PAVEMENT

PAVEMENT (Rock Garden, Dublin)

Pavement play like a group who are deeply suspicious of taking this whole rock ‘n’ roll thing seriously.

They are like song subversives; infiltrating a great melody in order to detonate some chaotic, quirky chord changes and some chicken clucking harmonies in it. (Yes, Pavement actually did a very good chicken impersonation tonight.)

There’s only so much I can take of quirkiness, and particularly when much of it is Fall-inspired. But the great thing about Pavement for me is that no matter how hard they try and succeed in being weird, they can never escape the fact that in Stephen J. Malkmus they have a kid with a sparkling pop sensibility and a genuine rock ‘n’ roll heart (not to mention a beautiful, aching sensitivity and melancholy). Because no matter how hard Malkmus tries to be off-beat and seriously weird, somewhere in the beginning, middle or near the end of a song he is to be found digging deep into old ground and nearly always managing to come up with something rich and fresh.

Pavement have no respect. They take a song and they say, ‘let’s see where we can go with this one'. And they go down lanes, in your front door and out the back kitchen window. They go all over the place. Sometimes their songs end like they’ve just had heart attacks. Sometimes they end in the middle and begin again or something like that. Sometimes you’re left wondering, did that song end there or has the other one begun already?

In lesser hands this sort of thing could be an awful pain in the arse but Pavement manage to pull it off nicely because, basically, they have great bloody songs. Their absolutely brilliant new album Crooked Rain Crooked Rain — Buy it! Buy it! Buy it! — may have lots of lyrics about rock ‘n’ roll being past it, but the album in itself and tonight’s performance prove that even though Pavement may contain a bunch of melancholy, modest lads and a lead singer who dresses like a leprechaun — when in Ireland . . .? — once you let them loose on a decent melody, they will shake it and make it rock ‘n’ roll.

• Gerry McGovern