Indie-rockers -- the once-flourishing, now rare mid-'90s variety, easily identified by their drab plumage -- love a mystery. Think of how Guided by Voices' rise to notoriety was propelled by their fabled years of invisibility in Dayton. Or the way mild-mannered singer-songwriters Will Oldham and Bill Callahan transformed themselves into something more merely by slipping into their respective secret identities as Palace and Smog. Some bands pursued this strategy more assiduously than others, and some still do; the White Stripes' do-they-or-don't-they angle is the latest variant. But for a while there, an air of obscurity seemed a surefire route to, at the very least, some fanzine adulation and college-radio play.

And in some cases, considerably more. No band parlayed as little information into as much success as Pavement. Beyond their trashy, buried-under-noise production, the pseudonymous line-up -- "S.M." and "Spiral Stairs" -- and the unevocative Letraset artwork of their 1990 seven-inch "Slay Tracks" dared (or begged) those who stumbled across it to ask, "What the hell is this?" Two years later, when they released their first full-length, on then-nascent label Matador, everyone in indiedom knew that no one knew quite who Pavement were, or what they were up to -- though all agreed that they must own some Fall records.

Founders Steven Malkmus and Scott Kannberg eventually lowered the masks, assembled a band, and settled into the usual record-tour-record rhythm. Now, however, two new Matador releases enable us to revisit their early career. The two-CD Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe and Reduxe repackages the above-mentioned debut with the reverent completeness usually reserved for more venerated artists. (Translation: isn't this a little soon?) And Slow Century is a sprawling DVD double disc that includes all the band's videos (which range from engaging Monkees-esque goofs to no-concept lip-synch clips) and the bulk of two live shows from their final tour in 1999.

But the DVD's raison d'être is an hour-long documentary by long-time friend Lance Bangs, who shot shows and interviews sporadically from 1992 on. If Bangs's attempt to reconstruct the past reveals anything, it's that there isn't much to reveal. Pavement come off as Everyband: Echo & the Bunnymen-worshipping high-school bandmates hook up in Stockton, California, after college and find a local studio run by an older drummer (Gary Young, who appears only in hilarious archival footage of early, drunken gigs). They figure out how easy it is to record, press, and mail out 500 copies of a single; they do it. Personnel changes, larger tours, and European television appearances ensue.

It's an appealing myth, but in the telling, Bangs sticks too closely to the members' we're-not-trying party line. There's little attempt to dramatize the combination of luck, effort, deals, and actual artistic merit that contributed to the band's ascendancy, and none at all to identify the tensions that led to their demise. (For that, watch the concerts; when bassist Mark Ibold flubs the intro to "Stereo" in Seattle, Malkmus stops dead, muttering, "It's only the 200th time we've played this.") And if you're wondering why the members cared about making music at all, much less this music, you'll have to figure it out yourself.

Pavement don't make Bangs's job any easier by being, as far as anyone can tell, a bunch of bright but staggeringly normal guys not much given to tortured self-analysis. The obligatory "commentary" track that accompanies their promo videos is almost a parody of their collegiate-slacker image: after some complaints about their shirts and haircuts, there's not much here beyond the rustle of bags of chips and percussionist/mascot Bob Nostanovich's telling the others where to find more beers.

Of course, there's no crime in a band's letting their music do the talking. The revamped Slanted & Enchanted -- which also includes contemporaneous B-sides, outtakes, the slightly later Watery, Domestic EP, two much-bootlegged BBC sessions, and a scorching London concert from 1992 -- does just that. The liner notes may tell us where and when (but not why) Malkmus wrote the songs, and that he yelled "Rock out!" into Gary Young's headphones at key points during recording, but the real mysteries remain intact.

Unlike Pavement's earliest releases, Slanted isn't so much lo-fi as an almost transparent representation of some deeply strange sounds and lyrical conceits. How is it the atonal, mismatched guitar parts of "Conduit for Sale" add up to a perfectly proportioned nugget of garage punk? How do Malkmus's lyrics, which often sound like someone speaking in code about an experience he didn't know how to describe in the first place, manage to carry any emotional resonance at all? How, in short, can something so wrong seem so right? All we'll ever really know is that it did and largely still does. Ten years on, Pavement's story may not be worth a second visit, but their music is.

Issue Date: December 20 - 26, 2002