WORD: Is there a smarter American rock band than Pavement? Hard to imagine. It’s been said that literature sacrificed itself back in the 60s so that rock could grow. That’s when poetic kids picked up guitars. That’s when the rock song turned sneaky, erudite and sublime on occasion, and the novel began overstating the obvious, except in rare instances. From Pavement’s earliest four-tracks (see: Westing (By Musket and Sextant) to the phenomenal Brighten the Corners (see: enclosed), they’ve been writing and recording great, picturesque, spooky, wacked-out, tear-jerking soul music that finesses American experience like nothing else on record, in print, on film, or in art galleries. Take it from an awestruck novelist who’s prone to overstating the obvious. Pavement aren’t just America’s most literate band, they could be its finest living writers, I mean in addition to their songs being wildly catchy and unpretentious and all that.

STORY: Two years ago, Pavement were playing a club in Atlanta. A good friend of mine who adores them attended the show, and brought along a cassette of some music she’d made, hoping to pass it to one of the band members. She’d been having a weirdly obsessive daydream: Pavement would meet her, take the tape, slip it into the deck on their tour bus later, flip out, phone Matador and force them to give her a record deal. Stephen Malkmus or Mark Ibold or Spiral Stairs would produce her first platinum album, fall in love with her, and they’d become a sort of happier Courtney and Kurt to the budding post-grunge generation. Anyway, during one of those classic brief, what-the-fucking-hell Pavement set lists, Stephen Malkmus spotted my friend at the foot of the stage. She held out the tape which he grabbed and shoved into his back pocket. She was ecstatic, rocking out, when, maybe five minutes later, Malkmus executed a tricky chord change, and accidentally fell on his ass. She froze. Pavement kept playing, oblivious. Malkmus got to his feet, reached into his pocket, pulled out the mangled tape, threw it down on the stage and, to the cheers of the audience, gleefully stomped it to smithereens. Thus her little tragedy became a piece of Pavement’s magic. She’s fine by the way, and can’t wait to tell her grandchildren.

QUESTION: Has Steve Malkmus’ friendship with Elastica’s Justine Frischman and Blur’s Damon Albarn saved England from Brit-pop? See Blur’s new, very Pavementy single “Beetlebum” (straight in at #1 on the English charts.)

PROOF: Slanted and Enchanted, the most deliriously beautiful debut album of the pomo rock era. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which needs no introduction. Wowee Zowee, a stupidly misunderstood display of tensile strength that’s destined to go down in history as Pavement’s White Album. Brighten the Corners, the band’s most exquisite, sweet, multiplicitous, downright gorgeous album yet — a record so fine and fresh that it might just single-handedly save rock from trip hop.

— Dennis Cooper