Pavement

Wed 17th Feb, 2010 in Features

The phrase “the most important American band of the nineties” doesn’t get bandied around a lot, but it certainly applies to Pavement. Over ten years and five albums, the five-piece outfit from California produced the kind of lo-fi alt-rock that inspired a generation of similarly laidback, guitar-driven imitations that continue to pop up even today, despite the fact that Pavement disbanded in 1999.

Since then, their cult following has ballooned, and like the art of a dead painter, their work has become the stuff of indie legend. And of course with every band that has managed to foster a cult following post-break up, there has been no silencing the rumours of a reunion tour, no matter how many times they turned out to be false.

Only this time, there was a whole lot of truth behind the recent announcement from Rolling Stone that Pavement are in fact embarking on a world-wide reunion tour in 2010. The idea was spearheaded by guitarist Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg, who is conveniently running the whole thing off the back of his impending Melbourne wedding.

“It’s really kind of selfish,” he says of the band’s decision to kick things off in Australia and New Zealand. “I’m getting married, so I said, ‘Why don’t we start there and everyone can come to the wedding?’ And it’s also a good way to start everything off, the guys can bring their families down and make a vacation of it. It’ll just be really relaxed and, you know, I can show them around.”

An avid fan of Melbourne in particular, Kannberg has been splitting his time between it and Seattle for years, Seattle’s dreary weather finally proving too much for the Californian-born 43-year-old. “It’s winter in Seattle now. The sun doesn’t shine here. It rains three weeks in a month, so I’ll be glad to get out and move to your lovely country soon. I’ve been coming there a bunch of times over the last ten years. I have a bunch of really good friends there.” And another one of our charms? “You guys have really weird sports,” he chuckles.

The prospect of coming back after ten years might seem daunting, particularly as a great portion of Pavement’s fans discovered them well after they’d broken up. However, Kannberg seemed typically unfazed by the idea that their new fans’ sky-high expectations might not be met. “We haven’t actually started the rehearsals yet, but I’m sure the songs will come back to us and they’ll be fresh and fun. Hopefully people will see that too. And having never seen us before they won’t know any better,” he quips.

With the scores of new fans Pavement has managed to accumulate over the past ten years, it seems the band is actually a bigger phenomenon now than ever before. “It feels like that,” Kannberg remarks. “Booking these shows all over the world, we would have never sold out four shows in Central Park. I think there’s a bigger fan base there, more demand because we haven’t done it in ten years, but if we keep doing this for a year it probably won’t be as special because it isn’t as new.”

It’s hard to imagine a man as unassuming and amicable as Kannberg to be the founder of what has been described as one of the most important and influential bands to come out of the nineties. But true to form, the quietly modest Kannberg is having none of the hype. “I think it’s rubbish,” he says of the grand statements that oft follow any mention of Pavement. “There are a lot of bands in the nineties that were really good; we were just really lucky to be recognised as a good band. But we worked hard and put out a lot of material. But I think that reputation came out more since we broke up. We put out a lot of reissues, kept the name out there, founded new bands. We were just really lucky to have good labels and good people who supported us. I guess we were important, but a lot of great bands in that era were also important.”

With the announcement of a reunion tour, there’s always the hope that the release of a new album would follow. And while their record label remains stubbornly cagey on the subject, Kannberg is happily forthcoming, if frustratingly vague. But it seems that’s part of Pavement’s appeal, if they were anything but prone to nonchalantly fly by the seat of their pants, we’d probably be disappointed.

“We really don’t know yet,” he concedes. “We haven’t even started rehearsals yet. So we’ll revisit it, see how the tour goes, and see how we feel. But it would be nice. I just did a solo record, and during that I thought, what if Pavement did a record, how would I write for that? It’d probably be the same way I write now, just with different people involved. It could easily happen one day. At the moment we’re just happy playing the old songs, revisiting them. But eventually we’re going to get bored of playing the same old stuff.”

Fair enough, but there was still one burning question I had to ask – where did his 20-year-old nickname come from? Kannberg became suddenly playful. “It’s just a punk rock name I made up. You know when you’re a young band trying to be funny? You just make stuff up. Now I just go by Spiral. I went and saw the Swell Season, and I introduced myself to one of the guys and I’m like, ‘Hey, my name is Spiral.’ And he’s like, ‘Spiral? What kind of a name is that?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s my punk rock name.’”

Pavement headlines Golden Plains Festival next month, with a string of headline shows around the country.

Thursday 4 March – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Saturday 6 March – Golden Plains Festival, Victoria
Sunday 7 March – Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide
Monday 8 March – Metro City, Perth
Wednesday 10 March – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Friday 12 March – The Palace, Melbourne
Sunday 14 March – The Palace, Melbourne