The latest issue of Relix examines the past, present and future of the band Pavement. In conjunction with our story, we asked a number of artists to share their thoughts on the band. Here Trey Anastasio, Patrick Carney, Josh Ritter, Will Sheff and Marco Benevento all comment on the music.

When do you remember hearing Pavement for the first time?
We were playing in Portland, Oregon, I think it was the spring of 1994. I was wandering around town and came across this cool little record store and went in to look around. I asked the woman behind the counter if she had anything new that she liked, and she handed me Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

I clearly remember liking the cover and putting it on in the bus. I didn’t love it at first, but I remember thinking the first track sounded heartfelt. That was enough for me to want to play it again, after which I began to really hear the first track. I also began to notice the second track, and found myself gravitating to a couple others deeper in the record as well, like “Range Life” probably, though at this point I didn’t even know what the songs were called. This process continued with each subsequent listen. The record just kept sounding better and better.

To make a long story short, by the end of the tour I could not stop listening. I fell in love with that record. I ended up getting everything they put out. Wowee Zowee is my favorite. Pavement was the soundtrack to the second half of the ‘90s for me. I had a couple friends who felt the same way and we would quote lines to each other in the corner at parties. “chim chim chim sing a song of praise, for your elders… They’re in the back. Pick out some Brazilian nuts, for your engagement… Check that expiration date man, it’s later than we think.”

Most of the people I hung out with didn’t really get what the big deal was, but to the friends I had who really liked Pavement at that point, it felt like we were in on a secret.

What do you find appealing about Pavement’s music?
“Father to a Sister of Thought” is one of my all time favorite Pavement songs. I used to sing that song to my girls to put them to sleep – “Rotten device, I’ll say it twice;” “Angel of Corpus Christy, you’re so misty.” Listening to it now, I’m transported right back into that era, the mid to late ‘90s. The busses and hotels, the parties in Burlington, the European tours. It’s really emotional.

I love Stephen Malkmus’ guitar playing. Check out “Rattled by the Rush” . He kind of reminds me of Neil Young, who’s playing I also love. They both know how to milk it. When I met Bryce Goggin he told me that the solo on “Rattled” was one take, which didn’t surprise me because it sounds so fresh. Bryce’s genius is knowing when not to “fix” something, which is a tough thing for a lot of producers to get. Bryce gets it. He knows that “right” or “perfect” usually isn’t better.

I wish I could appropriately thank those guys. Their music was a big part of my life during that emotional, turbulent period. I’ll always be grateful.

When do you remember hearing Pavement for the first time?
The first time I heard Pavement was 1994. I was 14 and I was in my friend Gabe’s basement. His older brother Josh was always introducing us to new music, some of it amazing and some of it horrendous. I remember hearing “Silent Kit” and flipping out. I wanted to really get into Sonic Youth back then but it wasn’t poppy enough for me at 14. Pavement was the missing link between noisy guitars and pop for me.

What did you find appealing about Pavement’s music on record and/or live?
I saw Pavement May 19, 1995 in Cleveland on the Wowee Zowee tour. To this day it is the best concert I have ever seen. I remember being surprised they were playing such a small room ‘cause to me they were the biggest band on earth. Watching Bob Nastanovich was by far my favorite part.

How, if at all, has Pavement impacted your own music?
Gary Young’s drumming on Slanted and Enchanted is amazing. He is basically writing guitar parts on the drums – I’m into that kind of thing.

When do you remember hearing Pavement for the first time?
The first time I heard Pavement I was in Ohio. We were driving to Parma see a politician give a speech. We’d been listening to Busta Rhymes for about an hour. I can’t remember the song, but I always associate the lyrics to “The Hexx” with that trip. I’m pretty sure we were going to see Bill Clinton.

What do you find appealing about Pavement’s music?
I’ve never seen Pavement live. My best friend and manager Darius Zelkha took about a year to really turn me on to them. When it happened it was like someone had spiked the punch. Perhaps that’s one of the things I find so appealing about them – once you get them, it’s like your own private discovery. Pavement is the Patron Saint of musical left turns. There’s something there for the Beefheart, the Zappa in all of us, but it’s leavened with a kind of fruity, Coral Gables-Tang. They’re not afraid to go Creedence or yacht rock, but they’re likely to make the subject matter Dungeons & Dragons or skateboards or Civil War correspondence in the process.

