Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has my favorite opening to any album: a bass and a lead guitar argue while a drum kit tries to mediate. After the three have hashed it out, they start to work together to introduce what is probably my favorite song in Pavement's catalog, "Silence Kit." By the time Stephen Malkmus enters the mix, exactly one minute into the album, the song has exploded like a wild cannon shot. What follows is an anthemic take on Buddy Holly's "Everday" that ends with Malkmus jerking off backstage after a show. In a sliver over three minutes, Pavement make an open and shut case for themselves as one of the most inventive rock bands of the 90s (second only maybe to Radiohead).

From the pathologically catchy "Cut Your Hair" to the heart-on-sleeve earnestness of "Gold Soundz" to the brazen choices of "Filmore Jive," the next 39 minutes after "Silence Kit" offer the best of the band. The album is frequently talked about as if it was Pavement's conscious attempt to gain fame. Whether or not Pavement were this calculated when writing and recording the album, I'm not sure I care to speculate. What I do care about is how this album fits into Pavement's career. Crooked Rain is the most quintessentially Pavement album they ever made. They sound like a bunch of confidently intelligent, relaxed products of suburban California. They sound like themselves.

Like Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain is boatloads of fun. "Unfair" is an ecstatic tour of California via its water rights issues. Malkmus doesn't pull punches: "You film hack, I don't use your pay." "5-4 = Unity" is a playful send-up of David Brubeck's seminal "Take Five." But unlike their full length debut, the band wasn't afraid to scrape the distortion off their guitars to make some direct statements. The spiritual center of the album is "Range Life." The song is a surprisingly personal take on band life and indie cred: "After the glow, the scene, the stage, the set/Talk becomes slow but there's one thing I'll never forget/Hey, you gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent." At this point in their careers, Pavement shouldn't have had to worry about paying their dues, but they clearly understood the fickle nature of the beast. And Malkmus sounds a little bitter about it: "If I could settle down, then I would settle down." But instead of bitching and moaning about being in a great band, he turns song's attention elsewhere. He's a teenager again, winding his way through the empty suburban streets on his skateboard. The lyrics are the most genuinely poetic thing Malkmus has ever written: "Out on my skateboard, the night is just hummin'/The gum smacks are the pulse I'll follow if my Walkman fades/But I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame." Lines as poignant as that lose their luster under the microscope of interpretation.

When I got my turntable a while back, I started to make a list of albums that I wanted to own on vinyl (and to keep me on track in my local record stores). The only criteria for inclusion on the list was that the record had to be an album that I usually listened to from front to back. Crooked Rain was one of the first two or three records that made it on the list.

Quarantine the Past

Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before the word slacker gets rediscovered. The word was a inspired bit of armchair sociology that was ultimately undermined by its own weaknesses as a classification. Slacker was never a convincing condemnation because slack was a virtue, a quasi-political statement of intent. Slack was never about work ethic; it was always about motivation. A slacker was an underachiever only in the sense that achieving had been defined by such narrow parameters. Superchunk got it right the first time: "I'm working, but I'm not working for you, slack motherfucker!" And Pavement were the quintessential slack motherfuckers.

This year sees the unlikely reunion of Pavement, which prompted Matador to release something of a greatest hits package, Quarantine the Past, for the band. This begs the question: who is the greatest hits album for these days? Who needs to be introduced to a band's career by means of such an antiquated method? The internet has made the quaint greatest hits package superfluous: you can download a band's entire catalog in minutes. I have a hard time imagining that this record will introduce that many kids to Pavement. I mean, most kids have cooler/dorkier older brothers or access to the internet (which is essentially the same thing). But if it does, then I think Quarantine the Past is a nearly perfect Cliff's Notes to Pavement. You get the most immediate classics in their catalog: "Summer Babe," Gold Soundz," "Shady Lane," "Cut Your Hair." But the album throws some nice curveballs your way: the noisy racket of "Mellow Jazz Docent," the punk workout of "Debris Slide." Every era of Pavement's career is covered and documented, from their bratty, smart-alecky early days ("Two States") to the elegant and earnest late years ("Spit on a Stranger").

The center of the 23-song retrospective is a three song set that define Pavement's core sound: "Grounded," "Summer Babe (Winter Version)," and "Range Life." "Grounded" showcases a band who have made layers of distorted guitars sound elegant and sophisticated. But whereas "Grounded" is tight and controlled (mainly due to West's whip-cracking drum work), "Range Life" is a shaggy dog story with a great hook. The song is most famous for its final verse in which Malkmus cracks on the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots (a joke that has not aged well), but it's the impressionistic middle verse that holds all the song's charm. But the exact center of the record is "Summer Babe," the song that better than any other one encapsulates what Pavement could do with a couple of guitars, a bass, and a drum kit. The song is a towering masterpiece: every element of Pavement's sound for the next decade was present on "Summer Babe": the rusty guitars, the clever bass, Malkmus' nasal voice moving between lazy and impassioned at the drop of a hat.

When you're dealing with a band of this caliber, it's difficult not to demand a more nuanced look back. For the life of me, I can't figure out why "Silence Kit" or "Major Leagues" or "Kennel District" or "Strings of Nashville" or their awesome cover of Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon" were left off. I could lose a few songs on the record: "Fight this Generation," "Embassy Row," or "Heaven is a Truck." Matador plays is relatively safe with Quarantine the Past, but anyone intrigued by the record will be shocked at the amount of material uncovered by the excellent deluxe reissues of the past decade. It's hard to fault Matador for the tracklist because it wasn't designed with the obsessive fan in mind. This is an entry-level record for entry-level fans.

When the tracklist for Quarantine the Past was revealed back in January, I could have reviewed it right then and there. These songs are that ingrained into me, that essential to my musical development. And if pressed, I would be inclined to say that Pavement is my favorite band of all time. They aren't the most talented band, nor as they the most important band. But with maybe two or three exceptions, there just isn't another band that I listen to as much now as I did when I was 15 years old, back I when I was a slack little motherfucker myself.

You can purchase Quarantine the Past here or here.

Rating: 10/10