Harness Your Hopes

Pavement could be angular and difficult and deliberately opaque, but this song — a B-side that outlasted most of the album tracks around it — goes somewhere more open and reaching. The guitars jangle with a warmth that's unusual for the band, acoustic and electric elements sharing space without the usual abrasiveness, and the tempo has a gentle bob that's almost nautical. Stephen Malkmus's voice is looser here than on some of the more barbed material, the characteristic dry wit still present but softened, like he's allowing himself to mean something without immediately deflecting. The song is about holding onto aspiration, keeping something intact against the erosion of time and irony and the accumulated weight of disappointing yourself — a subject Malkmus usually approaches at an angle but here addresses with something close to directness. It belongs to the Pavement of the late nineties, a band that had survived long enough to let some of the defensiveness drop. The song found a second life years after its release, discovered by people too young to have known it the first time, which feels appropriate — it's the kind of song that rewards being found rather than encountered. Best when you're in the middle of something and need to remember why it matters.