In September 2009, when word filtered out that slacker-rock legends Pavement were reforming, thousands of bloggers, newspapers and bloggers-for-newspapers took to the Internet to trumpet the news. It was a veritable new-millennial traffic-spike: a source of gossip-mill excitement for generations of indie nerds. Comment threads filled with banter, old Pavement bootlegs were disseminated into the digital diaspora, message-board discussions about possible/probable/hopedfor set lists entailed. The act of getting the band back together was akin to the stone thrown in the pond, and the ripples of digital static washed outwards apace.

Twenty years earlier, when Pavement released their first seven-inch single, there was no press fanfare. There wasn’t even a press release. The five-song set was self-released by a band who, at that time, were a mysterious entity, attributed only to similarly mysterious entities SM and Spiral Stairs. They didn’t have a band photo. No one knew who they were.