Great Media: Pavement "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain"
by Richard Pittman
on Jun 21, 2008 1:00 PM CDT
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Everybody's taste is different, and to understand my taste, I think I have to describe it to you as best I can. I like organically created pop music. I am a huge fan of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus formula. It's a jumping off point for everything from Chuck Berry to the Beatles to the Sex Pistols to The Pixies to Radiohead to Weezer to everything that has happened in rock music from the very beginning. I think rock starts losing its way when it strays from the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus format too far. I can't take those jam bands and their 20 minute noise-polluter songs.
That describes the structure I like. In content, I tend to gravitate away from the party-boy stylings of classic rock and more towards moody, introspective, or mournful songs. I've been accused of liking "sad bastard" music, and that's not entirely incorrect. Give me a Violent Femmes song about frustrations with girls any day over a Van Halen song about sleeping with your teacher. But that's a topic for another day. The introductions are done, and now we need to focus on Pavement.
Thanks to Poseur for finally getting me to get off my butt and listen to Pavement a couple years ago. Poseur's a big fan of their first album, "Slanted and Enchanted", which I like just fine, but my favorite Pavement album is their second one, "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain".
Pavement doesn't fit cleanly into my usual style, though it's not terribly far removed. It's definitely not "sad bastard" music, but it's definitely not closely related to Van Halen either. (You'll have to pardon me as I will frequently cite Van Halen as my personal icon for everything that I dislike in musical lyrics.) It's sort of a combination of fun music and lyrics that defy easy characterization.
To me, Pavement was a bit of an acquired taste. Pavement's early stuff was kind of poppy, but deliberately imperfect. You can hear all the mistakes that are made in the instruments. Singer Stephen Malkmus is hardly a polished singer, and his off-tune style can be a little off-putting if you aren't used to it. You can hear the hiss of the amps and even the occasional stray noise in the studio, and Pavement doesn't care. They're also just about the least hard-rock looking band you'll ever see. They look like they could be the guys in the fraternity house. Well, maybe they could be the hipsters in the fraternity house.
If you don't believe me, check out a 1994 performance of "Gold Soundz" off of Crooked Rain:
Beavis & Butthead famously reviewed one of Pavement's music videos, "Cut Your Hair". They said of it, "These guys just aren't trying hard enough." And it is true that Stephen Malkmus makes it look so very easy. But then again, brilliance often looks like it is so simple. Wayne Gretzky made it look like it was easy to score goals in the NHL. Michael Jordan made it look like it was easy to get to the goal in the NBA. Jerry Rice made it look like it was easy to score touchdowns. Stephen Malkmus makes it look easy to put together perfect pop songs.
The genius of Stephen Malkmus is that he makes so many of his songs sound so right, that it's almost as if the songs were simply sitting in the ether, placed there by the gods, waiting for some mortal to find and claim them.
"Crooked Rain" is probably their most accessible album. Starting with their 3rd album, "Wowee Zowee", they went to a more experimental, noisy style that didn't appeal to me nearly as much as their earlier, poppier stuff. Standouts on the album include the morose ballad "Stop Breathing":
stop breathing
stop breathing
breathing for me now
write it on a postcard
dad they broke me
dad they broke me
The classic song from this album, and one that is required listening for every rock music fan is the brilliant "Range Life":
out on my skateboard the night is just humming
and 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
As an added bonus, the song contains a brilliant but completely uncalled for shot at Smashing Pumpkins, and it really bothered Billy Corgan. A feud developed over the years, one that I am sure endlessly amused Stephen Malkmus and endlessly annoyed Billy Corgan.
The source of the feud is, as I see it, that Pavement was completely free of artifice. The band members didn't have a particular fashion style, and seemed indifferent to their public image. Like I said, they looked like anything but the typical rock band, while the Smashing Pumpkins went out of their way to look like '90s alt-rock versions of rock gods. Pavement looked like they could be waiting tables at Bennigan's on a Saturday night. You might call them hippies and not tip them well, but they wouldn't look terribly out of place.
Fortunately for the relatively new converts to Pavement, Matador Records has started putting out their old albums in Special Edition format, complete with B-sides, live cuts, John Peel sessions, and alternate versions. The bonus material is just as good as the canonical material, and I would highly recommend spending the extra couple of dollars to get the special editions.
