Anyone that found themselves coming of age to the sound of early 90s indie rock has a place in their heart for Pavement. Go to any ID show at your local music venue, mention the band's revered name to a stranger, and make a friend for life. But ask virtually any 16-year-old indie newcomer about Pavement's impact on their lives and record collections, and reach the bitter realization that what was once so fresh and utterly indispensable now merely passes with an "eh." The kids are never quick to dismiss Pavement, as the band is, and likely always will be, heralded among the founding fathers of independent rock as we know it. But somehow, the magic that once made them so vital and potent has faded with age, and just doesn't seem quite as relevant in these high-powered times as it did ten years ago.
When Pavement came along with Slanted and Enchanted in 1991, it seemed a revelation: so vastly different from anything before it, and so clearly prescient of everything that would come after. Stephen Malkmus' lazy, pitch-imperfect California drawlin', Spiral Stairs' shredded almost-guitar-playing, and the album's seemingly unfinished half-songs encapsulated the slacker ethos of the time with the hyperactive, restless energy that only hits after long bouts with boredom. Pavement's stream-of-consciousness lyrics and one-take anthems achieved genius through apathy. And in a time when apathy seemed the only option in life, no one said everything by saying nothing at all like those bored Stocktonites.
These days, the kids have ambition, and rightfully so. America's flush with cash and prizes, and for once, there's actual opportunity. In this age, when kids come barreling out of high school with enough computer experience to put Nolan Bushnell to shame, indifference would simply be retarded. And the current climate of independent music reflects that with bands like Sigur Rós, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai who, while all somewhat dreary at times, seem driven by an intense passion to be the best at what they do. Yes, time advances for everyone, it seems. Everyone except Scott Kannberg.
Despite Pavement's demise, Kannberg still hangs on tightly to his Spiral Stairs alias, a name which seems an inside joke so closely affiliated with Pavement that it's hard to see how it could exist outside the band. Even the name of the new group he's formed with members of the Moore Brothers (a duo who finds their home on his Amazing Grease label), the Preston School of Industry, is a waning reference to an early Pavement song. It's also undoubtedly another inside joke between Pavement members, as the actual Preston School is a detention and re-education center for juvenile delinquents in Ione, California, just over 40 miles from Pavement's hometown.
The music on the Preston School of Industry's debut album, All This Sounds Gas, revels in early 90s alterna-rock, a sound so exhausted it now sounds at least as generic as its equally banal predecessor, freedom rock. The only thing separating the Preston School from the Gin Blossoms is their well-worn Pavement edge. Even so, Pavement's rough-hewn absurdities have been blent with more conventional pop structures by bedroom wannabes for the past decade; the fact that the Preston School is fronted by an ex-member of the band doesn't make their music any less of a mimicry.
Three of the album's tracks were written by Kannberg during the sessions for Pavement's swan-song, 1999's Terror Twilight, including the record's lead-off, "Whalebones," which starts the album off nicely with the kind of lazy, repetition-based melody that should sound familiar to any Pavement addict. But while a pleasant listen, all of the youthful exuberance Kannberg displayed on his Pavement tracks-- even ones as late as Brighten the Corners' "Date w/IKEA"-- has totally evaporated, and where the song should burst into a fiery distortion overdrive, it's content to meander on and peter out with no sign of actual effort. "The Idea of Fires" and the seven-minute long "Encyclopedic Knowledge of," both also written in the Terror Twilight days, never seem to gain direction or rise above I-could-do-that mediocrity.
While these three tracks seem passable at best, they're never downright offensive. But the uninspired country twang of "A Treasure @ Silver Bank (This Dynasty's for Real)" crosses that line. Senseless lyrics like, "It's a polyester bright day now/ And the dinosaurs are for real," and, "50 minutes till the muses needs/ Put you out to the trees," just sound so fucking wrong against the vagabond Travis Tritt backdrop. And a half-hour later, the album closes at its worst with the neverending "Take a Stand," a pale Soft Bulletin imitation whose hackneyed, off-kilter beat stumbles awkwardly underneath 11,000 layers of acoustic guitar and a chorus of inept la-la-la's before the song closes with a voice proclaiming it "a brilliant rock odyssey."
All This Sounds Gas might not have been such a weak effort if Kannberg's lyrics actually had anything to say, but nonsense prose has never meshed well with jangly, country-inflected pop. The album also might have improved, however slightly, if they'd left off the embarrassing quasi-experimental keyboard jam, "Blü Sön," a 44-second excursion to Planet Shame that makes the Byrds' "Moog Raga" seem like a monolith of pulsing electronic genius. But, of course, they didn't, leaving All This Sounds Gas to languish in future obscurity as yet another post-legendary project that fails to live up to its frontman's glory days. Unfortunate.
