Pavement is one of the first bands I got into after a early high school "music discovery" phase and I've listened to them pretty consistently for the last ten years now. That's longer than I've been driving and longer than I've had most of my friends. I'm fairly certain I've spent more time listening to Pavement than I've ever spent with any woman, or even the sum total of all women. It's a weird relationship to have with a band. I think I originally liked them because they made noisy music and their lyrics were about absolute nonsense. I also liked them because it really seems like nobody in the band actually gives a shit. There's a great Beavis and Butthead episode where they just keep saying "Try harder! You're not trying!"
That got me through the first 8 years or so. Lately (the last two years I guess) I've mostly been listening to their later stuff because the song writing is so superb. The lyrics are still absurd and it's still weird but overall everything is more polished. For whatever reason though (and I feel like an idiot for this) I've just never really listened to their second-to-last album, Brighten the Corners. It just got lost in the bigger picture or something. Well in the last week I've been playing it nonstop and I'm ready to admit that I've been living the last 10 years in ignorance. Every Pavement album has a couple of really terrible songs and this is no different (I hate "Stereo" and "Date with Ikea"). Most everything else is very solid though and mixes the typical Pavement slyness with stuff that really gets stuck in your head. A smattering of songs below.
No comments:
Post a Comment