‘Pavements’: Venice Review

Dir. Alex Ross Perry. US. 2024. 128 mins.

That US indie outfit Pavement was ‘The World’s Most Important and Influential Band’, as billed in Alex Ross Perry’s film, might come as a surprise to those who are not fans. But to anyone who spent the 90s listening to the band’s witty, melodic, subtly eccentric songs, the claim made – however whimsically – in Pavements  is not too far off the mark. At once a documentary about the band and its recent live reunion, and a fictional embroidery around its status (and missed opportunities), Pavements  is a joyous, slyly subversive celebration that, while unlikely to persuade newcomers to the music, nevertheless catches the band’s wayward spirit, as well as the downright ordinariness that came as an alternative to the bloated rock band ethos. 

A joyous, slyly subversive celebration 

Connoisseurs of rock docs will certainly enjoy the oddness of Perry’s approach which, in its artfully confounding way, recalls the tale-spinning mischief of Martin Scorsese’s 2019 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. Following Rite Here Rite Now, his concert movie for the band Ghost, Pavements sees Perry playing fast and loose with the facts, in collaboration with editor Robert Greene and DoP Robert Kolodny, both known as directors of perplexing doc-fiction hybrids (respectively, Kate Plays Christine  and boxing movie The Featherweight). 

Formed in 1989, in Stockton, California, by guitar-playing duo Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg (a.k.a. Spiral Stairs), Pavement ranked high among American alt-indie bands, partly by virtue of nearly achieving widespread success, with a certain public profile but also the stigma of being a critics’ favourite. Pavements contains ample footage from its 90s prime, including performances of songs from five studio albums, plus present-day footage focused on three major events coinciding with the band’s reunion tour.

One is the opening of a Pavement museum, featuring memorabilia including the band’s ads for Apple and Absolut vodka. Another is the stage show Slanted! Enchanted!, a jukebox musical built around the songs. And the third is the filming of a Hollywood biopic of the band, entitled Range Life  and starring Joe Keery from Stranger Things  as a troubled, broody Mallkmus and Jason Schwarzman as Matador Records boss Chris Lombardi.

Spoiler alert! Pavements  is not remotely what it appears. Despite extracts from Range Life, seen in rough screener-style clips labelled ‘For Your Consideration’, there is no such feature – although it’s fun watching Keery play himself as an anguished Method-style perfectionist doggedly working on his Malkmus. And Range Life  is wryly plausible in its generic scenes about music bosses leaning on recalcitrant artists to produce more commercial product. 

Nor did Pavement ever do Apple or Absolut ads – although a pop-up exhibition, including cleverly faked artefacts, did take place in New York in 2022. Similarly, Perry actually staged Slanted! Enchanted!  over three nights in New York in December 2022. What we see of it suggests a ripely preposterous conceptual gag – the idea being to take ironic slacker songs “and put them in the most sincere form possible, musical theatre.” Even if you don’t know the repertoire, you’ll pick up on the counterintuitive frisson created by having a young, starry-eyed chorus earnestly emoting to the outré lyrics – and oddly rousing melodies – of songs like ‘Gold Soundz’ and ‘Spit on a Stranger’.

More straightforwardly factual material reveals some reasons why Pavement was too refractory, or just plain down-to-earth, to achieve rock star status (although Malkmus went on to enjoy a cult solo career). Included are anecdotes about the late Gary Young, the band’s mercurial, exhibitionistic first drummer, and contributions from Kim Gordon, formerly of Sonic Youth, who praises Pavement while noting that it could be “annoyingly boyish”. Boyish they may have been, but Oasis-style macho they weren’t, and the goofy, sweetly cerebral charm of a subtly strange band is captured in this ingenious tribute.