Lightning Kills Pavement's Atlanta Farewell — and the Band Shrugs

Pavement's headlining set at Atlanta's Shaky Knees festival was canceled at roughly 7:53 p.m. on Saturday, done in by thunder and lightning before the band played a note. The gig was the last announced show of the indie-rock band's second reunion, which began in 2022, and it paid, according to industry sources cited in Grayson Haven Currin's reporting for Pitchfork, a few hundred grand — "a lot more than they ever made back then."

What followed was less tragedy than farce. Bassist Mark Ibold, 63, emerged with a black garbage bag and loaded rows of Modelo and Coors Light into a backstage refrigerator; the back of his shirt read "Poachers Bar." Auxiliary drummer Bob Nastanovich, unmoved, streamed a horse race from Altoona, Iowa, on his laptop. His horse, Brinx Job — named for a Pavement song — held on for third. "The show's right here, my man," Nastanovich said.

Did the band even want to play?

Perhaps not. Guitarist Spiral Stairs, who lives in Australia, reported a remark from singer Stephen Malkmus. "Stephen said this afternoon, 'I hope this gets canceled.' You saw him at sound check — he wasn't feeling it," Stairs said. "I told him, 'Well, you got your wish.'"

Malkmus, 60 since May, later contradicted the shrug. Days after the cancellation he said repeatedly how disappointed he was, recalling a couple who flew across the country for the show. "I'm feeling bad for all those people who missed it and had to go see Twenty One Pilot," he said, mangling the name of the night's eventual headliners, Twenty One Pilots.

How did Pavement get here?

The band began as an art project between elementary-school friends Malkmus and Stairs (born Scott Kannberg), back home from college in Stockton, California. Their accidental drummer, Gary Young, 13 years their senior, recorded them in his home studio, Louder Than You Think, and greeted concertgoers with celery sticks or pennies. Young died in 2023, the first Pavement member to do so, soon after turning 70.

Their five-album run between 1992 and 1999 produced, by Currin's count, two or three masterpieces. Slanted and Enchanted (1992) generated 5,000 preorders after a Spin rave, so many that Matador Records couldn't pay rent; the day the boxes arrived, police delivered an eviction notice. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994) spent four weeks on the Billboard 200, and Melody Maker's Everett True called it "the album of 1994, the yardstick by which all others are judged."

The end came in stages. A mud pie hit Malkmus at Lollapalooza in 1995 and he walked off. At the first Coachella, on October 10, 1999, he couldn't sing "Gold Soundz" in 102-degree heat. A month later, in London, he attached handcuffs to his microphone stand to symbolize being in a band. They walked offstage for 11 years.

What sustains a reunion this size?

Streaming, partly. "Harness Your Hopes," a former EP obscurity, went viral at least twice in the past decade, most famously soundtracking a Utah teen's TikTok fit-check trend. Stairs keeps a gold record for it on his shelf in Australia; the platinum one is on its way. "That song, more than anything, has helped us keep doing this, because you see all these kids in the crowd discovering us," he said.

The band leaned in, releasing a music video starring Sophie Thatcher, born a year after the song came out, and participating in Alex Ross Perry's 2024 film Pavements, which staged an Off Broadway musical of their songs and a half-fake memorabilia museum.

What happens now?

The day after the canceled show, Nastanovich drove the band's gear seven hours north from Atlanta to drummer Steve West's home in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. The rest of the band flew up to rehearse for a recording session, people around the band told Currin — though anyone asked inside the organization offered only "No comment," often with a smile. Several shows are scheduled for 2027.

Nastanovich, for one, believes Malkmus has never enjoyed Pavement more. "He's always loved all of us, but he's able to express it more," he said. Stairs, the band's most surly member, came closest to sentiment: "Our music is appealing to people in a way we never, ever thought would happen. I'm not weighed down by it. It's a very positive part of my life."

Malkmus frames the reunion as something closer to rest than work. "It's like a version of vacation: You get to act like a rock star for a second, and then everyone goes back to their life," he said. If new recordings emerge from Virginia, that vacation may turn into a career again.