Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement

This career compendium fittingly begins with Stephen Malkmus’ invitation to “go back to those gold sounds,” but true to Pavement’s disjointed nature, it takes a non-chronological mixtape approach. Indie-rock anthems like “Cut Your Hair” rub against the formative Fall worship of “Two States”; the low-key ballad “Here” gets upended by the punk-fuelled chaos of “Unfair”. The tracklist also accommodates non-album oddities like “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence”, a grungy ode to R.E.M. that cheekily toes the line between tribute and critique.