Pavement:Classic or Dud

lo fi by preference vs lo fi by necessity?

Listening to S&Eon headphones last night, I reflected how it’s an album like Murmur — as great as the songs are, the production (sometimes slighted as “murky, lo-fi,” etc.) is a very deliberate & key creative aspect of what makes it the album it is. The same songs, recorded differently, wouldn’t have the same impact or mystique... you can hear how the other mix of “Summer Babe” doesn’t quite have that feel.

I’m writing crappily this morning (and I guess it’s not a revelation that the production is key for any great album), but you probably get me...

aw I wanna hear this "David Gone's" song

I would listen to it in two weeks on the one-year anniversary of his being gone.

I've definitely never thought of S&E as lo-fi in sound like Eric's Trip or someone - is it seen that way? It's a fairly big, dynamic, clear-sounding rock album. Slackerish in terms of playing and singing, yes.

its range of frequencies of relatively limited, but there's a lot going on within that narrow range

Well it doesn’t have any low end ...

not true! spiral's guitar is run through a guitar amp & a bass cab on loretta's scars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHIw74zVmaA

speaking of...

Hey, I never noticed the keyboard(?) deep in the mix under the "From now on..." section of "Loretta's Scars."(??)

― Your dream has symbolic content (morrisp), Monday, July 20, 2020 10:11 PM (yesterday)

Oberheim OB-8

Yeah, it's not a Bob Rock production or anything. I just don't think it sounds like what actual lo-fi gear would have delivered in the early 90s.

xp thx, Al!

I think Spiral found the low end when he boosted the heck out of it for Luxe & Reduxe.

One thing that kind of bothers me about Pavement's "lo-fi" distinction is that they recorded everything up to Crooked Rain at Gary Young's original studio that had a 24-track MCI console which if you are familiar with is approximately the size (132"x41"x38") of ~200 Tascam 424s (18"x14"x4") such as the ones actually used by GBV, Sebadoh, Silver Jews, et.al. Slanted & Enchanted is extremely hi-fi compared to Alistair Galbraith or The Grifters music from the same period.

I have a horse in this race, but imo 90-ish % of the bands under the "lo-fi" banner were only lo-fi under the absolute broadest sense of the term ("not working at Ocean Way")

right, so you end up with this absurd descriptor that covers this vast swath spanning the "direct to boombox/answering machine" bedroom crowd all the way up to... ???

...not spending a month in the ibiza/barbados?

... home studio not up to Tom Scholz standards?

interesting new Pavement album came out on Spotify last friday

"LAugh Trak" is a jam

Is that like the (now removed) new Neutral Milk Hotel song that popped up on Spotify over the weekend? Seemed like Jeff Mangum going future bass was a 2020 twist too good to be true.

this will be 1/2 of ILM's favorite Pavement album lmao

(Less) Froggy (More Mott)

Jackals, false grails

Anybody know what’s going on? There’s also a new «Yo La Tengo» single on Spotify in a similar vein, i.e relatively basic instrumental EDM

Someone lost the keys to the Matador office?

that's weird. I thought there was a chance "300 Miles of Dust" was by some dance kids who'd never heard of Pavement before, but the Yo La Tengo song is also posted to Youtube on an official looking account.

It is credited to novecore.com

BNM 8.6

There was also an electronic song credited to Neutral Milk Hotel that briefly popped up on Spotify, but it was pulled fairly quickly. I think there's just a sudden rash of people uploading their music to streaming services credited to more popular artists, but no one seems to be doing any vetting.

Just watched the Space Ghost episode, which somehow I had never seen (or had long forgotten about). Good stuff

oh there's a thread for that: The Beatles

Pavement are teasing the long-awaited deluxe reissue of their final album, 1999's 'Terror Twilight' https://t.co/xTSQXWVj6v pic.twitter.com/0HadHrOh29

— Stereogum (@stereogum) February 11, 2021

I would be happy to add this one.

lol at “pavement’s all shook down.”

i guess i will buy this.

Glad to see some Terror Twilight love in here, I've always thought that one seemed unfairly maligned. Any word on the deluxe version?

― the fey bloggers are onto the zagat tweets (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, 8 June 2011 18:17

Yeah, it's great. They removed half the tracks.

― отдых в Крыму! (Pleasant Plains), Wednesday, 8 June 2011 18:23

They should do the “Godrich sequencing” for the tracklist.

what was that again? started with The Hexx?

lol at “pavement’s all shook down.”

i guess i will buy this.

― mizzell, Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:52 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha this is very otm

xpost - this is what I understood it to be:

1. platform blues
2. the hexx
3. you are a light
4. cream of gold
5. ann don't cry
6. folk jam
7. major leagues
8. speak, see, remember
9. ...and carrot rope
10. billie
11. spit on a stranger

If they could cast a "Godrich-Removal" spell on this album I'd give it a curious listen.

the idea of starting the album with "platform blues" is odd.

agreed, would prefer "the hexx" opener for sure.

the "godrich removal spell" is to listen to the live bootlegs from 1999 ... some of the TT songs really took off onstage.

I was at the Mr. T's Bowl show (just SM & a Groovebox) and it was great. Have you heard that set?

i saw the SM show at the Long Beach Museum of Art that summer! a magical night. I have a tape of that, not sure if I've heard the Mr T show.

There is video of it, albeit in prehistoric digital quality.

Terror Twilight is way underrated, a better album than Brighten the Corners even if it doesn't reach the same heights

two decades later I love them about the same but for the longest I was a TT partisan

their weakest album IMHO

they really don't have a bad album, but if I had to lose one it'd probably be terror twilight. fotunately, I don't have to lose one.

I have an old bootleg with some of those SM + boom box cuts on it (pulled together by a former Ilxor.)

This is frankly my least favorite Pavement album (though I love a few tracks) but I’ll buy it, of course. Really hope a dynamite live set is part of the package.

Oh yeah, it's definitely the weakest Pavement album, but it's still Pavement and I'd love to hear demos or scraps from this era that might give us a peek into the non Godrich version.

The holdup has probably been that Malkmus’ solo career came immediately after - feelings to be caught in diving into archives and recognizing that a lot of the material might have been on the first solo album, etc.

That said there were period b-sides that are under heard in modern times. Scott’s “Stub Your Toe” is fun.

Also, guys? The liner notes may be the wildest part of the reissue if everyone chips in.