As they’re back in the news for a reunion, I have been listening to and thinking about Pavement recently. Their songs are still as fresh for me as they were 15 years ago when I last listened to them – at that time, obsessively, for months on end. But they are not as rewarding – not after listening to LCD Soundsystem.
While playing in different genres and a product of different decades, both groups explore fundamentally similar angles. Both are droll and earnest, obscure and precise, layered and clear. Yet only one of these two epoch-defining projects transcends their own contradictions and thus their time and place.
For me, it’s LCD Soundsystem for the win.