Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus announces new band
Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus has officially launched his new band, The Hard Quartet, with music expected to be released in the near future.
At this stage, all that is known about the group is that Malkmus is joined in the line-up by Emmett Kelly, Matt Sweeney and Jim White. Notably, drummer White is also a member of Dirty Three alongside Warren Ellis, and the trio recently released their first album in 12 years, Love Changes Everything.
While Sweeney has been a member of Swan, Chavez and Skunk, the guitarist also teamed up with Iggy Pop to tour his 2016 album, Post Pop Depression. Although he didn’t play on the record, he was part of a band that played it live which also included Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.
Kelly is another established member of the rock fraternity, having contributed to records by Angel Olsen, Ty Segall and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. He’s also released music under the alias, The Cairo Gang, and is part of The Double and The CIA.
On July 16th, Malkmus took to social media to reveal the band members, as well as the name of the new musical venture. It comes after he previously teased the name in posts, such as, “a hard band is good to find” and another mysterious message which stated, “a hard band name is good to find”.
Malkmus is yet to reveal when music will officially arrive, but the wait shouldn’t be too agonisingly long. The Pavement frontman hasn’t released an album since his 2020 solo effort, Traditional Techniques, and his attention was later turned to reuniting with his former band for an extensive world tour.
After their return was delayed due to the pandemic in 2020, they finally re-surfaced in 2022, and took flight on a nostalgic trip round the world.In a four-star live review of Pavement’s return to UK shores in 2022 after 12 years away at Leeds Academy, Far Out wrote: “The crowd was kept entertained (even though the music was entertaining enough) by Bob Nastanovich, who performed his trademark scream as he paced around the stage like the band’s hype man.”
While they are still touring and appear to have no plans to stop, they have refrained from entering the studio to make new music. In 2022, Malkmus explained to NME why Pavement wouldn’t make another record, claiming, “It’d be total cringe if we [wrote new music]. No way. These songs are good, they exist in this present. There’s no point. That’s just me, anyone can do what they want. It’s your life, choose your adventure. If any band wants to make a new album, they like to do that, that’s totally rad. But, yeah, not happening.”
Malkmus added: “I understand the impetus to put out a new record — it makes it sound like the band’s more legit or something, and not just like a cash-in deal. But it doesn’t have to be that way if you just own your songs.”
Pavement may not release another note of music, but Malkmus is set to soften the blow by starting a new chapter with The Hard Quartet.
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