Sorry Pavement Fans, Scott Kannberg Says A Reunion Is Only A Remote Possibility

2019 marks 30 years since the formation of Pavement, one of indie-rock’s most definitive acts. After the band got back together for a run of reunion shows in 2010, fans have been waiting for another Pavement tour. The possibility of a 30-year anniversary tour was floated, in advance, by guitarist Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg, but is now definitely not happening, because frontman Stephen Malkmus, as ever, does not want to play reformation shows.

“Steve always complains. ‘I don’t want to do these shows, we’re just being nostalgic,’” offers Kannberg. “But, you know what? I love going to see bands that I didn’t get to see when I was a kid. I still have never seen The Rolling Stones, but I’ll go see the fucking Rolling Stones when they’re 80 years old! And it’ll be great. Nostalgia makes you feel good. Everything’s fucking nostalgic. You drink a Coca-Cola, and you’re remembering what it was like when you were a kid and you [drank] a Coca-Cola. That does something in your brain where it makes you feel good. I love nostalgia, I love history, I love the past. That’s just the way us humans are built.”

Kannberg isn’t resting on his Pavement laurels. He’s just released his third album as Spiral Stairs, We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized, the album following on from 2017’s Doris & The Daggers, with Kannberg hoping to make it “sound a bit bigger and better produced”. But the influences on the album were, too, wholly from the past, drawn from “old records that [he] didn’t really get into when they came out”.

“I really got [inspired by] Van Morrison; not the popular stuff, more the weird records that he did in the ’70s, like Veedon Fleece and Wavelength,” Kannberg explains. “There’s a sense of freedom to the way he sings. That’s something I tried to do a little more. I also got really into the first few Nick Lowe records, which I never really did when they were coming out in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Then, there’s definitely a song on this record where it was me trying to write a Go-Betweens song.”

Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Kannberg was all about punk, then post-punk. Growing up in Stockton, California, he wanted to rebel against the rock’n’roll that’d come before. “I was a teenager in the ’80s, I graduated from high school in ’84. So, the music from the ’70s I fucking hated,” Kannberg recounts. “I hated Led Zeppelin, I hated classic rock, all that stuff. For me, The Clash was the best band [in the world], they should’ve been as big as The Rolling Stones. Punk rock was big for me. Then I got into post-punk: Echo & The Bunnymen, Devo, REM. If there was really one band that guided me to lots of other music, it was REM. They’d do a Wire cover, they’d do a Television cover.

“Classic rock was all over the radio, so I avoided that. I was about The Replacements, and Husker Du; that kind of stuff appealed to me, more. That’s what was exciting about when Nirvana made it big. Their influences were the Pixies and The Replacements. It felt like we were winning for about five minutes, there, in the ’90s. Then the major labels took over again, and Pearl Jam became popular, so it was just ‘Ugh, back to classic rock again.’”

The persistence of boomer nostalgia – from the ’70s through to now – is something Kannberg hates: 

"I can't fucking stand it. It's still dominating our culture."

But, it’s informed his personal desire to never be that guy, waxing lyrical about how great, say, 1991 was. “I never think that my generation is better than anybody’s,” he says. “There’s great music now, there was great music then. It’s funny: I love Roxy Music, but you read these interviews with Bryan Ferry, and all he wants to do is make jazz records. He’s like: ‘I know every musician in Cab Calloway’s band!’ It’s like, whoa, what the fuck? What does that mean? I guess it makes sense, that this is the music that came 20 years before him, and he was fed that nostalgia growing up. But, as nostalgic as I am, I don’t ever wanna be that guy.”