Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain Matador, 1994 amazon

As i've mentioned before, once upon a time i was a pumpkinhead. Anything Billy Corgan produced up until the craptacular Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was golden. Therefore, when heretofore unknowns Pavement began shooting their mouth off with lyrics like "out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins, nature kids, they don't have no function ... i don't understand what they mean, and i could really give a fuck" from "Range Life", i was none too pleased. The wisdom of time eventually exposed me to yet another of my youthful miscalculations. Hrm ... Billy Corgan really doesn't have a function. And Steven Malkmus is a goddam genius. My error was made clear to me during my musical expansion of 1998, when i picked up the godhead 1994 masterwork Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Previously known to me only by the modest radio hit "Cut Your Hair", i quickly learned two things: 1) "Cut Your Hair" has nuance way beyond what i'd gleaned from hearing it previously, and 2) the rest of the record is equally as profound, if not more. The characteristically lurching "Silence Kit" opens the album, boasting Malkmus's glorious sequitur/non-sequitur lyrics ("hand me the drum stick, snare kick blues") as well as the band's usual lo-fi fuzz. "Elevate Me Later" continues with a shade more conventional songcraft, shifting to a more emotionally urgent and slightly less playful tone with no loss in resonance, before slowing things down on "Stop Breathin", a somber dirge that slowly builds to a crescendo of plucked guitar and drums at its climax. The homage to garage bands of "Cut Your Hair" follows ("music sounds crazy, bands start up each and every day, i saw a new one just the other day ... i don't care, i care, did you see the drummer's hair?"), segueing into another slow builder in the harmonics of "Newark Wilder". The first half of the album draws to a close with the rollicking trip across California of "Unfair", leading to my personal favorite, the shimmering wistful pop of "Gold Soundz". The second half of the album explores several new directions, including the aforementioned piano-driven sprawl of "Range Life", as well as the psychedelic freak out of "Hit the Plane Down". The affair fades out with the appropriately named jam session "Fillmore Jive". Malkmus would reach even greater levels of juxtaposed poetry on 1997's Brighten the Corners, but Crooked Rain stands as a brilliant union of songwriting.

login to submit comments