When Pavement advises us all against haircuts again in 2010, they'll join a growing list of well-regarded previously defunct bands who've gotten back together this decade, a list that includes My Bloody Valentine, Television, Mission of Burma, Blur, the Pixies, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Stooges, the Police, Dinosaur Jr., Gang of Four, Rage Against the Machine, Blink 182, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, and Led Zeppelin. All of which gets us to wondering what else there is to look forward to on the reunion front. Here are a few of the remaining broken-up bands out there. We're only talking about bands where the principal players can actually participate - I don't even want to speculate about the possibility of Krist, Dave, and Pat Smear hitting the road with some other singer*.
* So now, of course, I'm going to do exactly that: who would that even be? Mark Lanegan? Mark Arm? Greg Dulli?
Sleater-Kinney
The breakup: Longtime Boston Phoenix favorites announced an "indefinite hiatus" in 2006, most likely due to singer-guitarist Corin Tucker's desire to raise her young son.
Where are they now?: While Tucker has stayed retired from music - she had her second child last year - the other two members of S-K have done awesome things. Janet Weiss - who could handle both Steve West's and Bob Nastanovich's drum parts on her own if she wanted to - has been a member of Stephen Malkmus's still-underrated post-Pavement band the Jicks for the past couple of years (in addition to her continued work with Quasi). Carrie Brownstein, meanwhile, has carved out a nice career for herself as a music blogger for NPR, and as an actress in comedy shorts with Fred Armisen under the ThunderAnt moniker.
Could they reunite?: They don't seem to hate each other, but if Tucker's desire to spend time with her family was indeed the reason for their initial breakup, then it would seem like nothing has changed. Still, we wouldn't be surprised if they did play together again, even if just for a series of one-off shows up in the Pacific northwest.
Four more after the jump.
Neutral Milk Hotel
The breakup: They released In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, one of the best albums of the decade, in 1998. Frontman Jeff Mangum, though, grew weary of the grind, and the band broke up a year later; at some point, he suffered a nervous breakdown fueled in part by (Y2K-related paranoia) and essentially became what Slate called "The J. D. Salinger of indie rock."
Where are they now?: NMH member Julian Koster has been playing with his band, the Music Tapes, and other members of the band have worked with other bands from the Elephant Six collective like Circulatory System and Elf Power. In 2008, Mangum himself performed a Neutral Milk Hotel song publicly for the first time in a long time.
Could they reunite?: Seems possible, although one gets the sense that maybe it'd be a lot more possible if we'd all shut up about it for like two seconds. As it happens, we talked to Koster earlier this year to discuss his (ultimately successful) crusade to save the carousel in Hull, Mass. and Amanda Palmer's (also successful) high school musical, and he told us this:
"[Mangum] is definitely doing all sorts of creative things. I think part of the reason for silence in terms of trying not to talk about creative projects for him, or involving all of us, is just that it puts so much attention on things that probably all have to happen organically by themselves. I feel bound to not say anything specific, but I think when people want to know that, what they want to know is if he's working and if he's being creative and if there will be things shared in the future, and I think all of those things can be answered in the affirmative. There's been a lot of friendship and community among all of us, especially in the last year."
So who knows.
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