Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus Featured on Forthcoming Silver Jews Compilation

Here’s a throwback of epic indie cred proportions: Silver Jews, the strangely named indie rock band composed of David Berman and Pavement‘s Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich, are releasing a collection of early work on label Drag City, Pitchfork reports. 

Due June 12, ‘Early Times’ will gather together songs from 1992′s ‘Dime Map of the Reef’ 7″ and 1993′s ‘The Arizona Record’ 10″, two out-of-print records that were probably recorded on a boombox in some Hoboken, N.J., bedroom. And we’re not kidding — they probably really were recorded on a boombox. Listen to the track below and then try to tell us it wasn’t.

We’re talking some major hipster arcana here, as this is the period just as Malkmus and Nastanovich were forming the seminal Pavement, which assuredly Silver Jews was never a side project of. Grab this reissue and you’ll be able to brag to everyone that you knew what these guys sounded like before they knew they were cool. Or, as the press release relates, you can hear “muppet baby versions of the David Berman, Stephen Malkmus and Bobby Nastanovich that we know today.”

Silver Jews’ ‘Early Times’ Track Listing
1. ‘Canada’
2. ‘The Walnut Falcon’
3. ‘September 1999′
4. ‘SVM F.T. TROOPS’
5. ‘THE Unchained Melody’
6. ‘Secret Knowledge of Back Roads’
7. ‘I Love the Rights’
8. ‘Jackson Nightz’
9. ‘The War in Apartment 1812′
10. ‘West S’
11. ‘You Can’t Trust It to Remain’
12. ‘The Wild Palms’
13. ‘Welcome to the House of the Bats’
14. ‘Bar Scene From Stars Wars’

Listen to Silver Jews’ ‘I Love the Rights’