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Pavement
I love Pavement. And while I do think Slanted and Enchanted is better, it’s sort of like saying I think “Hamlet” is better than “MacBeth”. Both are genius, I’m just picking the one I like better. I just like S&E better becaue, well, I heard it first. Most people’s first exposure to Pavement is “Cut Your Hair” or “Blinded by the Rush”, as both even had VIDEOS. And they are great songs. CR/CR is a great damn album and if you don’t own it and S&E, well, you should shut down your computer right now, grab your keys, drive to a CD strore, and buy both of them. If you like them, go back in two weeks and buy Wowee Zowee and Brighten the Corners.
I agree that they seem lazy but in fact are not. Pavement is perhaps the quintessential “slacker” band. But what makes them so great is that on the first listen, you have no idea where the song is gonna go. Their songs really do meander all over the place, only to cut back to somewhere else. And they do this without sacrificing pop sensibilities or song structure (well, not too much).
I love them picking a fight with Billy Corgan (and Stone Temple Pilots), for no particular reason other than it was funny. Corgan was the only one humorless enough to take the bait. and I think that’s one of the real virtures of PAvement that a lot of indie rock misses: music should be joyful. Playing in a rock band is fun. OK, not all the time, and I’m not saying there’s no place for sad bastard music, but so many indie rock bands struggle so hard to be completely without joy. Which is why I tend to gravitate towards indie rock bands that seem like they like doing this: Pavement, the Pixies, the Hold Steady, Drive-by Truckers, etc.
Don’t take yourself so seriously. Zurich is stained.
by Poseur on
Jun 21, 2008 1:45 PM CDT
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I read the liner notes to the Special Edition of CR/CR, and in it their manager said that he’s pretty sure Stone Temple Pilots never knew about the shot Pavement took at them in this song. Which makes it even funnier to me. Pavement takes a shot at STP, and STP never notices. Billy Corgan just couldn’t allow the world to ignore the fact that someone, somewhere thought he was a little ridiculous.
Richard Pittman
by Richard Pittman on
Jun 21, 2008 6:17 PM CDT
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I also prefer Slanted and Enchanted...
...to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, probably for the same “I heard it first” reasoning, but I also find that now, when I try to listen to Pavement, I don’t really care for anyting but the bonus live S and E stuff on the expanded edition. After having watched Slow Century one too many times, I just really really don’t like the studio stuff. Weird.
by Todd on
Jun 23, 2008 7:03 PM CDT
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Thanks
I’ve often lamented the fact that I’ve fallen victim to an unfortunately common phenomenon: somewhere around one’s mid-20s, familiarity with new music takes a nosedive. I can picture the curve in my head. This is particularly lamentable for someone like me, who went to UGA in the 1980s when “music appreciation” had pretty much become a not-for-credit graduation requirement. In my years in Athens, the culture flipped: my freshman year, fraternities hired cover bands for their parties, so we got to hear lots and lots of “Gloria” and “Shout” , since Animal House was still the model for how such a party should look and sound; in just a few years - between R.E.M. and Widespread Panic - what was already a well-established culture around town finally permeated every facet of University life, and the opportunity for new music to be heard spread from several downtown venues to every private party in town. Anyway, presented by a post on an LSU site with a band of whom I’d heard but with which I was unfamiliar, the reflection ended up bringing back some rather pleasant memories of a Dash Rip Rock show at Athens’s Uptown Lounge somewhere around ‘86 or so. So yeah, that was fun. Thanks.
I digress. It’s what I do. Sorry about that.
I’m giving a listen to the two Pavement albums featured most prominently in these two discussions. So far, so good. Even though my appetite for absorbing new music is not nearly as sharp as it was back in nineteen hundred and eighty-six (much like my capacity to spout of the past imperfect of -ir verbs), there may yet be a few new tricks available to this old … well, you know.
Well past it, sometimes I still can’t see myself at thirty.
by NCT on
Jun 22, 2008 10:49 AM CDT
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another great selection for the series.
sometimes it’s hard to remember the era of pseudo-grunge and crap rock that saturated the airwaves after the onslaught of nirvana and their seattle progeny. pavement was a breath of fresh air in that environment and i can’t thank them enough for staying true to their own twisted muse during that time.
but they certainly weren’t su generis. there is a little bit of the velvet underground’s pop sensibility and a whole lot of the fall’s brittle left-of-center musical approach not to mention cynicism.
this is a great album to discover not so much because it’ll give you a direct musical influence to draw from, but because it’s a blueprint on how to break down the accepted norms and make something work even though it has absolutely no reason to.
by kleph on
Jun 30, 2008 8:33 PM CDT
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