‘“It’s better, I like it, it’s cool that we did that, it’s old-school or whatever,” he says of the analog adjustment. “But it sounded wrong to me or something, and I was like, ‘That’s a B-side.’ It’s terrible, too — nobody told me! I guess I was such a boss, and maybe nobody thought I would listen. Usually Scott [‘Spiral Stairs’] Kannberg or something was really good at telling me, ‘That’s a good song,’ [like he did with the Slanted And Enchanted single] ‘Summer Babe.’ So it should have been on the record. I’m just saying that’s my mistake.”
Now, and likely forever, “Harness Your Hopes” has moved beyond the Spotify phenomenon to become one of the definitive Pavement tracks across all platforms — Apple Music, YouTube, etc. It’s even been having a moment on TikTok lately, to the degree that Malkmus’s 15-year-old daughter recently saw it in a post and gave him the news that it was blowing up, kinda. “She was like, ‘It’s trending, but in a certain way, not in a big way,’” he laughs, dryly.’
Stereogum examines “Harness Your Hopes” the 20th century b-side/21st century smash hit from Pavement The Rock Band.