LOOKS like lo fi is on the up and up, if last night's gig by US band Pavement is anything to go by. The avant garage band from California were playing their first Dublin date since 1994, and more than 1,000 faithful punters turned up to hear the band's slanted songs from the beaten sidewalk, of life. The gig was originally scheduled for the Mean Fiddler, but the recent closure of that venue forced the promoters to move the concert to the larger Red Box, and 500 extra tickets were snapped up by eager fans, proving the pulling power of America's most well trodden alternative band.
Dublin hopefuls The Mexican Pets opened the show with a tightly wound set of songs, stretching their guitar grinding sound to sublime breaking point.
So where did Stephen J. Malkmus and his Pavement cohorts spring from? Did they simply emerge from the primordial tar to challenge pedestrian pop with just a few twisted riffs and bent out of shape lyrics? Actually, the band began as the part time project of songwriter Malkmus and guitarist Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannenberg - how were they to know that they'd soon become a major cult on the US college circuit, or that they would hit the UK Top 20 with their second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain? And if you'd told Malkmus that he was destined to become the Kurt Cobain of lo fi, he'd have probably looked at you with a sideways glance.
Pavement began their set in characteristically slacker style, throwing some old, half forgotten tunes into the moshpit, then topping them off with new songs like Stereo and Starlings of the Slipstream. With the help of Mark Ibold on bass, Stephen West on drums, and Bob Nastanovich on percussion, synth and occasional, blood curdling screams, Pavement nonchalantly dissected pop's formaldehyde saturated corpse and put it back together into weird shapes like a bunch of kids playing with a model kit. New song Type Slowly was a carefully collated manuscript of muddled emotions, and Shady Lane was a search for solace in a world gone commercially crazy. The nearest thing Pavement have ever come to a hit single was the sharply sussed Cut Your Hair, and it grabbed the crowd by the scruff of the neck, shaking them around a bit before losing interest and moving on to the next crooked riff.
Pavement didn't need to play the over enthusiastic rockers, however, and when they shrugged off their guitars and shuffled offstage, the crowd begged for more of that lovely lo fi stuff. Faithful fans were rewarded with re-readings of such early tunes as Box Elder and Unfair, and a laid back, Beatlesque finale which made Blur's Beetlebum sound like Herman's Hermits. Way, to go, Malk.