#range life

[keeryquinn]

Joe giving Fred a hug cause he’s emotional after filming 🥹🥹. I love them both so much 🥰

Via: Fred Hechinger Daily on Twitter/X

[freckledjoes]

obsessed <3

[dailyjoekeery]

New Movie Still from 'Pavements' with Joe Keery, Fred Hechinger, Nat Wolff, Logan Miller and Griffin Newman

[godsavetheanimalz]

when stephen malkmus said i wanna raaaaaange lifeeeee i felt that…

[paulmescalsnose]

I’m sure this this is sacrilege to fans of the band, but as someone who had never heard of Pavement and who fell for the whole “Range Life is a real biopic” trailer, I saw Pavements tonight and I saw it specifically for Joe Keery and Fred Hechinger.

if you are also fans of them and were wondering how much they are in it and if it’s worth it: Joe is in it a fair bit, and is very funny in the role. I’m glad I saw it for him. Fred is not in it very much, and if I’d seen it only for him, I think I’d be disappointed. He only has a couple lines and is most often in group scenes with Joe and the others (however he remains great).

[grrlmusic]

Pavement - Range Life (Official Video)

[dustedmagazine]

Pavement — Pavements Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Matador)

Last spring, Stephen Malkmus performed a loose-jointed and shambolic solo set in my town, a low-key and disorganized performance, enacted amidst much shuffling of papers and refusal of requests (Malkmus has forgotten more Pavement songs than you probably know). It is difficult to convey, however, how hard the audience—mostly greying ex-hipsters in horn rims and original-issue concert tees—leaned into this performance, how eager they were for every new set of chords, every near-forgotten lyrical fragment. You can see the whole thing here, and if you’re a hard core Pavement fan, you’ll likely enjoy it. But the point is that there’s an appetite for Pavement-related content, pretty much regardless of quality, which brings us to the Pavements OST.

The soundtrack, like the movie (which, full disclosure, I haven’t seen) follows three parallel storylines: a documentary about actual Pavement and its history; a weirdly clunky biopic called Range Life starring Stranger Things’ Joe Keery as Malkmus; and a supremely ill-advised musical called Slanted! Enchanted! From the reviews, it sounds like the concept works better on film than it does in the soundtrack. It works very poorly here. There are 41 tracks, 22 of them you’ll want to hear once, at most.

The most awful stuff comes from the musical, putting a cheery, technically proficient, lobotomized gloss on Pavement’s twisty, torturous songs. Want to hear “Give It a Day” belted, not rasped or slurred? Got you covered. Ever imagined “Rattled by the Rush” as an all-hands, all-singing, all-dancing finale? Again, this is for you. I was a reluctant convert to David Byrne’s Broadway extravaganza, but this is not that.

The cuts from the biopic are almost as icky, and come across as lunkish, overly literal interpretations of the Pavement mystique. Here’s Keery musing on whether playing Malkmus will win him an award and stumbling through an earnest rendition of “Range Life.” There’s the dejected members of Pavement sitting around after a disastrous set at Lollapalooza 1995.  Here’s Cosloy pledging that he will never, ever sell Pavement out in a stairwell. The line readings are flat, the dialogue obvious, and, sure maybe it’s all a joke that comes out better on film, but it is deadly, deadly dull here in the soundtrack.

But, for all that, Pavements includes a trove of live and alternate takes—actual music played by actual band members—that makes the case for Pavement as a monster band. The Peel Session “Circa 1762” is a blistering, obliterating rampage, Malkmus skating slippery over a monumental buzz; a rehearsal take of “Witchi-Tai-To” is volatile magic. A nine-minute live version of “Type Slowly” aches and flutters and swaggers, a mix of over-literate angst and rock ‘n roll grandeur.

Indeed, when late in the track listing, Keery talks about shedding the Malkmus persona he’s taken on for the role, he suggests a solution. While he’s exorcising any traces of Malkmus from himself (and to be honest, I see very few), how about we start taking him and the music theater nerds and film clips out of Pavements? There. Perfect.  

Jennifer Kelly