Fluxblog 541: the Pavement musical makes me cry
Also: Vampire Weekend and Geese in Philadelphia
I Was Dressed For Success
Michael Esper, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Kathryn Gallagher “Slanted! Enchanted! Finale!”
This ridiculous piece of music has made me cry.
It made me choke up the first time I heard it, in its intended context of the fake-but-real Pavement jukebox musical Slanted! Enchanted! in 2022. I teared up when I saw it in the context of the Pavements film premiere at Lincoln Center, and then a few times more when I was listening to the Pavements soundtrack on an elliptical at the gym and on an Amtrak train to Philadelphia. It’s happy tears, mostly.
I don’t cry to music easily, but this deliberately hokey swirl of bits from various Pavement songs seems like it was built specifically to light up my brain and tug aggressively on my particular heartstrings. Some of it is novelty and nostalgia – these songs run so deep for me, a pillar of my life since I was a young teenager and I was hearing it all come out in real time.
Alex Ross Perry’s Pavement musical is a joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s a major component of Pavements, which is a lot of different films at once. It’s a documentary, showing the truth of the band in their prime and in the recent past. It’s an intentionally terrible biopic, depicting a contrived and condescending media narrative about the band. There’s making-of-the-biopic footage in which actor and musician Joe Keery attempts to figure out how to portray Stephen Malkmus, which is essentially a meditation on the unknowable but unmistakable character at the heart of the music. It also features a fake-but-real Pavement museum, which celebrates the obsessive fan’s relationship with the band. (I’m in that part.)
The musical is in the mix to present an alternate take on the music itself that emphasizes the melodic craft and sentimentality in Malkmus’ music. It’s laying bare everything he’s made an effort to dial down or shrug off. It’s zeroing in on the real reason anyone loves this music, but it’s swapping some layers of irony for different layers of irony.
So what’s getting to me in this finale? It’s the way the “Major Leagues” chords are nudged fully into an “aw shucks” level of sweetness. It’s the raw disappointment in Michael Esper’s voice when he sings “success it never comes,” and the way Zoe Lister-Jones shifts the refrain of “You’re Killing Me” from dulled resignation to mild agony, and the unabashed earnestness of how Kathryn Gallagher sings “a shady lane, everybody wants one.”
But it’s mostly the ending that moves me, when the music drops out and the three of them trade off lines from “Ann Don’t Cry” : “The damage has been done, I am not having fun anymore.” It’s all very manipulative and cliché in musical theater terms, but it works. Esper circles back to “Here,” dramatically concluding the musical the only way it could: “Come join us in a prayer, we’ll be waiting, waiting where…everything’s ending here.”
Those parts of “Ann Don’t Cry” and “Here” were already very open-hearted, even if Malkmus actually sings “my heart is not a wide open thing, I know” in the former. But in this arrangement, Perry shines a light on a vulnerability that’s always been in the band’s music even if Malkmus has made an effort to obscure or underplay it. These are moments when he was being very clear, in his way. I know these feelings and music motifs well, but this time they’re dialed to the max. You can’t shrug off the emotion when it’s this bare and sincere.
So, in other words, this gets me in the gut because their vulgar display caught me off guard. I can’t help it, because I’m a cold, cold boy with an American heart.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE
I went to see Vampire Weekend and Geese at The Met in Philadelphia last weekend, and I’m so glad I traveled for this one because if I saw they had played two of my grails - "Stranger" and "We Belong Together" - plus two favorites I haven't seen performed in over a decade - "Don't Lie" and "I Think UR A Contra" - I would've been extremely jealous. A lot of unexpected songs, a great audience in a mid-sized theater, much smaller than anywhere I've seen them play since 2013 at Roseland. Also, the bit of VW closing Saturday shows with an SNL goodnights version of "Flower Moon" is so charming, I’m lucky to have seen them do it twice. However, regular style “Flower Moon” is now my top grail, along with “How Long?” As for Geese – I’ve seen them play a lot in the past couple years, and each time Cameron Winter’s swag level is higher. They’re really getting in the zone now.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Billboard has a new profile of Faye Webster announcing her move to Columbia, a major label.
• Rob Sheffield wrote a feature about Pulp for Rolling Stone, which is a big deal if you’ve ever met Rob and know how much Jarvis Cocker means to him.
• Nick Paumgarten wrote a brief profile of Stephen Malkmus and the Hard Quartet for The New Yorker.