The Hard Quartet is not, as pop stars say, a “project.” In the words of one of its members, Pavement and Jicks frontman Stephen Malkmus, “It’s a band,” man. It’s a band where every member—save for drummer Jim White—volunteered to play bass, and all contribute vocals. It’s a band that could have been named “Iron Chad” (or its inverse, “Silk Becky”), a band that waxes poetic about mortality on one song and sings about paddling frat frosh on the next. It’s a band of really funny people who are equally talented musicians, who spin up words like “lustify” as proficiently as they tear into a guitar solo. As the punny name suggests, the Hard Quartet is a group of four players—Malkmus, White, Matt Sweeney, and Emmett Kelly—who, combined, have known and performed with each other in various iterations for nearly a century. On its self-titled debut, the quartet cracks open the rock’n’roll canon to rebuild it in its communal, irreverent image.

The idea for the band germinated when Sweeney, frontman of math-rockers Chavez, suggested it to Malkmus while working together on 2020’s Traditional Techniques. With a few texts to the other members, the Hard Quartet was born. On paper, their collaboration seems almost predestined: Sweeney and Kelly both frequently perform with folk revivalist Will Oldham, touring together for 2021’s Superwolves. White, another Oldham collaborator, performs with Kelly in a duo called the Double; back in 1994, his band the Dirty Three opened for Pavement. The only two without direct previous ties, Malkmus and Kelly, bonded over the latter’s Magma belt buckle.

It’s easy to imagine a collective with this much shared history battling for the last riff or the final word. But the Hard Quartet instead overflows with a bounty of new ideas born from the synthesis of their sounds. No one is quite the lead, unlike in Pavement or Kelly’s band the Cairo Gang; nor is anyone relegated to session player, as on Oldham’s albums. The record traverses prog-rock epics, spit-shined power pop, gnarled punk, and baroque folk, flexing the vocal and instrumental personalities each member has developed over decades of road-tested rock. Not since Wowee Zowee has Malkmus sounded so delighted by his own vocal inflections (“Action for Military Boys”). Sweeney takes the intensity but not the anger from Chavez, effervescent and free. The Hard Quartet beats with an insatiable hunger to grow in new directions, rather than retread the past.

At times, it’s clear which musician is leading the charge. The tilted melody of “Earth Hater” sounds like an extension of the Jicks’ 2018 record Sparkle Hard, and “Heel Highway” shares the ease and impish humor of Malkmus’s self-titled debut. The minor-key harmonies of “It Suits You” and fingerpicked guitar on “Jacked Existence” feel at home next to Sweeney’s 2005 Oldham collaboration Superwolf, and “Killed by Death” evokes Chavez’s wide-eyed sense of wonder.

More often, it’s impossible to tell where one contributor’s ideas end and others take over. “North of the Border” opens with just Kelly’s unadorned vocals and guitar, but takes root when White’s drums crash in to give shape to his sunburnt riffs. “Our Hometown Boy” is a pure power-pop sugar rush—the chiming guitars of Big Star, the crystalline harmonies of Raspberries—but still makes time for lyrics about a “cloven-toed mistress” and Sweeney’s soaring guitar solo coda. “Rio’s Song” sparkles like a folk-rock gem polished by time, enacting the swaggering camaraderie suggested by its Rolling Stones-inspired video through White’s drum fills and Malkmus’s ricochetting fretwork. It’s classic rock comfort food that retains the willful eccentricity and goofball impulses of its creators.

As expected from this band, the lyrics are at turns profound and wry. There’s “Sister Sludge” with “eyes of stoplight green” on “Chrome Mess,” and “no Debbie Downers allowed on the spaceship” on “Thug Dynasty” (another justly rejected band name). On “Six Deaf Rats,” the closest thing to a Pavement album cut, Malkmus asks, “Why are you sleeping in those high heels shoes? Where is the logic in that?” (Always sleep red-carpet-ready, Steve!) Others read like Pig Latin: in-jokes that work purely because of the conviction in their delivery. Try to parse the e.e. cummings puzzle logic of “Pie chart me kid/When I went big/Better be a sizable chunk,” the opening line on “Earth Hater,” and you’ll miss the swagger of Sweeney’s guitar and the buzz of Kelly’s synthesizer. The zanier moments are grounded by more philosophical musings: “All we gain isn’t there for us to keep,” Sweeney observes on “Rio’s Song.” On “Heel Highway,” Malkmus manages to sing, “Bring me peace on Earth” without sounding like a dirty hippie or a snarky cynic.

Is the Hard Quartet a supergroup? Their deep mutual admiration is clear. Yet there’s none of the stiffness, artificiality, or inflated sense of purpose that can arise when such rich legacies combine. The Hard Quartet is confident, not cocky; they seem like they genuinely like to make each other laugh, and their gorgeous melodies feel like the natural output of four rock vets hanging out together in Malibu. Maybe, as Malkmus said, they really are just a band, man. The Hard Quartet lets us into their circle for just under an hour; it’s hard not to want to bask in its stoned brilliance even longer.