Pavement
“My cliched melodic sense, like the things I know how to do, they’ll come out naturally. You take enough bong hits, and they’ll come out.” – Stephen Malkmus
“All tour long, I was obsessed with proving to Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus that my IQ was higher than his (though I’m not quite sure this is true).” – Courtney “I Killed Kurt Cobain” Love
“Imagine how cool I'd have been if I was some English kid who liked Pavement in 1995.” – Jack Feeny
Albums Reviewed:
Except for the runaway Weezer win the first time out (and even then, it’s not like they’d released the shitstain that was Make Believe yet), my readers have shown very good musical taste in the annual polls I keep tossing up. Beastie Boys? Good call. Smiths? Another good call, though not as good a call as all the Smiths fans probably think it is. And Pavement? Best call yet. Good job, people! I probably would’ve gotten into Pavement eventually, as they’re more or less the uber-nineties indie rock band and were releasing their best stuff under the commercial radar during my formative pre-teen “I love Nirvana!” years, and this fact at some point would undoubtedly have led me to check them out, but you hastened the process, and for that I would like to say “thank you.” And these reviews would have been up a while ago if not for the fact that I’m in grad school now and it’s hard and stuff. So updates will be sporadic for the next…oh…six years?
Anyway, what do I think of Pavement? What everyone else thinks of them, apparently, though with maybe only 90% of the passion of Mark Prindle. As such, what is typed below is probably not the most informative or thought-provoking set of reviews I’ve ever written, and, at least considering what I’ve been churning out the last year or two, will probably seem a little short, but what can I say beyond what’s already been said? Formed by childhood buddies and singer/songwriter/guitarists Stephen Malkmus (the leader and chief songwriter and singer and all that fun stuff) and Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg (not all that fun stuff, but still cool) in Stockton, CA (roughly equidistant from Sacramento and San Francisco, and not close enough to either to be an interesting place to live), they started out as a lovely lo-fi indie slacker rock group with fantastic melodies and guitar lines and finished up as a lovely slow guitar pop group with fantastic melodies and guitar lines. The “band” Pavement was formed only reluctantly and after the studio project became successful and consisted of acid reject and crap drummer Gary Young (owner of the studio where Malkmus and Kannberg recorded their early material), bassist Mark Ibold, and second drummer/do-everything-crazy-guy Bob Nastanovich. Eventually they got a drummer who could keep time named Steve West to replace Young and went onto world domination (of the indie rock underground). They’re really good and write all sorts of good songs with good melodies and stuff. You should totally check ‘em out, even if Malkmus can be kind of an ironic prick.
Lineup! In your picture above are, from left, Spiral Stairs, Nastanovich, Malkmus, West, and Ibold. Lineup paragraph complete.
And, onto the reviews!
Oh, I should also let you know that Pavement’s first three albums, at this point in time, have been re-released in supposedly completely awesome giganto-editions with remastered sound and an ungodly amount of bonus/unreleased/etc. tracks called, respectively, Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.’s Desert Origins, and Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition. I have everything on MP3’s I didn’t pay for, but if I were to choose to buy copies of the first three albums, I would get these editions. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Kenn Wilson Cepres (kenncepres@yahoo.com) writes:
Finally, Pavement reviews!!!
although I was a bit disappointed coz I was expecting the Pavement page to
have the most hilarious reviews ever...they were rather unintersting and
rather short. Man, where's the Prindle sense of humour? you probably did a
slacker type of job for this slackering favorite band of mine. You don't seem
to like Transport is Arrange (from Brighten the Corners) coz you did not
mention it, it's the best song in there...Thanks, anyway..
Slanted And Enchanted (1992)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Trigger
Cut/Wounded Kite At :17”
I was a grand total of ten years old when this thing came out, so I’ll readily admit I wasn’t so much into the whole indie college rock scene at the time (I hope you’ll forgive me for this, as well as the copy of the Offspring’s Smash I had on endless repeat for much of my middle school career, which was ofcourse well after I was ten). I don’t think I would’ve liked this much then, though, considering my total crap musical taste due to the fact that I was, you know, ten. I would have probably thought “Oh, it’s too slow and sloppy” or “They don’t rock enough!” or “The singer can’t hit any notes!” or “I’m ten and I wanna listen to this shitty album I bought because I’m ten! I love it! Well, I don’t like two-thirds of the songs much at all, but I love it!” You know that for a good year (thankfully before I was ten) I walked around in an Iron Maiden t-shirt (with the mascot thing and everything) because I thought it “looked cool” without knowing that there was actually a band called “Iron Maiden?” I probably wouldn’t have liked them, either. They didn’t sound like Silverchair, man. They suck.
