How one yelled line in ‘Cut Your Hair’ helped shape Kurt Vile: “He was just a trailblazer”

Kurt Vile says hearing Pavement’s ‘Cut Your Hair’ on the radio as a teenager helped set him on his musical path. Stephen Malkmus’s shouted line, “No big hair!”, caught Vile’s attention and introduced him to a band whose mixture of humour, melancholy and adventurous guitar work later influenced his own songwriting.

Pavement’s unexpected radio success with ‘Cut Your Hair’ showed Vile that an alternative band could reach a mainstream audience without smoothing away its rough edges. He admires the group’s gradual, independent rise and Malkmus’s off-hand style, while calling ‘Range Life’ a particularly beautiful, nostalgic song; Vile says he still knows every detail of it.