Pavement release first recorded music in 25 years ahead of new biopic

Pavement have released their first new music in over 25 years – and it is a cover of Jim Pepper’s ‘Witchitai-To’.

• READ MORE: ‘Pavements’ review: a surrealist love letter to the ‘90s indie titans

The legendary US indie band have not released any new recorded music since their 1999 EP ‘Major Leagues’, the last release before their split later that year. They did reunite for a comeback tour in 2022, however, and during those shows, they played ‘Witchitai-To’ regularly.

The new release was captured during the rehearsal for one of those shows, with the band bringing life to the track that was first released as part of Pepper’s band Everything Is Everything’s self-titled debut album in 1969.

Listen here:

News of the release of the track first surfaced in December when Scott Kanneberg, aka Spiral Stairs, told the Kreative Kontrol podcast that “there will be a new Pavement song on the soundtrack” to Pavements, the band’s part-documentary, part-biopic feature film.

Directed by Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell), the movie blends fact and fiction, including scenes depicting the band preparing for a museum exhibit that features up-and-coming bands playing Pavement songs. It also shows Perry casting, writing and directing a jukebox musical based on the band, while also trying to bring a Hollywood biopic to life, starring Stranger Things‘ Joe Keery as frontman Stephen Malkmus and Jason Schwartzman as the band’s manager.

NME awarded the film four stars, with Matthew Turner writing: “The behind-the-scenes footage (some of it scripted, some of it not) frequently features Keery preparing for his role as Malkmus, and becoming a little obsessed, whether it’s perfectly recreating 1990s photographs of the singer (an original way of presenting archive material) or, in the film’s most obviously mockumentary moment, taking a photograph of Malkmus’ tongue, so as to work on the accent properly with his voice coach.

“In short, this is a thrillingly creative music documentary that serves as a loving tribute to the band and the sense of fun that Perry is having behind the camera is both palpable and infectious.”

Pavements is set for a limited cinematic release in the UK and will be made available for streaming via MUBI.

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