Tuesday, 17 July 2007

• Currently Listening Brighten The Corners By Pavement see related

                                                                Overrated/Underrated
  
  It’s an age old music nerd tradition: arguing over the public perception of our favorite and least favorite artists.  For example, The Beatles: Overrated.  The Trashmen: Underrated.  That’s how it’s done.
  
  In the world of indie and underground, we love to knock the high and mighty off of their pedestals and raise our own paupers up as the true princes.  In music, the worst thing in the world is to ever be overrated, lest people realize their error and take you out.  Look at Teenage Fanclub.  In 1991, Spin magazine voted their pleasant Bandwagonesque the best album of the year, one spot ahead of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Ask people today which is the better album and they’ll say “Teenage who?”  Over the years, with hindsight being 20/20 and the sting of initial excessive praise having long since worn off, Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque has proved to be a very good/not great Big Star throwback that just represents a strong album that was unable to incite a cultural touchstone the way Nevermind did.  Now, Nirvana is “the greatest band of the 90’s” and Teenage Fanclub are just some 90’s slacker rock also-rans that fooled people for a while.
  
  Now we still couldn’t be fooled, could we?  We’re too smart, in these hyper-intelligent days of iPhones and cyber stalking, to accidentally be overrating any more albums, right?
  
  Of course we're not too smart, why else would I be writing this?
  
  Let’s take the piss out of some sacred cows and put the piss into some others, shall we?
  
  Band: Pavement
  
  Background: The flagship band for the whole lo-fi slacker rock movement of the early-90’s.  Released five albums between 1992 and 1999.  There first two (Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain) are hailed to be indie classics and both pop up on many best of the 90’s lists (they’re actually both in the top ten of the decade on Pitchfork).  After the poppy Crooked, Pavement released their “experimental third album” with Wowee Zowee to some head scratches followed by a strung cult following among more adventurous Pavement fans.  After Wowee Zowee Pavement returned to pop with 1997’s Brighten the Corners before ending it all with 1999’s slightly obtuse Terror Twilight.  After breaking up lead singer/songwriter, Stephen Malkmus went on to a successful solo career.  Pavement’s influence on indie music holds strong to this day.
  
  Overrated: Slanted & Enchanted (1992)

  
  Rock critics went apeshit over this album when it came out in 1992, heaping praise on it like it was a Teenage Fanclub album or something.  What’s amazing is that the love has only increased over the last fifteen years.  Critics endlessly blah blah about this album’s “importance and influence” and how it “revitalized” something or other, slapping on gold stars and hearty pats on the back.  Now I don’t know about you, but when I listen to music, I don’t think to myself, “Wow, this sounds so…influential!”  No, I think, “Wow, I’m enjoying this piece of music because it’s actually good!”
  
  Now this album actually is pretty good.  Pavement’s one of my all time favorite bands so I won’t besmirch their name too much.  Back in my high school band days I wrote a song that pretty unabashedly ripped off “Zurich is Stained” and “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” is, of course, an undeniable classic and the ultimate Pavement song to many.  So there’s definitely enough here to enjoy, but in comparison to what Pavement did after this album, there is something missing.
  
  Ok, I’ll just come out and say it: Slanted & Enchanted is essentially a younger, prettier version of the Fall, the awesome British band lead by Mark E. Smith.  Of course, the Fall are cool and a totally great band to want to sound like, but who wants a copy when you can get the real thing?  Also, the production is poor and, here comes the major sacrilege, not all the songs are that great.  Now people are going to say that the production is supposed to be bad, this is lo-fi after all, and that the songs are supposed to feel fragmented and incomplete, this is slacker rock after all.  In the words of my father, “I get that, Debi.”  It fits that aesthetic, but that don’t make it hot shit.  I like the songs ok, but there’s simply not enough going on for me to get truly excited over.
  
  I’m simply trying to take the album’s reputation of “classic, must have album” to “relatively strong genre exercise” or even “a promising start for a band that has a lot more in them.”  It ain’t bad, but it ain’t that good either.
  
  Underrated:  Brighten the Corners (1997)

  
  By 1997, Pavement had become the elder statesmen of indie rock.  Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (the first album I ever heard by Pavement) showed the world that Pavement were more than one album wonders (although, I’d like to argue the “wonder” that is that one album).  After going all “difficult” with 1995’s Wowee Zowee, Pavement returned with a more streamlined effort, one that lost a little bit of the “anything goes” quality that the been had so successfully harvested on their first three full lengths.  Brighten the Corners was initially received with a collective sigh of, “Yeah, it’s good, but it’s just another Pavement album, it’s not important.”  Critics enjoyed it well enough.  It appeared in the middle of some year-end best of lists.  It certainly wasn’t at the top, though.  Pavement’s day had come and gone and what with Radiohead releasing such an “important” work that year, there was no chance that the straight forward Corners was going to garner much attention.
  
  Brighten the Corners may not be a grand statement, but it does something that no other Pavement album before or after has been able to achieve.  It’s an album completely devoid of filler.  Even my other favorite Pavement album, Crooked Rain, is weighed down by two or three highly skipable tracks.  Not so for Brighten the Corners.  After spending time as lead guitar man for the amazing Silver Jews, Steve Malkmus’ fretwork was sharper than ever, plus his penchant for the lyrical bon mot is in peak form all over the album.  And the hooks, my God, the hooks!
  
