Recap Pavement at Roy Wilkins Auditorium

Let’s can the “slacker” talk already, always a lazy way to typecast Stephen Malkmus’ pitch-evasive Valley-boy drawl, drummer Steve West’s distracted shambling, and guitar mistuning by now as integral to the rock vernacular as distortion itself. Pavement whisked through 28 songs in just less than two hours last night at the dreaded Roy Wilkins Auditorium, starting with “Cut Your Hair” (which we all pretended was a hit), and stopping with “Here” (which we all pretended could have been one), not a single rendition perfunctory. You know, like a real rock ’n’ roll reunion show (complete with overpriced tickets and overbearing light show), but with a few false starts for old times’ sake, just so you didn’t think you were at a Foo Fighters concert or something.

While you’re at it, leave “irony,” “lo-fi,” and “Gen X” in your I Love The ’90s time capsule too. Hang on to “self-aware,” though, because if any reunion of the definitive indie-rock band of its era (and the best without girls in it) was destined to dredge up nostalgia, Pavement would for damn sure express its self-conscious perspective on that. Its time had passed, and lyrics like “I’ve got style / Miles and miles / So much style that it’s wasted,” and “Stone Temple Pilots, they’re elegant bachelors” weirdly evoked not our youth, as nostalgia typically does, but a historical moment marked by a vastly different sensibility. Or as Malkmus put it (during a ramble about the band’s backstage spread): “The fucking ’90s were cool. Hummus was exotic.”

The five members roamed onstage, casual in T-shirts with jeans or khakis, promising the “the last time you’ll ever see us,” (unless you road-trip to Milwaukee tomorrow night, that is). Guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg got to sing a couple of his tunes. Bassist Mark Ibold was reassuringly amicable and low-key. Malkmus was wry and aloof. Auxiliary noisemaker Bob Nastanovich provided stage presence: He contributed shouty vocal bits, beat on a second drum kit, shook his tambourine, noodled about with keyboard effects, and jumped around like a make-believe rock star. Between songs, he talked sports and Des Moines, and he traipsed across stage with a lucky audience member during “We Danced.”

The set was heavily weighted toward the first half of the band’s career, with eight songs from Slanted And Enchanted (“Two States,” “Perfume-V”) and seven from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (“Gold Soundz,” “Range Life”), plus a handful from their EP/7-inch days (“Box Elder,” “Frontwards”). If you liked any of the songs, you probably liked ’em all. There were definitely worse ways of avoiding the VMAs.