Pavement Album: “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain”

1. Silence Kit

"Conduit For Sale!" was music for driving through the one-story cement chain stores of America. "Silence Kit" is music for cruising down Highway 1, cliffs on your left and the Pacific Ocean on your right.

2. Elevate Me Later

Yet another "girl left me and moved to Los Angeles" song, but Pavement does it with more poetry than, say, Reel Big Fish's "She's Famous Now". Some great lyrics in here: "Does he sleep with electric guitars/Range roving with the cinema stars/And I wouldn't want to shake their hands/Because they're on such a high-protein plan/And there's 40 different shades of black/So many fortresses and ways to attack"

3. Stop Breathin'

A slow song about death. Weird lyrics. Not great, not bad.

4. Cut Your Hair

Pavement's only "hit" song. Definately more pop than what you'd find on Slanted and Enchanted and Wowee Zowee, but the lyrics are definately Malkmusian. Speaks of people's shallow judgement of music, referencing how before they got big, all anyone talked about was their hippie drummer's long hair.

5. Newark Wilder

Creepy, uneasy jazz. You could see Christopher Walken walking through a rainy city on his way to kill somebody to this song.

6. Unfair

A song declaring Northern California's supremacy over Southern California over distorted punkish guitars, comparing our Shasta Gulch and Tahoe Lake to their "manmade deltas and concrete rivers". Sort of a continuation of Slanted's "Two States".

7. Gold Soundz

In a sort of pre-emo song, Malkmus sings of angst and self-loathing over heartfelt guitars with an intelligence and way with words that a modern emo band like Death Cab For Cutie could never duplicate.

8. 5-4=Unity

Very un-Pavement, an instrumental piano-centered jazz song.

9. Range Life

Chill country rock that references 1994 youth culture: skateboards, Walkmen, the Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins.

10. Heaven is a Truck

The companion to "Range Life," another country ballad, with a little bit more of a late night edge to it.

11. Hit the Plane Down

People say that they sound like The Fall on this song. I'm gonna come right out and say that I've never heard anything by the Fall. A repetative guitar riff plays as a man who isn't Steven Malkmus sings weird lyrics about crashing a plane.

12. Fillmore Jive

An amazing song. A six minute epic about the future of music. The first minute just has Malkmus singing over a single guitar, with lyrics that develop into the refrain "I need to sleep," which is complimented by a burst of music (drums, bass, and guitar). The following verses reference a music scene featuring glum "kids on vespas", streets full of punks, rockers with their long curly locks, all saying good night to the rock and roll era. The song has a melencholy optimism to it, like the band is saying goodbye to an era of music, while welcoming a new era in, one that filled with drug addicts, skinny arms, and the "dance faction/a little too loose for me".

I was in Florida on vacation the day Kurt Cobain shot himself. I remember staring out into the ocean trying to understand why he would do such a thing. Later that night I saw the video for 'Cut Your Hair' and my world shifted ever so slightly. I bought this record on the recommendation of a friend who was an avid ministry fan. I'm not sure how or why he knew about it but I owe him big time. The thing is when I got this record I hated the sh*t out of it. It was terrible, the worst music ever, oh my god, my allowance for the year...WASTED. But somehow I kept listening and slowly it crept in between my synapses and has been blocking the flow of relevant thoughts ever since. When you listen to the music you feel filled with sad beams of sunlight. You are traveling across the desert with an ex-girlfriend to drop her off in a different city. But you are strangely at peace with this and you are angry in a fun way. You want to f*ck s*it up...melodically. Gold Soundz, Fillmore Jive, Elevate Me Slowly, Unfair, Range Life, and Silence Kit are all brilliant individually. The rest of the songs are essential to make the album whole. This is my favorite album of all time.

Truly one of the best albums to emerge from the 1990's, Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain took the unique sound of Slanted and Enchanted and made it fuller. Cries of "sell-out" emerged at the time, but if anything, Crooked Rain ended up sounding more like Pavement than before. This album is virtually perfect from beginning to end. It kicks off with "Silent Kid", an instant classic that chugs along on a great guitar riff, augmented by new additions Mark Ibold on bass and Bob Nastanovich/Steve West on percussion. Every single song on this albums is a delight, from the rollicking "Unfair" to the slower songs like "Stop Breathing" and "Newark Wilder". Throughout, Stephen Malkmus' immense talent for writing simultaneously ambiguous/absurd and yet deeply meaningful lyrics shines through (example: "You're the kind of girl I like / Because you're empty and I'm empty / And you should never quarantine the past", from Gold Soundz). Even Spiral Stairs' contribution ("Hit the Plane Down") is much better than his usual fare. Nearly ten years after its initial release, this album sounds as fresh and exciting as it did back then. Wondrous and perplexing, this one's an absolute classic. And in truly Pavement-ian fashion, it even ends in mid sentence ("Their throats are filled with..."). You just can't beat something like

One of the few major alternative rock bands from the 90s to be able to honestly grasp that title (most were either too obscure to be major or got a lot of radio play and lost that "alt" label), Pavement did score a big underground hit with "Cut Your Hair," one of the best singles of the decade that a lot of people have still never heard. On their second album, Pavement continue their slacker vibe tradition and crank out warm and melodic pop songs with a hard rock attitude. They didn't go for the pink noise effect or try to change the world with their "omniscient" observations, but preferred the less groundbreaking method--and it worked.

"Fillmore Jive" is a rare epic for them, and one of their all-time best tracks. "Unfair" and "Stop Breathin'" are thoroughly underrated gems and "Silence Kit" has a smooth and buried melody that's gorgeous beneath the hard-tuned guitar line. Only the disappointingly tepid "Heaven Is a Truck" doesn't hit the mark.

Teeters on the brink of great album and true masterpiece--replayability threatens to tip it over, but its product-of-its-times factor keeps on pushing it back (so many smaller bands have aped their successful ingredients, that it loses some of its freshness). Fans of the band probably own about three copies of this by now; fans of indie and alternative rock must have it if they don't already.

Best cuts: "Fillmore Jive," "Silence Kit," "Cut Your Hair," "Unfair," "Stop Breathin'," "Newark Wilder," "Gold Soundz," "Range Life," "Elevate Me Later," "5-4=Unity," "Hit the Plane Down"

Although this purchase would be well worth it, Matador Records just announced that they will re-release Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain like they did Slanted & Enchanted. It will similarly have two discs of extras, and I think it would be worth the extra bucks for new fans; you would soon become a much bigger fan. This album is the cornerstone of Pavement's career.