Carys Manjdadria-Jenkins Carys Manjdadria-Jenkins pins down Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, a documentary/mockumentary/fictional concert film which stands out in the sea of musical biopics as a ‘semiotic experimental’ tribute to the sardonic American indie band.
Each time Pavement were described as ‘the world’s most important and influential band’, the man in the seat next to me cackled so hard that the row rocked back and forth.
Slacker-style self-deprecation cross hatches with masturbatory meta movie making, both the filmic and musical scene celebrating itself whilst detesting its own successes. The result is an overflow of irony, much like in Malkmus’s lyrics, that further mystifies the band.
Second hand suburban distance added to the slightly artificial music, a musical theatre production that treats the sincere as ironic and the ironic as sincere. More meta even, is the film within a film that shows Joe Keery playing versions of himself and the singer. The second Malkmus of the movie, he caresses projections of the singer’s face, wearing his old clothes and changing his vocal chords to parody, pastiche, & pretend. Interludes of the joke Oscar-bait Pavement biopic are woven with the Off-Broadway theatre kid production. It is as much about the act of creation as it is about the product of creation itself.
Raising this self-labelled Slacktivist band to such heights of the silver screen and the fabled curtain is the ironic end of glory to the band that nearly self-destructed with self-deprecation. It is the more optimistic ending of The Replacements’ similar indie descent: kings of the 90s indie scene, never able to tell if they’re being serious; vans tap on a dusty dirt floor, Beavis and Butthead unsure if they’re even trying to play their instruments.
Fans flock to their mystique, an audience cutting across generations as new and old concerts are spliced with archive footage and the fictional. Slacker philosophy’s missing a godhead, and they really feel that Pavement fills it. Despite the own band’s insecurity, they are something of a sentimental icon to many. Photo of Malkmus’s throat – the holy ground where every song has come out of. Museum exhibition of the last decades – shrines for the new indie bands. The songs – material for new interpretation, covers, interpolation.
Their most bittersweet song, ‘Here’, runs throughout as a hymn, a blinking light to the audience that this is the time to cry. The Chungking Express-like use of the song climaxes at the end with the montage of audiences swaying, singing, sobbing. Malkmus remains in apathy. With the overflow of irony, it’s too late to tell whether any of it is sincere anymore.
Pavement, ‘the world’s most important and influential band’, remain in the shadows of the stage and scrawled liner notes.