Anyway, I’m glad I randomly avoided Pavement until I was 25 and then reviewed them because you lovely people voted for them in my annual poll. They’re great. I think I like the next one a little bit more, but, regardless, this one’s pretty damn great. Influential? Oh, sure. Why not. I can see the influence they have on tons of later bands, but it’s not like a Pixies record where within two seconds of putting it on it screams “LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN TO ALL THE BANDS I HAVE INFLUENCED! YOU CANNOT LISTEN TO ROUGHLY 50,000 BANDS THAT HAVE COME AFTER ME WITHOUT THINKING OF ME AND THIS ALBUM AND HOW MANY BANDS I HAVE INFLUENCED!” So sure, it’s influential, but it’s not, like, Pixies influential. To the non-indie/college/slacker rock people who write in and ask me to review metal bands from the eighties who’ve put out twenty albums of which I have none and thus probably don’t know exactly what this album sounds like, let me provide a brief, musical-type summary. It’s sloppy, slacker, lo-fi, college rock. Now, wasn’t that helpful?
Oh hell, I guess I can be more specific. It actually sounds pretty good to me, in spite of its “lo-fi” qualities (whatever that’s supposed to mean exactly). The drums are so organic-sounding it’s almost like a live recording, and the bass is the same way, and they’re both steady and insistent but not, you know, “snappy” or anything because this is slacker-rock, dude. No attempt has been made to make the guitars sound anything but like what they’d sound like in your garage either, at least beyond at least making it sound like you’re standing next to them instead of listening to an album that was recorded in some dude’s garage, but see, I think this is where the awesomeness lies (well, that and the songwriting). They’re often pretty distorted and sorta maybe grimy kinda, but not in a “wow, look at us trying to be distorted” way. No, see, it’s like a “we have a distortion pedal in our garage, and this song seems like it calls for a distortion pedal, so I suppose we’re gonna use it” kinda way. And then, ofcourse, there are all those times where the guitars play all these lovely, completely non-distorted lead lines that are all pretty and such, but it feels like they could use the distortion pedal at any time and it would still be just as pretty, you know? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? No? Look, I haven’t written a review in over two months and it’s not like I was any good at writing in the first place.
What I’ve
been trying to say in my own rambling way is that this album sounds fantastic,
and the songwriting is extremely strong and occasionally top-notch, but it
doesn’t sound like these guys were even trying
very hard (which I guess is the whole point of “slacker-rock,” right?). The guitarists only occasionally stay on the
beat with their parts, and Malkmus back there only bothers to “sing” like half
the time, the other half of the time tossing out some sort of ironic-sounding
speak-sing hibbity jibbity that would probably make him sound like a dick if
his band weren’t so damn good. Some of
these songs would be fucking killer
power-pop tunes if put into the hands of a power pop band that was all about
craft and tightness and snap and precision, but to say this band isn’t like that isn’t even necessarily
an insult. I’m thinking specifically of
the opening two tracks, “Summer Babe” and “Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite at :17,”
the later of which is just an amazing
pop song and probably sounds better
with the Pavement treatment, even given my previous statement about what Cheap
Trick or someone could do with this shit.
The guitar riff in the chorus…would you want that cleaned up? Or the backing vocals…would you want those
on-key or in unison? Maybe, maybe not,
but the feel of the song demands they not
be, if that makes sense. Hell, they
don’t even care about creating full-fledged songs half the time either. Why is “
I know it’s odd to say the fact
that it sounds like a band doesn’t really give half a shit half the time adds
to the quality of a record, but that’s exactly the case here. They can be noisy and abrasive as well as
they can be quiet and lovely (compare “Conduit for
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Silence
Kit”
Similar to the first, but less distorted, more melodic, and a little more subdued. I don’t honestly see how someone could have serious issues with one of these and love the other, though this is an opinion I’ve seen floating around occasionally. If you dig the slower, more melodic stuff, you’ll dive right into this one, and if you love the distorted guitars, occasional rocking out and overarching slacker atmosphere, you’ll love the first one. Ofcourse, I like both of these things, so I dig both the albums about equally, though I’ll go ahead and toss my support behind this one as my favorite. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a good melody. Still, it’s not like it’s much different from Slanted.