How, if at all, has Pavement inspired or impacted your own music?
Pavement and Malkmus’ lyrics and production ideas have been a pretty big influence on my own work – not always in it’s subject matter, but certainly in its philosophy. I like the sounds they used, the weird Casio keyboards, the songs about hair, the weird references to cricket and lines like, “Lies and betrayals, fruit colored nails, eeeee-lectricity and lust.” There’s so much in a single Pavement song to appreciate. It’s like eating one of those movie-sized bags of Starburst candy.

When do you remember hearing Pavement for the first time?
I grew up in a pretty isolated town, and I don’t remember hearing about Pavement until I went away to Minnesota for my freshman year at college, which was around the same time I was introduced to pretty much all the big indie rock bands of that time – Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo, etc. – through friends and through college radio.

What do you find appealing about Pavement’s music?
For years, I completely hated Pavement. This wasn’t their fault, really. I guess you could more accurately say I hated certain ways that their music had influenced scores of far lesser bands. Pavement’s seemingly intentional sloppiness and emotional opacity and Malkmus’ disaffected voice and the sense you got from him that he didn’t care what the words that came out of his mouth meant – those things were all exceptions to the traditional rock approach, but they were exceptions that proved the rule. Pavement got away with all that stuff because they had such panache.

Their imitators, though, took Pavement’s example as permission to not care about being good at their instruments, to not try to write good songs and to not worry about expressing any point of view or even emotion in what they played and sung. For years, the college airwaves were filled with this kind of clangorous lo-fi guitar rock with some marble-mouthed singer mumbling in the exact same range as the guitars, with no melody to speak of, and a sloppy crappy band playing behind them. Because of Pavement, you were somehow supposed to believe that this music had merits even though you couldn’t figure out what those merits might possibly be.

I remember going to long and miserably boring five-band-bills where the stage was a protracted parade of shlubby dudes who stumbled onstage dressed in clothes it looked like they’d picked off the dorm room floor that morning. We were all supposed to believe they were all great, because they were all like Pavement. In some ways, I think the unbelievable boringness of the endless local-band Pavement clones (combined with the gravely-serious Palace and Low clones who would shoot you a dirty look if you didn’t sit cross-legged on the floor during their shows) was one of the things that paved the way (ha, ha, ha) to showy genres like “New New York Rock” and “Dance Punk” and all that stuff. By that point, people were desperate for some kind of fun out of their indie rock, even if it was ridiculous.

But musicians shouldn’t be blamed for who they influenced and when the boring pseudo-Pavement bands had fallen, I began to re-appreciate all those early Pavement records, and, really, all of their catalog. Malkmus has a truly original voice, snotty and distant but also joyous and weirdly friendly, with a kind of buried vein of emotion that keeps squirming away petulantly when you try to touch it. He writes fantastic melodies and does that wonderful inspiring thing of throwing them away half the time like he doesn’t even care that they’re good. His cut-and-paste lyrics are always occasionally timelessly brilliant. And the guitars are often like being chased off a cliff by a swarm of bees!

How, if at all, has Pavement inspired or impacted your own music?
I wouldn’t say they’ve been a huge influence, but I do adore early Malkmus lyrics. They have the exquisite-corpse thing where you have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about and yet you know completely but you could never articulate because it’s like five different things at once.

When do you remember hearing Pavement for the first time?
I love it when people hand me CDs at the right time. I listened to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain for the first time maybe two years ago. And I specifically remember Bret Gladstone from The Village Voice handing me the expanded double disc and feeling excited about listening to it. I’d heard about how awesome they were and how they influenced a bunch of bands that I liked over the last 10 years or so. Somehow it was the only CD in my van for about two months. “Stop Breathin’” was a favorite as was “Range Life.”

What do you find appealing about Pavement’s music?
I loved Stephen Malkmus’s voice. And the photos and artwork in the double disc Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I was incredibly blown away by the sounds on the record – the lo-fi guitars and raw room sound. I dug Malkmus’ songwriting, too.

How, if at all, has Pavement inspired or impacted your own music?
It reminds me to keep the music loose. And to write with no fear.

In what ways might listeners hear similarities between Bryce Goggin’s production work with Pavement and his production work on Me Not Me and your forthcoming album?
Maybe in some of the more raw tracks. Some improvisations can get pretty gritty and some tunes can lend themselves to a more live bashin’ your head sort of feel. Working with Bryce Goggin reminds me that instruments played through enormous tube amps from the ‘50s and ‘60s can really improve that level of amplified rocking that some super clean records lack.