Pavement release first recorded music in 25 years ahead of new biopic
Indie icons Pavement have released their first recorded music in 25 years: a cover of Jim Pepper’s ‘Witchitai-To’.
The cover is Pavement’s first new release since their 1999 EP Major Leagues, though the band played it throughout their 2022 reunion tour. The recording hails from the rehearsals for the shows.
Cheekily, Pavement co-founder Scott Kannberg teased the recording as the “new Pavement song” in December 2024 during an appearance on Vish Khanna’s podcast, ‘Kreative Kontrol’.
That the new Pavement song is a cover should be of little surprise to fans. Malkmus previously said in 2022 amidst their reunion tour that there would not be any new music from Pavement on the horizon, stating that “it would be total cringe.”
He later 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.”
At that time, he said of the song: ”It’s not a big deal,” referencing that the tune stemmed from jam sessions during live rehearsals. “It’s just cool because it’s something different and is a song we all really loved playing.”
Pavement also returned to the world of television performances for the first time in 15 years with their performance of ‘Haness Your Hopes’ on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The Pavements biopic is also set for upcoming release via Mubi. In the trailer, Stranger Things’ Joe Keery plays bandleader Stephen Malkmus and Jason Schwartzman as Chris Lombardi. The movie is dubbed as “the story of the world’s most important and influential band Pavement as you’ve never seen them before,” it appears to offer a wild pastiche of the music biopic genre.
Ranking all five Pavement albums from worst to best, Far Out wrote of the band’s success in 2024, noting: “Coming off the back of a wave of acts like Sonic Youth, REM and Nirvana, who were reshaping the rock landscape in the US in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Pavement’s blasé attitude was a huge part of what made them so special.”
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