Pavement played the Boch Center – 9/28
Reunited indie legends Pavement brought their 2022 tour to Boston with support from locals Guerilla Toss.
I love Pavement, let’s just get that out of the way. The platonic ideal indie rock band, they were one of the major music gateway drugs of my formative years. The nonchalant genius of frontman Stephen Malkmus’ weirdo wordplay, the band’s endlessly inventive songwriting and playing and their unparalleled ability to turn on a dime from a shambolic noise rock freakout to a genuine heartbreaker (no other group could pull off “Hit the Plane Down” -> “Filmore Jive”) all converge into one of music’s few perfect discographies. Over their 10 year run – comprising five records, a small stack of EPs and one of history’s greatest B-side batting averages – there’s not a note out of place, even if it’s a wrong one.
So yes, I was thrilled by last year’s news that in 2022, Pavement would ride again. I caught the band on their last reunion run, some 12 years ago at 2010’s Pitchfork Festival, but missed their Boston date at the cavernous Agganis Arena that same year. To see them in a proper headlining capacity this time around, in one of my home city’s most beautiful rooms, was a thrilling prospect indeed.
While Pavement’s previous reunion carried with it an air of they-said-it-would-never-happen gravitas, and in turn hit plenty of huge spaces and festival stages, this 2022 run feels a tad more…refined. The venues, including Boston’s Boch Center, trend towards stately, seated theaters – all the better for the sort of sprawling, surprising and deep-cut-heavy setlists the band has been rolling out each night. It’s a reunion for the heads, and for a card-carrying member of the Pavement Army, it lived up to every expectation.
Boston’s set kicked things off with “Grounded,” one among a generous portion of songs from the band’s shaggy and mesmerizing third LP Wowee Zowee (which also happens to be my favorite of theirs). Perhaps there’s less pressure this go round to zero in on the greatest hits, or, as writer Matthew Perpetua suggests, it’s a reflection of the belated canonization of the latter portion of the band’s catalog, but either way, the night was a true exploration. We did get some of the hits of course – “Stereo” popped up second, “Summer Babe” incited an enthusiastic singalong, a buoyant “Cut Your Hair” closed the main set – but the show’s most thrilling moments came from unexpected places. We heard gem non-album cuts “Painted Soldiers” and “Give It A Day,” unlikely algorithm favorite “Harness Your Hopes,” a loose and extended “Type Slowly” and the first airing of WZ‘s centerpiece jam “Half A Canyon” since the mid ’90s. Malkmus didn’t quite let off a scream so intense it nearly knocked him out, but it still brought down the house.
The band hit 25 songs in total, and would’ve played more if not for a somewhat baffling 10:30 venue curfew. The night’s lone whiff of onstage tension came then, when Malkmus and foil Scott Kannberg seemed to have some trouble coming to agreement on what to cut and what to play for an encore.
Indeed, spirits were high both off stage and on for the rest of the night, with the band sounding sounding both well-rehearsed and the correct level of shambolic, really digging into the nooks and crannies of the songs. Malkmus once more proved his credentials as a wildly underrated guitar player, and an extremely fun one to watch. Percussionist/vocalist Bob Nastanovich, meanwhile, remained the beating heart of the band – the hype man and X-factor bringing balance to their force. The addition of ex-Wild Flag keyboardist Rebecca Cole as touring member was a welcome one, too, as she subtly expanded the band’s sonic palette and clearly had a blast on stage with them.
Shortened encore aside, it was hard for me to picture a better additional chapter to my personal Pavement story than this one. The band’s approach in both curation and performance spoke to a love of these songs and a treatment of the catalog as a vital and lively thing – which of course, with its ceaseless influence on left-of-the-dial guitar bands of every subsequent generation, it is. Following the setlists and fan recaps night to night truly has me wishing for the financial autonomy to simply follow them around on tour. Maybe I’ll get there by the time we see them in 2032.
Scroll below for photos from the set, and from openers Guerilla Toss. The long-running Boston band – once chaotic noise rockers, now somewhere on the freakier end of the dance-punk spectrum – were a great fit for a warmup set.
