PAVEMENT

Out of the spring break sunshine of Stockton California and on to the pinball rhythms of Brooklyn; taking you in by charm, choruses and their good looks Pavement made five masterpieces then split, having taught the globe how to dress, drink and laugh at themselves. Slanted & Enchanted the classic debut cast a shadow miles wider than its modest tape width. Officially cute: SM, Spiral Stairs, Mark Ibold, MC Bob Nastanovitch and Steve West, laid down the follow up, the hook-heavy Crooked Rain Crooked Rain with the detached confidence of heirs apparent. Pedal steel and social commentary in a shiny pop whole. MTV rotation and world tours beckoned, the A list made it backstage and the band could talk up any football game. Wowee Zowee was their undisputed classic, a stoned and emotional mess just like the people who made it. It’s the 90s White Album. MTV got the fuck out the way but the Pavement live spectacle was now both elegiac and psychotic; ‘fight this generation’ few could want more from their favourite band. Forever the coolest name to drop Pavement turned into gentleman ambassadors of a beautifully non-indexed modus operandi. Career musicians wanted in. The kids just loved them. The last two LPs Brighten The Corners and Terror Twilight are stately showboats, intelligent, warm and cool. Their last ever show at the Brixton Academy felt like the Fillmore must have on a cold night, and the glow will always remain. Try watching the Slow Century DVD without stopping and sighing. So next time you find yourself staring at all the people walking round with coffee in their hands, remember it wasn’t always this way.

KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS

After packing an entire album’s worth of songs, licks, and winsome wisdom into his 2023 EP Back to Moon Beach, indie rock’s exemplary everyman Kurt Vile stuck to the medium’s more traditional format with Classic Love. The project draws heavily on Vile’s friendship and creative partnership with Nashville songwriter Luke Roberts. After meeting via MySpace, they toured together for Kurt’s seminal B’lieve I’m Goin Down… album, while Roberts has gone on to release LPs on Thrill Jockey and Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace. Their collaborative work emanates an energy that’s “sad and funny at the same time,” something Vile says is a guiding ethos of his music.

With a run of adored albums and EPs starting in the late 2000s, Vile quickly became a critical favorite and commercial stalwart thanks to 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze and 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down… A leading figure in Philadelphia’s robust indie rock scene, Vile has released nine solo LPs since 2019, as well as a cavalcade of EPs, collaborating with Courtney Barnett, John Prine, Hope Sandoval, The Avalanches, and many more.

“When you listen to Kurt, it can be like watching a tightrope act,” Roberts says. “He’s out here doing this thing that seems like he could fall at any moment. There’s a strength to what he does that makes you feel like you’re on a journey with him.”

This EP is succinct, not slight, exploring how romance changes as it endures. Vile’s “classic love” was adapted from a years’ old Roberts demo and features guitar work from Creston Spiers of Athens, GA band Harvey Milk. Vile likens it to a country music standard, the kind of song that’s been performed by dozens of artists and feels both singular and adaptable.

“I always thought ‘classic love’ belonged on the radio,” Vile says, comparing the track to Fleetwood Mac’s “Honey Hi.” “It had been a long time since I heard a classic song that belonged on the radio in a classic way.”

“hit of the high life” captures a sense of faded glory, with Vile and Roberts’ half-spoken vocals recalling Nick Cave or late-career Johnny Cash atop bluesy electric piano and guitar. “slow walkers ‘22” is an intricate finger-picking acoustic showcase built around the brilliantly blunt couplet “Everyone I know, talks to me way too slow / I lose track of what they say before they walk away,” a re-interpretation of Vile’s 2008 original song of the same name, while “wildflower” reimagines the wistful dream pop of Beach House’s original as a lonesome guitar ballad.

Classic Love is a concise but emblematic entry in the Kurt Vile canon: infectious, yet unvarnished, showcasing his natural ability to craft his own songs and interpolate others that you want to keep listening to. Responding to Roberts comparing him to a tightrope walker, he stresses, “I like to fall, too. That’s the beauty. A lot of times if you’re not careful the producer will erase the falls and [I] say ‘Put that fucking back. We don’t want it to be perfectly straight, because that’s not fucking real.’”

RATBOYS

Despite its title, Ratboys’ new album Singin’ to an Empty Chair is not defined by what’s missing. Rather, it’s the beginning of an important dialogue with a close loved one vocalist Julia Steiner finds herself estranged from. The music on the band’s sixth studio album – its first for New West Records fills the space that person left behind with 11 songs showcasing Ratboys at the peak of their powers — twangy, effervescent, as confident as they’ve ever been, and perhaps more emotionally interrogative than ever before. The four-piece Chicago band followed up 2023’s highly acclaimed The Window by reconvening with co-producer Chris Walla to begin tracking at a rural Wisconsin cabin before taking the songs to Steve Albini’s famed Electrical Audio studios in Chicago and later to Rosebud Studio in Evanston, Illinois. The results veer from bubbly power-pop on “Anywhere” to irresistible post-country on “Penny in the Lake,” along with heart-piercing ballads like “Just Want You to Know the Truth” and an exhilarating detour into the extraterrestrial on “Light Night Mountains All That,” which Steiner dubs the band’s mammoth “wormhole jam.” Singin’ to an Empty Chair also marks the first Ratboys album written since Steiner began therapy, which the singer/lyricist credits for the clarity found across the album’s unflinching examinations of relationship and self. Fittingly, as the album begins by extending a hand into the void, it concludes with a scene of serenity – all while weaving candid honesty, humor, chaos, and whimsy along the way. “It’s not all doom and gloom,” Steiner says. “The experience of making this record definitely gives me hope for whatever happens next.”

THEY ARE GUTTING A BODY OF WATER