Pavement:Classic or Dud

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.

I probably spent more time listening to the Major Leagues EP than I did TT proper.

Yeah nice little Killing Moon cover on that

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

― J. Sam, Thursday, February 11, 2021 11:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

I loved BTC when it came out, but no longer had an interest in hearing it after a certain point ("Stereo" is really the only keeper for me). By contrast, I will still spin TT occasionally.

Hot take: All the Pavement albums are great

Hot-endum: (apart from Slanted which is just good)

I listen to this more often than Crooked Rain but less than WZ, S&E

Terror Twilight has lots of really pretty moments. Nothing about it is weak to me. I can see people feeling that way if they are more of a fan of the other side of Pavement. I've always been on team pretty.

Hot take: All the Pavement albums are great
Hot-endum: (apart from Slanted which is just good)
― Party With A Jagger Ban (dog latin), Thursday, February 11, 2021 12:01 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

cosign this

Hot-endum: (apart from Slanted which is just good perfect)

TT & BTC both benefit from not being classic albums that i've listened to a million times - when i put them on they always sound a little fresher and better than i remember/expect

I just can't understand why anyone would think TT is weak. It's got some of my favourite lyrics on it. It's a "deeper" record in terms of production (and songwriting too I guess). I kind of get it if you're the kind of person who wanted Pavement to continue sounding like a sloppy garage band forever and ever, but I'd argue they stopped being that from Crooked Rain onwards, and I never loved the tinny badly-played stuff anyway

Preferring TT over slanted is crazy talk

I just like music that sounds good you see

I will say this: lyrically, TT is fascinating and very strong.

Slanted's overall frequencies are just a bit raw and unpleasant to me ymmv

Musically, it’s not bad! It’s just doing a bunch of different stuff and, yes, I enjoy slightly messier Pavement.

Have we polled TT?

slanted sounds positively lush after the EP's!

Oh yeah I just tried to listen to Westing and I agree.

Get the feeling the earlier stuff is a bit "had to be there" and I wasn't, but Crooked onwards feels fairly timeless to an extent

not like pavement suddenly became steely dan on terror twilight, it is still a very loose record (with richer overall sonics, which might be part of the problem for me, actually)

“Everybody look at me and my wonderful jooooooob” - deserves a think piece of its own (I’m not being sarcastic)

I just don't think Godrich was a good fit for Pavement at all.

IMO Godrich's touches on TT are barely noticeable and it's just a really...nice-sounding record. Definitely the cleanest-sounding Pavement record, though that crystalline quality serves some of the songs ("Spit on a Stranger", "Major Leagues") much better than others ("Folk Jam", "Platform Blues")

Kind of hope I get to review this reissue somewhere because it’ll force me to deal with my feelings about the last couple years of this band

Also Jon OTM

I feel that all five of their albums are going in a very clear, linear progression from one to the next. Terror Twilight is the fruition of what they were going for all along, and has Malkmus's best singing as well.
That "Godrich running order" makes the record out to be an even more forbidding dark prog record than it was before.

Another reason I like this record is that it has some of the most raw expressions of anger and fear in the entire Pavement/Malk ouvre. There is *very* little of the wry distance that is Malk's usual stock-in-trade on songs like "The Hexx" and "Cream of Gold" and I can't think of other songs of his that explore similar emotional terrain so directly. I'm into it.

Like *dread* is a feeling he explores very rarely, and he does it in a really compelling way here

i remember reading a story somewhere, maybe the perfect sound forever book, where nastanovich mentions talking to godrich in the studio some time into the recording of TT and godrich not remembering who he was. hope that makes it into the liners