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Pavement |
| Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins |
| Matador | 2000 | Album |
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Flannel-clad slackers of the second wave, please gather 'round and learn the true nature of your origins. Do you have any idea what its like to be so disaffected and afflicted with ennui that you can barely move? Of course you do. But not like Pavement did. In fact, they made a semi-lucrative career out of just that (it might have been fully lucrative, but you know, work and stuff...its hard).
Pavement's 1994 sophomore LP, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has recently been reissued on Matador records as the second in a series of re-releases (following the re-release of Slanted and Enchanted). Along with the added suffix "L.A.'s Desert Origins" come nearly forty(!) extra tracks including a Peel Session, B-sides, unreleased tracks, and initial recordings of some of the songs on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain with Pavement's first drummer, the rhythmically retarded Gary Young. Admittedly, this could be a bit much for the Pavement novice to absorb, but this shouldn't deter anyone from enjoying one of the greatest rock recordings of the 90's. Dive right in. Not only do you get a great record, you get an aural back-story of a phenomenal band at its peak.
Pavement had a mastery of the twisted pop song that none could match. And don't be mistaken, the tunes on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain are pop songs. Underneath the sloth and boredom (arguably the very reasons Pavement are genius) are beautiful, personal tunes that have easily spanned the decade, mystique intact. As far as songwriting is concerned, Stephen Malkmus is like the flipper baby of the Beatles. You know, the kids that are born with just hands sticking out of their torsos and no arms. The ones that your mom told you not to stare at. But you looked anyway, didn't you. Of course you did.
Pavement is one flipper baby that you should continue to stare at in the coming decades, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins only solidifies this. |
| John Harris |
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