PHOTOS AND ARTICLE BY GABRIEL DAVID BARKIN | PUBLISHED ON February 24, 2026

In the early 90s, New Jack Swing and hair metal dominated the charts and grunge was ascendant on rock radio. The Grateful Dead were filling stadiums. Madonna and Michael Jackson duked it out for claim to the throne of pop music (though everybody knew it had already been usurped by Prince).

Over on college radio (shorthand for “good music, low record sales”), bands like the Pixies, Yo La Tengo, and Sonic Youth captivated a mélange of record store clerks, avant garde post-punk arty intellectuals, and just-cool-enough-for-school undergrads. Following on the heels of the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello and treading the hallowed ground of Lou Reed and the Kinks, the indie poppers plied crafty lyrics set on a variety of thick and thin jangly guitar layers. The number of people who claimed to put the Violent Femmes at the top of their “inspirations” list probably outnumbered the actual number of records those cats sold.

Into this pool dove Pavement. They hailed from the cultural Mecca of Stockton, deep in the heart of California’s Central Valley. Their frontman was singer-songwriter Stephen Malkmus, although some would say “singer” is a generous description. He delivered his words in a voice more like a sing-songy storyteller. His distinctive sound was more “talk” than “croon.”

The band scored a top 10 hit on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart in 1993 with “Cut Your Hair.” (Believe me, you know the song if you listened to the Bay Area’s Live 105 in the 90s.) One might easily grasp that there was a not-too-subtle message in the lyrics indicting 80s arena rock and MTV’s celebration of style over substance:

I don’t remember a line, I don’t remember a word
But I don’t care, I really don’t care
Did you see the drummer’s hair?

The alternative messaging was tacit: long live the nerds with guitars!

Around the same time that Pavement was earning their notoriety, the Noise Pop Festival was inaugurated in San Francisco with a one-day $5 show at the Kennel Club (later to become Justice League and now the Independent). With a mission dedicated to presenting a wide range of mostly unhailed indie pop and alt rock, the festival grew each year. Nowadays, for nine days in mid-winter, Noise Pop presents dozens of shows at fistfuls of clubs throughout San Francisco.

Noise Pop has hosted pre-fame shows by the White Stripes, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, The Shins, Fleet Foxes and Bright Eyes. Among this year’s top-of-the-poster lineup you’ll find Tortoise, Lyrics Born, and Jay Som. Further down there’s 70s prog hero Phil Manzanera (wait, what!? how did I miss that one last week!) and DeVotchKa. There are dozens more. I guarantee you haven’t heard of most of them. I also guarantee there’s a ton of good shit in there.

Pavement never played the festival, but Malkmus has appeared previously as a solo artist. His sold-out appearance at the Great American Music Hall Monday night was also at the top of this year’s Noise Pop bill.

The show began with a 20-minute performance by Oakland’s Cole Pulice (they/them). Pulice is an electroacoustic saxophonist, improviser, and composer. They eased into their one-piece solo performance with a slow and thoughtful guitar melody, set some loops, and then swapped the Stratocaster for a saxophone.

The music was ambient, somewhere twixt Brian Eno and Pharoah Sanders. More loops. Frequent and tasteful use of an octave pedal. Dreamy and moody. Pulice manipulated a multitude of pedals and FX boxes on the ground in front of them and on a crate to their side. It seemed like a lot of “left-brain” activity to produce a very “right-brain” experience for the audience. And the audience dug it.

Malkmus came on stage for a 70-minute set with just an acoustic guitar and a few stomp boxes (occasional bits of mellow distortion). He smiled a lot, closed his eyes to sing, and enjoyed small bits of banter with the adoring crowd. Between verses, he played some acoustic leads that were mostly crafty and at times clunky. Über indie shit, man.

The set was about half Pavement tunes (no “Cut Your Hair” though), and the other half a mix of material from albums by his post-Pavement outings, including the Silver Jews, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, and two solo records. The plain white spotlights and sparse stage (nothing but a mic and a lonely amp set far back from the singer) made room for the wry poetry for which Malkmus is highly esteemed by his fans. To wit, on Pavement’s “Harness Your Hopes”:

 Well, show me
A word that rhymes with Pavement
And I won’t kill your parents
And roast them on a spit

A sweetly sung cover of the Kinks’ sublime “Waterloo Sunset” was the only break from Malkmus’s own catalog. Later, he made considerable use of his not-too-shabby falsetto on “Surreal Teenagers,” one of a handful of songs from his albums with The Jicks. Throughout the night, handfuls of audience members chimed in on some of their favorite songs. Indie love was in the air.

There was no encore, but Malkmus took a few moments to hand out copies of his handwritten song list – which I can assure you was merely a “serving suggestion,” as he deviated from the order frequently – and a few sheets of printed-out lyrics he’d kept at his feet during the set. Then with one final wave, he left the stage.

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Photos by Gabriel Barkin | www.gdbarkin.com | IG: @gabrieldavidbarkin