Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus has shared details of a new musical project called The Hard Quartet.
The vocalist, songwriter and guitarist shared news of the new band on his social media channels yesterday (July 16), confirming that he would soon be releasing music under a new group called The Hard Quartet.
The line-up is comprised of Malkmus, as well as Matt Sweeney, Jim White and Emmett Kelly. All members made the announcement through synchronised posts on their respective social media accounts, and the update shared their new name and logo.
It comes after Malkmus had spent the past week teasing fans with the idea of new material, and hinting that the announcement of a new endeavour would be coming shortly.
In a series of cryptic messages, they suggested that “a hard band is good to find” and that “a hard band name is good to find” – leading to eagle-eyed fans speculating that a new outfit would be announced.
So far, only the band itself has been announced, with the members and logo confirmed. Further details about the project remain unknown, although news of their debut material is expected to be shared soon.
The new band comes four years after Malkmus shared his last solo album ‘Traditional Techniques’, which also starred now-bandmate Matt Sweeney. In the time since, his focus has been on various activities with Pavement.
As for the other members, Kelly has been working with Ty Segall in recent times, and White has been contributing to Dirty Three’s first full-length album in 12 years.
In other Pavement news, earlier this year the band’s track ‘Harness Your Hopes’ went viral on TikTok once again.
It was originally released as a B-side on the CD edition of the band’s ‘Spit On A Stranger’ EP in 1999. It became an unexpected hit on Spotify in 2017, and is now Pavement’s most-streamed song of all time. Initially, it first went viral on TikTok in 2020. This April it took over the social media platform again – and garnered around 97million views per day.
Speaking to NME in 2022, guitarist Scott Kannberg said that the song going viral in 2020 had “breathed new life into Pavement”.
Malkmus explained: “It was a weird event of where your music goes; this can happen.” Kannberg added: “Yeah, it took it in another direction which is amazing.”
Malkmus continued: “It was a weird cultural thing, but by putting yourself out there, you have the opportunity for that to happen, even if you’re insecure or think your music is crap. You go ahead and do it, and then the world sees you. That’s a pretty fun part of doing any art, but specifically ours.”
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