It’s great,
though, and it definitely is slower
and more melodic. The rock is contained
principally in “Unfair” and “Hit the Plane Down,” the latter of which is a
disappointingly disorganized semi-mess, and the former of which is actually
awesome and clever and totally rocks my balls off with its lyrics making fun of
southern
It’s not like it’s a bad thing for a band to sound like they’re trying, though. Listen to the licks in “Gold Soundz” or the ending part to “Stop Breathin’” and tell me these guys don’t know how to write an interesting, melodic, pretty guitar line or three. They’re great! Even on the songs that don’t have quite as much going on melodically in the vocal (“Stop Breathin’,” I suppose), the guitars are lovely and melodious and just super-duper, though it’s not like the pop songwriting went anywhere, and the slight lack of “slackerdom” means the best vocal and guitar hooks stand out that much more. “Silence Kit,” for instance. What a song! The guitar is still a little distorted and not quite on the beat like before, but what a fucking line they wrote, you know? And the vocals…OK, we now have proof that there are a few octaves Steve can’t really hit up there with his voice, but I almost think the missed notes sound better than the hit ones ever could. And the “hand me the drum…STICK! Snare…KICK!” break is fantastic. Perfect.
Plenty more highlights to go, too. Steve harnesses the distortion pedal in a way that sounds halfway-epic and decidedly un-Pavement-like in “Elevate Me Later,” and the echoed guitar lines in “Newark Wilder” are beyond ace. Supposedly “Cut Your Hair” is the big famous one here, but it’s not like I had any preconceived idea about what Pavement songs I was supposed to like before I started listening to these albums, so I just find it to be another nice slacker pop song among a slew of nice slacker pop songs. I dig the most into the awesome slacker pop songs (“Silence Kit!”) and the stuff that’s different, you see, like the aforementioned “Newark Wilder” (that’s an odd structure there), and “5 – 4 = Unity” is like walking bass lounge jazz with sound effects and badass guitar lines layered on top. Total departure for the guys, almost as much as the tight, concise, country-western pop song “Range Life,” which rules so much ass it’s been preoccupied putting down insurgencies there the last four years even though it told everyone it finished with that and even put up a banner announcing it and wore a flight suit with a rolled-up tube sock stuffed in its crotch and everything. I mean…it’s a country song! No slide guitar, but there’s a cool piano in there and the two guitars are trading off and interlocking all these pretty, ringing, yet vaguely western-ish guitar parts that just sound like cheese. Then Steve tries to hit high notes he totally can’t hit like in “Silence Kit” and sounds just as charming as before, and then they make fun of the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots! One ironic slacker douche saying he “could really give a fuck” what you mean and all of a sudden you won’t tour with his band, Billy? Nice. I like the STP line, though (“they’re elegant bachelors…”). Clever. Good band, this. But you already knew that.
The only track I’m not a huge fan of is the aforementioned “Hit the Plane Down,” which just seems out of place on this album. “Heaven is a Truck” is a cute, quiet little thing I fully endorse and “Fillmore Jive,” somehow, is six and a half minutes long. From Pavement! It’s still cool, though. Sure, there’s no way these guys should be trying anything that could be characterized as “epic” at all, and the drummer’s fills at the end are all completely off the beat, but it’s charming! Like Steve’s botched notes in “Silence Kit” and “Range Life” (which are my two favorite songs on the album, remember). Pavement’s still at the point in their career where, as long as a song of theirs is vaguely organized, it’s gonna be good. They’re still so neat and cool. They haven’t gotten boring yet. So the song works, even though objectively large chunks of it don’t in that they’re amateurishly played, if that makes sense (a phrase I’ve been using a lot in these early Pavement reviews).
So I guess, even with the smaller reliance on the “slacker aesthetic,” they still sound good partially because they don’t and it sounds like they don’t care that they don’t. I continue to be amazed that a band can have such an odd and seemingly contradictory reason for being good, but what can you do? All other things aside, this is a band that can write songs, and now they’ve added even more lovely guitar interplay to their stew. Sure, they’ve lost a little energy, but this album is so pretty and wonderfully melodic I don’t even mind. Fantastic.
Wowee Zowee (1995)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Rattled
By The Rush”
The token “sprawling” album in the Pavement catalog, Prindle and all the commentators on his page seem to put this thing on some sort of uber-slacker rock pedestal and proclaim it the greatest offering Pavement ever foisted on the world, but I’m gonna go ahead and disagree. It’s still really good, ofcourse, and it doesn’t even sound all that different from Crooked Rain. It’s just…messy, I guess. And I know that’s kind of the whole point of the album, to be messy and sprawling and chuck a bunch of songs together that aren’t necessarily sequenced correctly, but the problem is that not enough of them have top-notch Pavement hooks and too many of them are just too slow and draggy. The production is better and tighter than ever before and the guitar lines are just as pretty as on Crooked Rain, but there’s just not as much stuff I can sink my teeth into here, even if there is more, you know, stuff.