  “Stereo” opens the album in fine, atypically hard rocking form.  Disjointed, but meaty, guitar improvisations meander in every direction while Malkmus pontificates on the likes of pigs, jocks and Geddy Lee.  The song has no narrative arc, it’s more like Beck’s highly catchy, non sequitor-laden goofs, but when the distorted crunch of the guitars kick in for the chorus, the music and lyrics coalesce to form a triumphant song that hits all your pleasure centers.  It’s one of Pavements greatest songs.
  
  “Shady Lane” follows in more laid-back form, like a less countrified “Range Life.”  This track is Malkmus’ crowning achievement as a lyricist.  With no introduction, Malkmus starts in with lyrics that awe in their wit, wordplay and surprising emotional depth: 
  

  
  “Blind date with a chancer / We had oysters and dry lancers / And the cheque went in a rut / We went dutch, dutch, dutch, dutch / A redder shade of neck on a whiter shade of trash / And this emery board is giving me a rash / I’m flat out / You’re so beautiful to look at when you cry / Freeze, don’t move / You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life.”
  

  
  After that we have false finishes, beautiful guitar interplay and an extended jam to close out the ceremonies.  “Stereo” is the big start, but “Shady Lane” sinks its teeth into you and sells you on the rest of the album.
  
  “Transport is Arranged” follows in the same vain as “Shady Lane,” a lackadaisical vibe peppered with more tasty guitar lines and highly quotable lyrics (shout out to Baltimore!) all made better by Malkmus’ wry delivery.  “Transport” leads us to “Date with Ikea,” a fuzzy pop rocker that feels like classic rock in its breezy end of the summer vibe.  This is as straight-forward as Pavement would ever get and it’s one of their most undervalued tracks.
  
  “Old to Begin” is a slow burner that truly scorches.  Packed to the brim with tasty guitar tones and some of Malkmus’ greatest rock star posturing – the entirely screamed final verse is a fine example -  “Old” encapsulates Pavement’s loose and sardonic appeal.  “Type Slowly” is the closest Pavement ever came to a full on ballad, and it truly marks a point in Malkmus’ progression as a songwriter.  One can hear where Malkmus would take his excellent solo material through this song - prettier, more melodic and carrying an air of confidence that exceeds all of Pavements prior material.  “Type Slowly” is Malkmus becoming comfortable enough to just let his songs ‘be.’
  
  Following “Type Slowly” are a string of delightful songs that are packed to the brim with some of Pavement’s greatest hooks.  After a minute long fake out, “Embassy Row” blossoms as one of Pavement’s most impassioned hard rockers; “Blue Hawaiian” is a breezy cool down that’s driven home by Malkmus’ charming speak-sing rap; “We Are Underused” is a slow, spacey, Southern rock jam that sees Malkmus leading the troops in a half soulful, half disinterested refrain of the songs title; and “Passat Dream,” with it’s tuneful, wah-wah inflected guitar jangle, is the album’s most classically indie track and subsequently stands as a true highlight with it’s uptempo drums and slippery guitar.
  
  The album closes with “Starlings of the Slipstream” and, appropriately, “Fin,” two heartbreakingly beautiful tracks that round the album out with Pavement’s trademark unintentional grandeur.  “Starlings” contains Malkmus’ most assured melody since he ripped off Buddy Holly for Crooked Rain’s “Silence Kit.”  “Fin,” like the title suggests, adds a cinematic scope to the whole album, with the kind of awe-inspiring closing jam that would fit perfectly over the closing credits of some generation’s defining film.
  
  Alas, it wasn’t to be.  Brighten the Corners was/is shunned (ok, less emphatically praised) for all the reasons that make it so great: the songs are (relatively) straight-forward with little room for the usual aimless filler tracks that appeared on the band’s previous outings, the production is pristine, the musicianship flawless and the emotional breadth vast.  It’s grown-up (especially in the wake of the scattered and aimless Wowee Zowee).  Many of the band members were getting married around the time of this record’s recording, which may explain the records “moving on” feel.  It’s an atypically focused affair for a group that up until that point, had been decidedly ragtag.
  
  It’s been ten years since Brighten the Corners and fifteen since Slanted & Enchanted and the two reputations couldn’t be more different.  Slanted is a very, very solid album with some classic songs, but it benefits from being first and being new.  Brighten is the product of consistency and nobody ever appreciates consistency.  But even more than consistency, no one appreciates the sound of a band at ease with itself.  Conflict sells, careerism and professionalism, well...did you buy the last Rolling Stones album?  I didn't think so. 

  But in the end, this is the sound that Malkmus has successfully stuck with through his solo career (2005’s fantastic Face the Truth  is a fine example of a confidant songwriter totally at ease with his truly unique style).  There's a stateliness to Malkmus' new style.  He's aware of how good he is.  And that's a good thing, actually.  He's a guitar god and a lyrical master now, but on Pavement's first outing, he was still a kid trying to ape his heroes and trying to take the piss out of the rock world.  Slanted & Enchanted captures the Zeitgeist of a young, hungry rock band, but Brighten the Corners captures the essence of who Pavement, and more specifically, who Stephen Malkmus, really is.  Listen and you'll find out. 
  

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