{"id":1789,"date":"2025-05-29T15:15:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T15:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/strange-life-149974\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T15:15:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T15:15:28","slug":"strange-life-149974","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/strange-life-149974\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"post-preview\">\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not sure we should have agreed to this,\u201d <strong>Stephen Malkmus<\/strong> muses during the extraordinary new documentary <strong>Pavements<\/strong>. \u201cHas there ever been a good movie about a rock band?\u201d There certainly hasn\u2019t been a rock doc like this one, which eschews convention at every stage in favour of meta-realities and roleplay, echoing the band\u2019s own approach on albums like <strong>Wowee Zowee<\/strong>. \u201cIt\u2019s a sprawling record with lots of different ideas positioning for your attention,\u201d explains guitarist <strong>Scott \u2018Spiral Stairs\u2019 Kannberg<\/strong>. \u201cThe movie is sort of like that. Here&#8217;s this band\u2026 and what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-content google-ld-json\">\n<div class=\"editable-content\">\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not sure we should have agreed to this,\u201d <strong>Stephen Malkmus<\/strong> muses during the extraordinary new documentary <strong>Pavements<\/strong>. \u201cHas there ever been a good movie about a rock band?\u201d There certainly hasn\u2019t been a rock doc like this one, which eschews convention at every stage in favour of meta-realities and roleplay, echoing the band\u2019s own approach on albums like <strong>Wowee Zowee<\/strong>. \u201cIt\u2019s a sprawling record with lots of different ideas positioning for your attention,\u201d explains guitarist <strong>Scott \u2018Spiral Stairs\u2019 Kannberg<\/strong>. \u201cThe movie is sort of like that. Here\u2019s this band\u2026 and what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><strong><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/shop.kelsey.co.uk\/single-issue\/uncut-magazine\/352\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">THE JULY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING NICK DRAKE, A 15-TRACK NEW MUSIC CD, THE WHO, BLACK SABBATH, BRIAN ENO, MATT BERNINGER, PULP, BOB WEIR AND MORE<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pavement\u2019s label Matador commissioned the project from director <strong>Alex Ross Perry<\/strong>, known for caustically witty, literary films such as 2014\u2019s <strong>Listen Up Philip<\/strong>. \u201cOriginally when we agreed to have a film made, we didn\u2019t really want to be in it,\u201d says Kannberg. Perry responded with radical, wild substitutions, intercutting an off-Broadway Pavement musical, a deliberately clich\u00e9d rock biopic \u2013 with <strong>Stranger Things<\/strong>\u2019 <strong>Joe Keery<\/strong> as an anguished, dickish Malkmus \u2013 and a fully operational Pavement museum, with accompanying behind-the-scenes dramas.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"UvR4aihyRXQ\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pavements | Official Trailer | Utopia\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UvR4aihyRXQ?feature=oembed&amp;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThey gave us an unprecedented amount of trust to reinterpret, dement, morph and alter their life story,\u201d Perry tells <strong>Uncut<\/strong>. \u201cNot because it\u2019s not worthy of being told traditionally, but because to do so would brutally misunderstand what\u2019s interesting about this band.\u201d Pavement\u2019s unexpected 2022-3 reunion shows added a further layer of actual and staged documentary footage. \u201cThe finished product changed with us touring so much and them being able to film it,\u201d says Kannberg. \u201cBut I think it makes it all better in the end, because there was such joy playing those shows and from the fans that came.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fake biopic scenes go furthest out, focusing on the fraught response to <strong>Wowee Zowee<\/strong>, with <strong>Jason Schwartzman<\/strong> as Matador founder <strong>Chris Lombardi<\/strong> begging Keery\u2019s alienated Malkmus for \u201c100% of the 50% of effort that you feel you may be able to give\u201d. Malkmus failed to see the funny side of an early cut, wondering if it was a \u201cprank\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a little weird at first,\u201d Kannberg admits. \u201cIt portrayed us as this band that we weren\u2019t. But that was the point, I think. We went and saw this fake premiere and some of the band were really confused because it was so far off from what we were. The parts in the movie where all is explained were not woven in yet. It was pretty funny still.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The band reacted far more positively to the Pavement museum of real and concocted artefacts, which opened for four nights in New York. Kannberg found it surprisingly poignant: \u201cIn the context of a museum, it was intense. All the memories came back strong.\u201d <strong>Pavements<\/strong>\u2019 mix of real emotion and artifice anyway speaks to the band\u2019s essence. \u201cThey ride that dial between irony and sincerity, sometimes within the same song,\u201d says Perry. \u201cMalkmus\u2019s tug of war between disinterest and deep artistic commitment makes him worthy of a film that splits his depictions five different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The film has refashioned Kannberg\u2019s own perspective on Pavement. \u201cIt\u2019s made it a much more important part of my life, I guess,\u201d he says. \u201cFor a long time, I couldn\u2019t really appreciate how important Pavement was. The songs became much more emotional and I had way more fun playing them this last tour, and the movie helped me understand this. A good friend that Steve and I grew up with told me once, \u2018That band fucked you up, dude.\u2019 I\u2019m pretty sure it fucked me up in the best way, though! And fucked up music is always the best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Pavements will stream exclusively on Mubi this summer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/features\/strange-life-149974\/\">Strange Life<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/\">UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wpematico_credit\"><small>Powered by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wpematico.com\" target=\"_blank\">WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI\u2019m not sure we should have agreed to this,\u201d Stephen Malkmus muses during the extraordinary new documentary Pavements. \u201cHas there ever been a good movie about a rock band?\u201d There&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,579],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interviews","category-pavement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}