There’s one song that I’ll put up with “Summer Babe” and “Trigger Cut” and “Silence Kit” and all those (and yes, I like the Pavement songs that are well-organized, commercial-leaning pop songs the most; so sue me), and that’s “Rattled by the Rush.” But it’s not just the melody with this one, even though that’s ace. See, this time it’s the groove, too, man. The drummer lays down a great part that grooves, you know? And the guitars are endlessly interesting. They change from pretty to distorted to some sort of processed sound that sounds like a frog being squashed and back again, but always keeping the same riff going, which is completely in time with the groovy drum track, and it’s just fantastic stuff. If the rest of the record sounded like this song and the superb, semi-dreamlike “Black Out,” I’d be in heaven. Alas, not so much.
I know it’s probably ridiculous of me to ask a band whose entire schtick is that they’re “slackers” and whose first two albums I adore for the exact reason that they don’t give too much of a shit about how tightly constructed most of their songs are to tightly construct an organized album for me, but that’s really what I wish they had done. The amount of quality material here is probably about as much as what the first two albums had, but on Wowee Zowee it comes sort of in fits and starts, and the record alternates almost at random between taking me to the same highs as the first two and frustrating me by stopping those highs way too early or tossing on another go-nowhere fuzzy, distorted punker. “Brinx Job” might have the loveliest bit of guitar interplay on any of these three albums, but it’s over in ninety seconds! That’s far too early! I’m not done loving this guitar part yet, dammit! And the album is so a) draggy and b) randomly disorganized and slow that even the best bits of guitar magic are sometimes in songs that don’t quite cut the mustard by themselves, whether that means they’re part of a song that has a mediocre part in it elsewhere or they’re just part of a song that’s too fucking slow. The last half-minute or so of “Grounded” is amazing, and while it’s not like the rest of the song is bad by any means, it’s just not up to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain standards of melodical tastiness. And good lord, are the fast punkers subpar. Why does “Serpentine Pad” exist? Why is “Flux = Rad” one of the most annoying Pavement songs ever produced? And why is “Best Friend’s Arm” not any better? Gah.
There’s so
much good stuff here that I feel bad criticizing this record like I’ve been doing,
but for me it just doesn’t stack up to the previous two. And it’s not like the guys aren’t still
writing good material. They are! They’re just not organizing it correctly or
constructing enough songs like “Rattled by the Rush.” And I’m sorry, but that’s my pop-whore
opinion and I’m sticking to it. Listen
to some of this guitar interplay, though.
“
I don’t know, I feel like I
should like this album more than I do, but I just don’t. It always hits me in this random, slapdash,
disorganized way, and no matter how much excellent guitar interplay and other
pretty trickery I get out of it, that doesn’t change. I understand they’re probably trying not to
be commercial and all that, and I respect that, but how am I supposed to love a
bunch of 2-minute half-songs? Maybe if
you took out all the crap punkers it’d rule, but then it’d be so uniform it
tone it’d probably bore me, so maybe not.
In any case, this is still a really good album, and there’s loads of
Pavement goodness to be found inside, but, if you’re anything like me, it’s not
gonna hit you in the same way the first two albums do. “Rattled by the Rush” rules, though.
Brighten The Corners (1997)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Date With
Ikea”
Definitely the most “organized” Pavement album to date, and as such, if you accept my argument for why I don’t like Wowee Zowee as much as I’m supposed to, I should probably love this one, right? Unfortunately, no, and the reason is pretty simple: this is the first Pavement record where the songwriting itself is showing signs of dipping, and obviously that’s a problem. Wowee Zowee may have been a mess, but it was an inspired mess, and you could tell the songwriting was still up at the same level of Slanted and Crooked Rain. It just didn’t utilize that songwriting as well as the first two albums. This one, by contrast, utilizes all the songwriting it has to make a 45-minute album of really pretty slow guitar pop songs with interlocking guitar parts and ironically clever slacker lyrics, just like Pavement should. There isn’t a single crap messy distorted punker mess like all the ones that took a shit every 15-20 minutes during Wowee Zowee. It’s also not “lo-fi” at all anymore (not that Wowee Zowee really was either), and the guitar tones and everything sound full and really, really well-produced. But the songwriting’s slipped a notch, so dammit.
