MUSIC

Pavement
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins
[Matador; 1994; r: 2004]
Rating: 10.0

In a 1994 interview with Option magazine, Steve Malkmus recalled his pre-Pavement band Straw Dog opening for Black Flag in Stockton, California. "I was backstage before the show and all those guys, they looked so scary, I was afraid of them," Malkmus told writer Jason Fine. "Like, Greg Ginn was mixing up this stuff in a glass. It was probably just protein powder or some healthy drink, but I thought it was heroin or something." Observing Henry Rollins squeezing a cue ball to pump himself up, Malkmus compared the Sisyphean ritual to smashing your head against a brick wall. "That's what I thought punk was, you know. That's when I knew that maybe I'm just not punk enough."

No maybes about it. The late-1993 press photos that accompany the lavish 62-page booklet included with this heavily augmented 2xCD reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain tell the story. After original drummer Gary Young split earlier in the year and Steve West, Bob Nastanovich and Mark Ibold joined Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, Pavement looked like a scrubbed-up gang of packaging majors in search of a good tailgate party (jolly Nastanovich in U-Mass windbreaker, clean-cut S.M. in puffy red ski jacket; only West's Harry Carey-style specs suggest that these guys might be hanging with New York hipsters).

The dorkily collegiate look was of no concern to Pavement, because to them, appearances never mattered. That's what all the indie bands said back then, of course, even the ones who threw away the twin-blade, let their jeans wear through the knees, flew the flannel, and became world famous. But from the first Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain single ("Cut Your Hair") forward, Pavement, on the verge of the big time, opted out. Who knew why, really? Kannberg would do some soapboxing when pressed in interviews (he wouldn't deal with Rolling Stone because he didn't like how they covered the 80s), but Pavement was never about principles-- at least not ones you could easily name. An anti-fashion statement is still a fashion statement, but Pavement was on another trip. They liked to make fun of rock iconography, but they were smart enough to avoid offering an alternative. You never really knew where Pavement stood on anything, which kept an air of mystery and made their music malleable.

Pavement's sophomore outing does not contain 12 perfect songs but it is close to a perfect album. Each of the best half-dozen-- "Silence Kit", "Elevate Me Later", "Cut Your Hair", "Unfair", "Gold Soundz", and "Range Life"-- contain Malkmus' catchy and highly unusual melodies ("Silence Kit" cribs from Buddy Holly, but even that's an odd gesture) and would be career highlights for most rock bands. But even the songs that aren't necessarily brilliant work well in the context of the album, moving things along in their own way. The Dave Brubeck send-up "5-4=Unity", for example, is a perfect placeholder between two unbelievably great songs. And the closing "Fillmore Jive" ends an album at least partly about the music industry on an appropriately classic rock note, with an extended group-jam coda on par with "Hey Jude". Not many records are this easy to put on in the car and let play start to finish.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has been called one of the great California albums, but unlike most records slapped with that label, it avoids dreams and nightmares and focuses on the banal. This is a suburban California album, and since suburbs are exactly the same from Sacto to Levittown, it's an album to which all suburban kids can relate. To us, the imagery of "Elevate Me Later" ("underneath the fake oil burning lamps in the city we forgot to name") and "Range Life" (the kid on the skateboard is coasting through a winding subdivision, not Brooklyn) is instantly familiar.

But really, though Crooked Rain references the burbs and the music biz, with Pavement it's the sound and feel that matter, not the words or themes. Quoting lyrics to get to the heart of Pavement is misguided. Go online and print some out and you'll see that, taken on their own, they're generally meaningless. Read the track-by-track notes S.M. prepared for Melody Maker at the time of the record's release (reprinted in the booklet here) and it's clear just how unknowable these songs are. "Stop Breathin" is about tennis and the Civil War, of course; "Elevate Me Later" is about political correctness.

Judging from the several alternate takes of Crooked Rain songs included on Disc Two, it seems that Malkmus tinkered with words constantly, and that the final versions are those sung on the take that wound up in the can. The "I/they don't have no function" bit in "Range Life", which most people take to be a self-deprecating line to let Malkmus off the hook for ragging on the Smashing Pumpkins fans, was probably just a glitch that he didn't want to go back and fix. The early version of "Range Life" recorded with Gary Young (one of eight such unreleased tracks on the 25-track bonus disc) had no such sentiment, and lyrics-wise, it's a completely different song. "Ell Ess Two", an early version of "Elevate Me Later" from the Young sessions, is also completely different and yet unintelligible in the same way. It's the way words sound and the way Malkmus sings them that gives his songs meaning.

The remainder of the first disc is given over to the B-sides and compilation songs released during the period. I've always thought Pavement's celebrated B-side prowess to be a tad overrated, but certainly the gorgeous and quiet "Strings of Nashville" is one of the best songs in the band's catalog (love that synthesized traffic whoosh), and "Stare", "Raft", and "Nail Clinic" all rate alongside other original Crooked Rain tracks. The two R.E.M. knocks, on the other hand-- the half-cover of "Camera" and the "Tweeter & the Monkey Man"-style goof "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence"-- are in league with "Haunt You Down" as weeded-out experiments for only the most hardcore fans.

The second disc, containing period unreleased material, is an equally mixed bag that turns up a few true gems. The most anticipated tracks are the first eight, recorded in 1993 with Gary Young and never officially released in any form. "All My Friends" is by far the best of these, and could fairly be called a Pavement classic (it would have fit quite nicely on the Watery, Domestic EP), and "Soiled Little Filly" is almost as good. The three alternate versions of Crooked Rain songs from these sessions ("Ell Ess Two", "Range Life", and "Stop Breathin"), and one later re-recorded for Wowee Zowee ("Flux=Rad") are interesting but ultimately show how Pavement had outgrown Young's primitive studio set-up (speaking of Wowee Zowee, early versions of "Grounded", "Kennel District", and two takes on "Pueblo" were recorded at the New York Crooked Rain sessions as well. Since these are three of Wowee's best songs, this was a fertile period indeed.) Jokey experiments, a few strong songs, a couple instrumentals-- including a welcome no-vox version of "Strings of Nashville"-- and four Peel Sessions tracks round out the generous bonus disc. The perfect dusty trunk hauled down from the attic.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was my introduction to Pavement and I loved it instantly. I was traveling a lot in '92 and '93 and was rarely close to a stereo, so somehow Slanted & Enchanted never made it on my radar. When I finally bought S&E, my first thought was, all right, sweet, some of these songs are as good as the ones on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. There's no question that S&E is a fantastic record, but to me, parts of it sound like Pavement wearing a costume. Listen to the brilliant "Summer Babe" and know that Malkmus loves Lou Reed, but East Coast cool ultimately isn't his style.

On Crooked Rain, Pavement became a band, opened up (as much as they ever could, anyway), and sounded like themselves: smart, funny, confident, West Coast, suburban. The confidence was key. Malkmus and Kannberg grew up loving bands loved by critics, and in their short history, the critics couldn't stop talking about them. In 1994, they were ready to take on the world, but chose to do so in their own quiet and unforgettable way.