Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History Of Gary Young & Pavement is the kind of record that only could have come out of a stubbornly independent underground and only could have been guided by Gary Young. Built around the SXSW-winning documentary about the original Pavement drummer, the soundtrack pulls together unreleased recordings, live oddities, and deep-cut scene archaeology that traces the crooked path from hardcore basements to indie-rock canon.

Young was never just “the drummer in Pavement.” He was their producer, their chaos agent, their gravity-defying ringleader. When he joined Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg in the early ’90s, he was nearly forty and already a veteran of the underground, a place where punk, post-punk, and experimental weirdness blurred into something that never played by the rules. That spirit runs through this soundtrack, which mixes ultra-rare Pavement performances with a wider portrait of the world that shaped Young long before the band ever became indie royalty.

The collection reaches back into that scene with tracks from Fall of Christianity, CRLLL, the Authorities, Gary Young’s Hospital, and Hot Spit Dancers, bands that documented a culture that never quite fit the industry’s idea of what alternative rock was supposed to be. This is the stuff Spiral Stairs was soaking up as a teenager, the DNA that eventually fed into Pavement’s crooked melodies and slacker swagger. Heard together, it paints a vivid picture of the creative soil that produced Young’s singular approach to music.

Pavement’s presence here is especially poignant. Alongside raw live cuts like “Summer Babe (Live May 19, 1992),” recorded at Sacramento’s Cattle Club, the soundtrack includes one final collaboration between Young and his old bandmates. “Please Be Happy (For Us)” began as a throwaway tune Young improvised during filming, then grew into something quietly moving after Kannberg built it out with a woozy, psychedelic backing and Malkmus added his signature bursts of guitar noise. It plays like a late-night postcard from an old friend, loose, strange, and unexpectedly tender, captured not long before Young’s death in 2023.

The album also weaves in original score pieces by Edward W. Dahl and Noah Georgeson, whose atmospheric cues help bridge the gaps between eras, from Young’s early hardcore roots to the surreal pop moment of Hospital’s “Plantman” becoming an MTV staple. Those instrumental moments give the whole project a cinematic flow, reminding you that this isn’t just a compilation, it’s a story unfolding in sound.

Louder Than You Think doesn’t clean Gary Young up or smooth out the edges. It lets the beautiful mess speak for itself, capturing the warped vision, the lo-fi invention, and the stubborn independence that helped give Pavement their shape and gave an overlooked scene its due.