Pavement:Classic or Dud

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

― tylerw, Thursday, February 11, 2021 4:28 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

cosigned. first heard The Hexx on the BTC tour at Shepherds Bush Empire and it was immense, almost Sabbath-esque. so disappointed by the TT version. They played Killing Moon as well, which was fabulous. That was definitely the best time I saw Pavement, their guitar soloing was so fluid and lucid back then, almost like Television minus the chops.

My memory on this re TT is fuzzy but BTC and Real Emotional Trash are cases where I made the mistake of getting real cozy with live bootlegs ahead of the proper records dropping ... and then subsequently being disappointed

I think the final two albums suggest a path whereby if Pavement had been more "committed" - lived in the same place, were all into it, maybe honed their "chops," etc. - they could have evolved into a sort of crunchy jam-band version of themselves.

yeah that seems here and there what Malkmus solo turned into

Phew, avoided that bullet.

At the time I thought Godrich’s production turned the lights up a bit too high for Pavement’s thing... the silliness kind of inadvertently got amped up at the expense of fuzziness/weirdness/artiness/noiziness whatever but it’s also a natural trajectory from BtC. I haven’t listened to it in years and never really took to it but it sounds warm and appealing right now. Saw em live on this tour too and I’m super grateful I did. Just seeing Bob screamin away <3

I’m listening to it now; sounds pretty darn good, I gotta say. Seems to get better with age, somehow.

My main objection at this point is that faux British accent that SM affects.

Haha, what songs does he do that?

i don't get on with this band much but i listened to all of their albums when i was trying and there's definitely a new vocal affectation that creeps in on the last couple which is pretty insufferable imo

xp The opening of “Ann Don’t Cry”; “Billie” (“ought to have a second chance”); etc.

“Speak, see, remem-BAH”

Is he putting on a fake British accent or is he trying to sound like Mark E. Smith?

It doesn’t sound like an MES accent to me (and that’s the only British accent I’m halfway an expert in!); I think maybe he was listening to lots of UK folk or something at the time.

This has got me listening to Watery, Domestic and this is one of the few records I simply can't understand what it is to not like, it's about the most perfect 11 minutes of rock ever recorded

it’s their peak for sure

(To be fair, he does do the accent thing as far back as “We Dance”)

"Fame Throwa" has the accent, probably something earlier?

yeah Watery Domestic is what I’d give to someone who wants to what Pavement is

xp I think he actually is trying to sound like MES on “Fame Throwa” though!

Did you remembah
In Decembah

as a britisher, this is really amusing to me. like when Taylor Swift sang that song about "Jag-u-ars" and an American friend said she was appropriating the British accent. Maybe so, but it hadn't occured to me that Americans tend to say "Jag-wah", but to me the rhotic 'r' on the end of "jag-u-ar" is still very much a US thing unless you live in Norfolk or the West Country which is a different type of "r" anyway. The start of "Ann Don't Cry" doesn't sound anything other than a US accent other than there's a flatness to the last syllable of "I am not having fun any-mo'" which I hadn't noticed before at all. Quite a few US accents don't use a rhotic 'R' anyway.

Same with "ought to have a second chance", the "a" in "chance" sounds especially twangy and Southern-US to me. Absolutely can't hear that as either a Southern UK long-a ("charnce") or a Northern short-a ("chah-nce"). It sounds like "chay-nce" to to me, which is a very country music-style thing.

what a rhotter

Just listening to the Godrich sequence now for fun https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6zwpCdHkPFjK576gaci8ET?si=N-dLFnmuRLKoxh1GAaxqsA

Starting with Platform Blues does actually make sense - it's a good intro track, with a count-in, an extended guitar "fanfare" to introduce the track. Following it up with The Hexx is bold, but would have heralded quite a switch in style. The original sequence baby-steps its way into the new proggy-sound so it doesn't sound like so big a leap from BTC to this album.

godrich's touch on terror twilight is immediately apparent, just the way all the instruments sound you can very much tell it was produced by the same guy as the bends & ok computer

'We Dance' vocal style was him supposedly trying to imitate The Frogs' quasi-Irish thing

yes, Terror Twilgiht has a very nice, round, warm sound which I can see being at-odds with Pavement's former sound but not too disimilar from Malkmus's later stuff (especially Traditional Techniques). I really like the sound on The Bends etc though, and the warm Godrich production on those Radiohead albums stops them sounding like icy, wet misery-thons.

