5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Pavements': An ironic tribute to an iconic '90s band
Nonfiction filmmaking is in something of a rut, with funding drying up for nearly everything except true crime and celebrity biopics. Filmmaker Alex Ross Perry makes the most of this reality with 'Pavements,' his alternately self-conscious and disarmingly sly film about the band Pavement.
If you know, you know: In the 1990s, the group fronted by California native Stephen Malkmus was a low-fi phenomenon, snatching snippets of everything from the Velvet Underground to Alex Chilton to create its own defiantly un-pandering scrounge act. Evolving in a decade from underground to indie to almost-breakthrough to college rock canonization, the band broke up in 1999, four years after a disastrous, mud-flinging performance at Lollapalooza. Although Pavement was never hugely commercial, it was disproportionately influential, its albums defining Gen X alienation like the chipped-vinyl equivalent of 'Reality Bites' on repeat.
