren't clouded by several layers of distance or irony or hedging?

The use of irony, hedging, and several layers of distance suggest they feel too deeply.

We’re having quite the tussle here, aren’t we?

my feeling on pavement is, they're fine

they're not without their charm

Pavement were better than GBV at the time and are still 100 times better now. History will be on my side. I don't see GBV having a Harness Your Hopes moment with the yoof.

Pavement are fucking boring! Sebadoh are nigh-unlistenable! lmfao

if the guitar sounds good then sure it sounds good but what's it saying

It's saying, wouldn't it be cool if all guitar was this fun?

All Indie Rock is fantastic. Imo Gimme more of it please.

also re; TGC’s posts, what’s funny is that part of what i hate about Pavement and Sebadoh is that it feels like some smart enough guys drenching their male toxicity in irony and deflection. the “guys who are cool and nice but who could be friends with frat guys” thing. i hated those guys when i was younger and i hate them now.

GBV are a bunch of hardworking drunks from Dayton. whether or not they’re better (they are), at least there’s something genuine about them!

What gives you the impression the Pavement guys are toxic? If anything, "women" in Malkmus' songs barely exist except as excuses for cool-sounding doggerel to accompany the guitars.

and believe me I get how a goofball ethos can mask toxicity but....Pavement aren't those guys

i remember them being described in Spin as the kind of band who doesn't really take drugs

i can see a certain frattiness with Crooked Rain, but not really with any of the other albums

i also think Sebadoh are super different from Pavement. . . . like a half a world away

same w/GBV they're all kinda different bands

answering your question with any sense of depth would require me to listen to Pavement again— since i don’t do streaming, probably not going to happen. fwiw tho i was responding more to the characterization of the band in a previous post as explanatory of their sound/appeal.

it's cool i get it, i love all three bands for different reasons but they all have such vast catalogs. one of the reasons I prefer pavement to the other two is the discography is relatively easy to follow

as to yr point waterface, i agree but also we’re talking about a certain cultural milieu that existed— bands that don’t sound like each other are mixed in with each other out for any number of reasons.

i guess my point is that i just find Pavement too studied and staid. same with Berman’s poetry, tbh— never really understood the appeal.

my feeling on pavement is, they're fine

Pretty much. GBV are a blast, though.

REM just seemed like a world apart from everything else that was happening in the post-punk underground in the '80s.

This is where context matters a little. Back when REM was starting up, iirc you couldn't even easily buy Velvet Underground or Big Star albums. They were pretty much out of print, relatively obscure totems/touchstones, the stuff of record store geeks. The same for a lot more of their more conventional influences, like the Byrds or whatever, or a lot of garage rock. Of course REM wasn't the only band mining this stuff, but due to timing alone, their touchstones were pretty out of phase with the mainstream. The same, for different reasons, with a band like the Replacements or even Uncle Tupelo (both of whom have Peter Buck connections). You listen now and think, what's so weird/different/innovative about this? And that's partly because those bands or sorts of bands served as introductions for all the stuff that influenced them that have since influenced hundreds of other bands.

It's not REM, but I've heard that in the late '70s, even acts like Tom Petty or Dire Straits, no one knew what to do with them at first. Iirc Dire Straits opened for the Talking Heads on one of the latter's first tours of England. Even a lot of what now sounds totally familiar or stale or mainstream sometimes once made people scratch their heads.

well put. Dead Letter Office & the songs REM covered (Wire, Television, VU, Mission of Burma) were like having an older brother saying "Check this out." Don't think they ever covered Big Star, but Buck talked about them enough in interviews, and yeah you couldn't hear that shit anywhere

Josh otm. Also not to be discounted: R.E.M. were exceptionally well-positioned to exploit growing major label interest in "college rock." Unlike their contemporaries they didn't mind spending hours and days courting deejays, Rolling Stone freelancers, and college newspaper reporters; they spent the '80s building a good will that sustained them well into the next decade.

I think I was born a little too late. By the time I was aware of R.E.M., they seemed very mainstream, and (apart from the music) the vibe they projected was very diffident and eye-rolly to me. So on that level they may have been U2 (who, musically, were never interesting to me).

Pavement felt messier, wilder, more in line with punk and disruption, and I was too young to understand what “fratty” signified. By the time I did get what that meant I was too into them for it to matter.

As for GBV, they were a lot of fun in the 1990s and slightly beyond, then they kept going, and going, and -

Born too late, or got into underground adjacent music too late.

(I was also a massive Nirvana fan in the moment - make of that what you will.)

Agree with some of the other folks in their mid-40s. Growing up, I liked the R.E.M. songs I heard on the radio, and they seemed to be good dudes (Stipe's politics, for instance). But their style wasn't one I naturally gravitated toward. The only album of theirs I owned was Monster, actually, bc fuzzy glam rock was more interesting to me than strummy mandolin ballads. And by the time that came out, I was beconing eager to get into more indie stuff, like Pavement and Sonic Youth, both of whom I found very exciting.

But I never cared much about the Replacements or Husker Du or GBV, all of whom seemed like more straightforward three-chord rock (even if it was distorted and had weird lyrics or whatever). R.E.M. seemed to have more range over their career, but a lot of their early classic stuff seemed similarly limited to me.

I think if anything all of those bands (the four you just mentioned) were interesting/compelling for what they did within the realm of or in service of subverting "straightforward three-chord rock." REM and Replacements were both huge Big Star fans, and neither sound at all like Big Star (or each other). Replacements and GBV were both huge fans of uncool classic rock, but neither sounds at all like the other (though early GBV sometimes sounds a bit like REM!). Husker Du and REM both covered a lot of '60s stuff - Byrds, AM bubblegum - but don't have much in common sonically. Etc.

Pavement (who of course emerged well after all those other acts) imo leans the least into some of the more obvious stuff. The Fall is one of more common comparisons, though I think Sonic Youth must have been some sort of touchstone as well, based on the bonkers guitar tunings. If anything Pavement remind me a little of Camper Van Beethoven, in some ways, CVB themselves being a deliberately eccentric hodgepodge of lots of the aforementioned - '60s pop, Sonic Youth, fun/silly garage rock indulgence, arch/sarcastic/droll lyrics ...

fwiw tho i was responding more to the characterization of the band in a previous post as explanatory of their sound/appeal.

I wasn’t explaining their sound/appeal, just pushing back on yr claim that their fans are sensitive Elliott Smith types or something. If you’re gonna dislike a band for its fans(??), at least nail it…