Didn’t Goodrich also produce the similarly polished sounding Beck snooze fest Sea Change?

The downside of the Godrich sequence frontloading the prog tracks is that side 2 seems abnormally light. Also, Spit on a Stranger could theoretically be a good closing track, but it doesn't work as a summing-up in this running order.

I still have the TT CD-Rom I won in the Pavement Poetry Contest back in the day. I wonder if that will be included in the Deluxe Edition.

Great The Hexx moment: at one of the reunion shows in 2010 in Central Park, they had to stop playing due to lightning and rain. We waited around a while but had to eventually leave to get back home. As we walked through Central Park in the dark, the band started back up with The Hexx booming through the night with lighting in the sky.

Listened to the Godrich order yesterday; it was interesting. It feels like a conceptual take on the title, where side A is "Terror" and side B is "Twilight." It's compelling, but it does make for a very imbalanced listen. It's also hard to imagine "Carrot Rope" anywhere but the final track.

PBKR tell us more about this CD-ROM?

I was also at that Central Park show! I stayed for most of it but had to leave for the encore. The song I heard them playing as I walked back to the train was "Lions"

xp The main menu was the album cover and when it started up it played the intro riff to Spit on a Stranger over and over again. I don't remember much else, just that it was kind of as slapdash as you would expect a Pavement CD-Rom to be.

Damn, Lions is one of my absolute favorites. I saw them again and for the entire show later in the week, but it wasn't as memorable as the partial show.

Was Carrot Rope tacked onto the album? the "...And Carrot Rope" titling always made it look like a bonus track. Also always thought the b-side was just called 'Then'?

god, the golden age of cdrom bonus content. it would be like "enter the CYBERWORLD of [whatever band]!" and the CDROM content would be a photo of the band that bounced around as a screensaver

Sometimes called And Then, sometimes a similar sounding song was called The Hexx

I prefer it when it was faster?

I feel like the . . . And part of Carrot Rope was a signal it was the last song?

There used to be a super hot and rad version of Speak See Remember on Youtube from their last tour, does not appear to be there anymore, bummer

At the time I read it as "oh yeah... and Carrot Rope" like "sure, it's on the album if you insist"

ha! it could be both!

The downside of the Godrich sequence frontloading the prog tracks is that side 2 seems abnormally light. Also, Spit on a Stranger could theoretically be a good closing track, but it doesn't work as a summing-up in this running order.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, February 12, 2021 12:32 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yup, I started getting a bit bored by side 2 but then I'm so familiar with these tracks they do have a habit of drifting by.

Spit On A Stranger has a nice "singalong" style which could work as an ending.

If I were to drop any tracks they would be Billie and Ann Don't Cry. I'd forgotten about the brilliant second half of "Speak See Remember".

Thanks for putting that up, dog.

Nice thing about it starting off with Platform Blues is that, well, it gets it out of the way sooner.

I love Ann Don’t Cry

Sometimes called And Then, sometimes a similar sounding song was called The Hexx

posted Silkworm's cover of And Then upthread

Just listened to the Godrich order again, definitely prefer this and always thought the official sequence dragged, but it would really benefit from something much weightier in the spot occupied by Billie

has Malkmus ever talked about the Nickel Creek cover of "Spit on a Stranger"? I wonder if that's one of those things that's been a good earner for him?

if I had a nickel creek for every...

Ann Don't Cry is uncharacteristically repetitive in its lyrics for a Malkmus song: "Ann don't you cry, don't you cry Ann, don't you cry, don't you cry Ann, don't you cry, don't you cry Ann, don't you cry, Dear Ann, don't you cry... etc". Although I love the part that starts: "Well my heart is not a wide open thing..."

I don't mind the repetition there; I don't think it's that excessive. He does a good job with the delivery- feels meaningful and heartfelt.

Also I had an Aunt named Ann who had medical issues. She almost lost her life when her liver failed, but got a transplant just in time. She was able to live almost 10 more years with the new liver until another major complication with her stomach was too much. Song just automatically makes me think of her- honestly the name was enough but the solemn/pretty vibe makes it hit a little more.

I'm a sucker for that sort of twinkling guitar thing too.

“speak see remember” is the one that made me go “ugh no”

nah when it kicks in it's Wowee Zowee esque shred city