News : Stephen Malkmus’ new band The Hard Quartet release debut single ‘Earth Hater’

Pavement icon Stephen Malkmus‘ new band The Hard Quartet have released their debut single ‘Earth Hater’, as well as announcing their first live shows in the US and UK.

The band, consisting of vocalist, songwriter and guitarist Stephen Malkmus as well as Matt Sweeney, Jim White and Emmett Kelly, shared news of a new musical project earlier this month.

They’ve just released their debut single as The Hard Quartet, titled ‘Earth Hater’, and it’s accompanied by a creative stop-motion music video directed by Eyedress.

‘Earth Hater’ is a broody indie track that leans into the band members’ grunge-y college rock pasts, with a more psychedelic jam twist, as Malkmus sings a chorus of understanding and harmony: “unto others you must do what you would have them do to you“.

The claymation music video acts as a warning against littering, with the band acting as guardians of the sea and getting revenge on a littering surfer by sending a trash monster after him for vengeance.

Joining Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, The Hard Quartet is made up of Emmett Kelly (best known for his work in The Cairo Gang and The Double), Matt Sweeney (best known for his work with Chavez, Superwolf, and music for Red Dead Redemption 2) and Jim White (Dirty Three and Xylouris White).

The members were teasing new materials separately on social media, before publicly revealing the logo and band name of The Hard Quartet.

The band have also announced tour dates in Los Angeles, New York and London later this year.

The Hard Quartet’s live dates are: 

OCTOBER
10 – Los Angeles, US – The Belasco with Papa M
15 – New York, US – Webster Hall with Weak Signal
22 – London, UK – Electric Ballroom with Tubs

You can buy tickets for their US shows here and their UK show here. They will be playing more live shows in 2025.

The Hard Quartet comes four years after Malkmus shared his last solo album ‘Traditional Techniques’, which also starred now-bandmate Matt Sweeney. NME gave ‘Traditional Techniques’ three stars in a review.

In other Pavement news, earlier this year the band’s track ‘Harness Your Hopes’ went viral on TikTok once again.

It was originally released as a B-side on the CD edition of the band’s ‘Spit On A Stranger’ EP in 1999. It became an unexpected hit on Spotify in 2017, and is now Pavement’s most-streamed song of all time. Initially, it first went viral on TikTok in 2020. This April it took over the social media platform again – and garnered around 97million views per day.

Speaking to NME in 2022, guitarist Scott Kannberg said that the song going viral in 2020 had “breathed new life into Pavement”.

Malkmus explained: “It was a weird event of where your music goes; this can happen.”

He continued: “It was a weird cultural thing, but by putting yourself out there, you have the opportunity for that to happen, even if you’re insecure or think your music is crap. You go ahead and do it, and then the world sees you. That’s a pretty fun part of doing any art, but specifically ours.”