Send "Pavement " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Pavement have a fairly small catalog-- five full-length albums and a handful of EPs, plus a compilation of early singles. Over the past decade, their B-sides, radio sessions, and assorted rarities have been repackaged into a series of excellent reissues, which has made it easy to be a Pavement completist without blowing a lot of cash. It's all very accessible, but it's not easy to know where to start. Quarantine the Past, the first-ever Pavement retrospective compilation, solves this problem by providing a cheap and easy entry point to the band that represents the breadth of their songbook. The best-known songs are featured-- "Cut Your Hair", "Gold Soundz", "Here", "Shady Lane", "Spit on a Stranger"-- but so are concert staples, fan favorites, and at least a couple of curveballs. The sequence is non-chronological, zig-zagging through the catalog and evenly distributing the obvious classics throughout the running order.It's important that a Pavement best-of not only focus on their singles, which often erred on the side of novelty and levity. The dark horses here are essential in sketching out the group's range, from the punky blast of "Unfair" and "Debris Slide" to the loose, stoned sound of "Heaven Is a Truck". "Grounded" is majestic, "Shoot the Singer" is wistful, "Date With Ikea" is a suburban anthem. "Embassy Row" is like an alternate-universe Pavement that could compete on modern rock radio with the likes of Weezer, and "Box Elder" is a platonic ideal of simple, lo-fi indie pop. Fans of the band may look over the tracklisting and wonder why some of their favorites didn't make the cut, but every song on this thing is an unimpeachable gem, and the collection presents a well-rounded summary of their distinct and varied body of work...full text |
| Bbc |
| Pavement were always a brilliantly awkward bunch and apparently remain so, having picked a very peculiar selection of tracks for this compilation, released to tie in with their imminent reformation tour, but overdue nonetheless. Stephen Malkmus and co were simply too good a band for Quarantine the Past to actively flounder, but its early stages really are surprisingly hard work. Or maybe not that surprising, given that after propulsive opener Gold Soundz (the title track of sorts, featuring as it does the line “you can never quarantine the past”) the album lurches straight into abrasive non-album rarities Frontwards and Mellow Jazz Docent. They’re decent enough tracks, but they’re hardly the band’s finest hour, and the wryly anthemic blast of Stereo sounds a tad beleaguered when it comes round at track four, not nearly so effective as occupying pole position on 1997’s Brighten the Corners....full text |
| Soundsxp |
| The touring return of Pavement has occasioned a “Best of” and an excuse to do a bit of historical research into why the were a band I never really clicked with back when they were all over the music press in the early 90s. On a couple of listens to the meaty 23 tracks selected here it’s not especially a surprise. Not because they’re no good - on the contrary. But the influences echo loudly. At the time, if you’d already heard Dinosaur Jr, the Breeders, the Fall you’d have needed another reason to fall for them. Pavement’s take was, either consciously or dope-cloudedly, California-hip which for many (especially the deeply unhip with a big wodge of heavy metal records) was bound to be a bit alienating. Look back with a couple of decades’ distance though and you can see what Pavement did for a generation of indie bands. They took what was being done by those mentioned above, plus the likes of (importantly) Calvin Johnson and Sonic Youth, bundled it up into a more consistent, attractive set of songs - great draw in any spotty youth looking for something to belong to but mark them as gently different at the same time. (If Pavement’s loose-limbed charm sometimes drifts into utter aimlessness, that’s as nothing next to toe-curling patchiness of things like early Sebadoh.) So in the same way that you can hear influences in their songs, you can hear what Pavement did to others’ ideas coming through in the bands of the last decade - from the anti-folkers to the likes of Conor Oberst to your better local bands (Smokers Die Younger round these parts). Their faults too - there’s a fair amount of the sort of navel-gazing music scene in-jokery which tediously reoccurs in a lot indie music now....full text |
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