Are You Pearl Jam? Or Pavement? Or Both?

A ’90s personality test.

There is a scene in the very strange, deeply fascinating pseudo-documentary Pavements, about the ’90s alternative rock band Pavement (which opens in various theaters this weekend), in which Stephen Malkmus, the lead singer and creative voice of the band, is preparing for a reunion concert in 2022. The band, rather infamously, has never quite gotten along with one another, leading to some equally infamous on-stage blowups, often because of Malkmus’ prickly moodiness. But Malkmus, while rehearsing, stumbles across an unfamiliar sensation: Satisfaction. “We sound good,” he says.

He then pauses, with a bemused grin. “It’s kind of funny to think that we’re finally getting it right, now that it doesn’t really matter.”

Pavement has to be the best never-was rock band in the world, the signature critics darling (their album Slanted and Enchanted was №2 in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll in 1992, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain held the same spot two years later) during one of the most exciting moments in rock and roll’s history. Pavement was the band that was always about to break big but never quite did. One of the great things about the film — made by Alex Ross Perry, who directed Her Smell and Queen of Earth and is the absolute perfect person to try to wrangle together a documentary…