Pavement have announced a stacked roster of special guests for their upcoming tour of Australia, with each show featuring different supports.
- READ MORE: “It’d be total cringe if we did that” – is Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus right about reunion albums?
Returning for their first tour Down Under since 2010, the indie-rock legends will play six headline shows across February and March. The run will kick off in Perth on Wednesday February 22, continuing along to Adelaide, Brisbane, Thirroul and Sydney, before wrapping up in Melbourne on Friday March 3.
Opening the show in Perth will be local psych-rock outfit Pond. Pavement will then be joined by Bad//Dreems in Adelaide, before Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever jump onboard for the Brisbane show. Floodlights are the only band performing at more than one show, appearing at both the Thirroul and Sydney dates. Lastly, Romero will kick the festivities off in Melbourne.
Tickets to all but that lattermost show (which is sold out) are on sale now – find them here.
In addition to their headline dates, Pavement will perform in Hobart as part of next year’s Mona Foma festival. They were the second band to be announced for the festival, after Bon Iver was revealed as the first act in August. The band will also be playing the inaugural Tent Pole festival in Geelong, where they’ll be joined by Spiderbait, Magic Dirt, Floodlights and more.
After first breaking up in 1999, Pavement reunited in 2010, embarking on a world tour that included several shows in Australia (and an appearance at that year’s Golden Plains festival). In 2019, the band announced they would reform once again to perform at 2020’s Primavera Sound, which was ultimately cancelled due to the pandemic.
In May of this year, the band played their first gig in 12 years, delivering a lengthy set at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. The following month, they finally performed at Primavera Sound in Barcelona and Portugal, before continuing with a headline tour of North America.
On it, they performed the ‘Perfect Sound Forever’ deep cut ‘Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent’, marking its first appearance on a setlist since 1996. In Philadelphia, too, they welcomed Kurt Vile out to perform ‘Zurich Is Stained’.
Reflecting on Pavement’s second reunion in October, frontman Stephen Malkmus said: “The tour’s been great so far. I’m sort of like a tiger let out of the cage. An older, greyer tiger.” He later told NME that it’s been “really fun to get back”, however the band have no plans to release any new music. “It’s pretty much just pure nostalgia in my mind,” Malkmus said, opining that it would be “total cringe” if Pavement dropped a new record in the present.
Nevertheless, the band announced that a new musical titled Slanted! Enchanted! – based on their debut album, 1992’s ‘Slanted And Enchanted’ – would debut this month. The first two performances were held the Sheen Center in New York.
Pavement’s 2023 Australian tour dates are:
FEBRUARY
Wednesday 22 – Boorloo/Perth, Concert Hall (with Pond)
Friday 24 – Kaurna/Adelaide, Thebarton Theatre (with Bad//Dreems)
Saturday 25 – nipaluna/Hobart, Mona Foma
Tuesday 28 – Meanjin/Brisbane, Fortitude Music Hall (with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever)
MARCH
Wednesday 1 – Dharawal/Thirroul, Anita’s Theatre (with Floodlights)
Thursday 2 – Warrang/Sydney, Enmore Theatre (with Floodlights)
Friday 3 – Naarm/Melbourne, Palais Theatre (with Romero) // SOLD OUT
Saturday 4 – Djilang/Geelong, Tent Pole Festival
Additional reporting by Ellie Robinson.