I actually
like this one about as much as Wowee
Zowee, I think, despite the fact that the songwriting’s weaker and the
nonstop dragginess occasionally bores me during some of the weaker songs (the
parts of “Type Slowly” besides the ridiculously great ringy guitar lines, for
instance). It’s really just another
album of good Pavement songs, and the reason this review won’t say anything
interesting (not that any of these reviews say anything interesting) is that
there’s not much else to say beyond “it’s really just another album of good
Pavement songs.” Others have made the
comment that Steve’s lyrics are more self-consciously silly and
ironically-detached this time, and I’m gonna go ahead and second that
(especially the famous line about Geddy Lee’s HORRIBLE voice (my opinion; the
song makes no judgment on its quality, instead simply alluding to the fact that
it’s “high”) in the opener “Stereo”), but it’s not like I ever listened to
Pavement for the lyrics. It’s for the
melodies and guitar lines! And sure,
they’re down a notch from Crooked Rain
(well, the melodies are; the guitar lines are as pretty as ever), but they’re
still shitloads better than what most bands can come up with. Stuff like “
Shockingly, the two best songs are the only two on Pavement’s five full-length albums that Spiral Stairs provides all the vocals for. “Passat Dream” is a fantastically jaunty little pop song that I wish Pavement had done more of on this album (“whooo ooo oooo oooooo!”), and “Date with Ikea” is simply one of the best tunes Pavement ever did. The intro sounds exactly like the Byrds, and the way it morphs into the heavily distorted yet melodic main section (complete with distorted vocals!) is awesome. It’s possibly the most melodic song on the album, yet they give it to the guy who can’t sing and distort both his vocals and the guitars to hell. What an interesting band. And the Byrds-rip guitar line recurs a bunch of times, too. I love that guitar line. Also, “Fin” is gorgeous. I had to get that in. I love that song.
So this is definitely a step backward for Pavement, but, just as an example, it’s still as good as or better than every album Pearl Jam’s ever released (and I like Pearl Jam). They’re just “maturing,” I guess. More emphasis on melody (however good it may be), less distortion, prettier guitar lines, less “spark.” Yup, that sounds like “maturing,” doesn’t it? They’re still ace, though.
Terror Twilight (1999)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Spit On A
Stranger”
Brighten the Corners with less ironic lyrics and if it were produced by Nigel Godrich. That’s basically it. Many have commented that this sounds more like a Stephen Malkmus solo album than a real Pavement album, but since I’ve never listened to any Stephen Malkmus solo albums, I can only say “that’s probably likely” and move on without further comment. It’s still good, though. It’s melodic, it’s quirky, it’s full of gorgeous guitar tones and melodies. It’s Pavement. I haven’t really had much to say about any of these albums, and the reviews have been getting shorter and shorter as this page has progressed, but at this point I’m really at a loss as to what to type. Sure, it’s a little more produced, polished and mature than its predecessor. So was Brighten the Corners. Sure, it’s full of really good songs but doesn’t have as much “spark” as previous Pavement albums. Same with Brighten the Corners. Yawn.
God, it’s still really good, though. The opening “Spit on a Stranger,” generic, draggy Pavement song though it may be, is wonderful. Just a marvelous melody and slow echoey guitar line and backing vocal and everything. It’s got no rough edges at all (thanks, Nigel!), but it’s a wonderful song nonetheless, and I love every second of it. And most of the other regular draggy Pavement songs are, if not as good, at least in its ballpark somewhere (e.g. “Major Leagues”…by the way, like the pun there? Ballpark? Major Leagues? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!). I dig the jumpy banjo-type “Folk Jam,” too, and the times Steve decides to turn up the distortion (“Cream of Gold”) are usually pretty nice, too. The album’s still got some weirdness in that “Billie” is basically three completely different songs and “Speak, See, Remember” is a sort of shuffly walking jazz thingy that in the end neither shuffles nor walks correctly because Steve won’t let it (at least before turning into an altogether unconnected (and tasty!) mid-tempo guitar pop song (with occasional distortion!) itself), but it’s more of an “adult” weird than the charming stuff on Slanted and Enchanted or Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The token “goof” song is “Carrot Rope,” which is thankfully just catchy and Pavement-y enough to avoid being an annoying novelty, but it’s just a goofy pop song, nothing more, nothing less.
This is a really good album, but it’s nearly impossible to get excited about. It’s like “yeah, ofcourse it’s great and the songs are top-notch. That’s what Pavement does! They write really good songs!” It doesn’t break any new ground or anything, but I guess that’s fine as long as the album’s so melodic and pretty. You gotta remember this is still as good as or better than anything Pearl Jam have ever put out, and here I am being all lukewarm and “eh” about it, and then you’ll realize just how good a band Pavement were. Just good songs, man.