It’s been 25 years, but finally there is a new Pavement recording! The group (who reformed in 2022, but has only performed live) have released a cover of Jim Pepper’s “Witchitai-To.” The song appears on the soundtrack for the movie about the band, titled Pavements.
The cover was recorded for the group’s 2022 reunion, and then was regularly performed on that tour. Guitarist and Pavement co-founder Scott Kannberg, nee Spiral Stairs, teased the recording late last year, announcing on the podcast Komplete Kontrol that a “new Pavement song” was forthcoming.Continue reading »
Farmer’s Wife — Season of the Witch (Donovan cover)
Austin rockers Farmer’s Wife go full shoegaze-psych on this Donovan cover just in time for Halloween. They write: “Our cover of ‘Season of the Witch’ materialized out of a drum beat and pedal feedback two Halloweens ago. This creepy classic opened us to more experimentation and allowed us to dive into an eerier side of our sound.”
Fiona Apple — Lately (Don Heffington cover)
The late Don Heffington was an acclaimed drummer, so, naturally, his new tribute album includes drum greats like Jim Keltner. But he was also a singer-songwriter, so friends and collaborators like Jackson Browne, Victoria Williams, and Fiona Apple cover his songs. Apple selected “Lately,” the closing song on the final solo studio album of his lifetime, 2016’s Contemporary Abstractions in Folk Song and Dance.Continue reading »
DIIV’s fourth album Frog In Boiling Water is one of the hits of the year, and the band is taking the opportunity to publicize it and indulge some of their passions. For a recent appearance on SiriusXM, they reprised a song which is part of their live set: Pavement’s “Cream of Gold.”
When completing the song, and the overall Terror Twilight album, Pavement were in flux. Stephen Malkmus did not have to be explicit about who he had a toxic relationship with, just that it was not going to go backwards, and would move relentlessly on, driven by his will to try and find a better place. The band took a hiatus after the album was released.Continue reading »
It’s been 15 years since the last Al Green album. Does “Perfect Day” signal the beginning of his comeback? Unclear — I thought so after his last single, another cover, and that was five years ago. But we can hope. “I loved Lou’s original ‘Perfect Day’—the song immediately puts you in a good mood,” Green explained. “We wanted to preserve that spirit, while adding our own sauce and style.”Continue reading »
It’s the 10th anniversary of the founding of South Korean band Say Sue Me. And they’ve decided to acknowledge it with a covers “EP.” (“EP” is not quite literal here, as there are 8 songs, ranging from two minutes to five.)
One of those songs is “Elevate Me Later,” a track from Pavement‘s second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. It’s apparently a sequel to “Loretta’s Scars” on their debut album, though the lyrics to the two songs don’t have much in common. The original is pretty classic Pavement, sardonic, quirky indie rock which deftly balances melody with an artsy edge.
Say Sue Me take a different approach. Their cover has an almost “country lounge” or “country tropicalia” quality, with a swaying tropical rhythm and twangy guitar. Lead singer Sumi Choi has a much pleasanter delivery than Stephen Malkmus. Near the end of each verse some pleasant but mathy lead guitar comes in. And after the second verse there is a vaguely jazzy guitar solo. The biggest surprise of their version is the false ending, which comes right when you’d expect the song to end.
It’s a pretty drastic rethinking of the song. I’m not sure how much it suits the lyrics but it’s still a fun spin on a classic Pavement track, and the vibe and style feels quite divorced from the original.
Not only did Will Arnett somehow convince Stephen Malkmus of Pavement to take his first-ever composer job for Arnett’s new Netflix show Flaked, but he got the ’90s rock icon to cover one of the most unlikely songs we can think of: Jimmy Buffett‘s “Margaritaville” – the song than spawned a thousand restaurants. The whole thing is not out yet, but 60 seconds appears at the end of one of the episodes, and you can listen to that clip below.Continue reading »
