awwwww shit, baby

Gold Soundz in '94


Why does anyone else even try?


PS The Brighten the Corners reissue comes out on November 18th.

"Cold Son" - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

Stephen Malkmus's new album is called Real Emotional Trash. It's with the Jicks, just like his second record post-Pavement, Pig Lib. Janet Weiss is in the band now, she's in Quasi and used to be in Sleater-Kinney. Awesome, right? What about the music? Is it good? Yes my friend, it's real good. Real, real good. Well, what does it sound like? Godzilla (Blue Oyster Cult) destroys Williamsburg and Kurt Vonnegut rises from the dead wielding the sacred stratocaster?? Suh-weet!

Yeah, it's pretty good. Wanna hear something? Here, clicky. Clickety-click.

Click:
"Cold Son" - Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks


from the album Real Emotional Trash, Matador Records

Buy it hurr: Newbury Comics


BONUS!

"Post-paint Boy" from Malkmus's last LP, Face the Truth

Sensitive Euro Man

There is a fine song of the gentlemen of the now defunct popular group Pavement. “Sensitive Euro Man,” it begins, “we’re so envious of your etiquette demands.” Truer words have been seldom spoken, dear friends. Inside of every Bud-swillin’ American loudmouth is the heart of a Lager-swillin’ Chav, or a Cider-swillin’ football hooligan and vice versa and again vice versa.

London is a fine place, and the English a delightful people. Every day I walk through the charter’d streets near where the charter’d Thames does flow, “And mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe.”

The English rain has relented, touch wood (as they say here), and I hope to dive into Bleak House tomorrow. I’ve met some charming ladies here in this weird space station of a student residence building who’ve suggested that I might take in the lovely lush greens of St. James Park and/or Regent’s Park, so I will give it a try. A sporting gentleman always does, you know.

Some lines of T.S. Eliot:

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

From Preludes

He might’ve been a fascist though, so watch out…

Amazonian: Hey-o!

PAVEMENT: “Sensitive Euro Man”

Pavement in the Amazon: byawh!

Ell Es Two

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I had a chance to rip a couple of CDs that I’d left back home, and among them was the Matador reissue of Pavement’s 1992 debut Slanted and Enchanted. What I love best about this album is its cohesion as a collection of songs. From the bone-dry delivery on “Summer Babe” through the scatterbrained hi-jinx of “Fame Throwa” to the drunken 6/8 drum pattern on “Our Singer,” the songs hold up all the way through. Even Spiral’s throwaway “Two States” is essential to the mix.

Anyway, one of my favorite songs from this album is “In the Mouth of a Desert.” The song displays the band’s incredible ability to blend really bleak, dissonant sounding guitar with effortless, off-hand pop hooks that you don’t really notice are there until it’s too late and you can’t make it through a single day without singing at least a line or three of Stephen Malkmus’ inimitable lyrics.

Here’s a live version of “Desert” from 1994 that features a cool introduction called “Heckler Spray.”

Yee-uh: Heckler Spray/In the Mouth of a Desert

Circa '62

“Don’t waste your precious breath explaining that you are worthwhile.”

Pavement are the greatest garage band of all time. It's a bold statement to make, and it's probably not true, but I want to make it anyway.

Initially comprised of Steven Malkmus (SM) and his buddy Scott Kannberg (later known as Spiral Stairs) in the very, very late '80s, the band released early EP with titles like Slay Tracks (1933-1969) and Perfect Sound Forever. They were recorded by the basically incompetent and insane Gary Young, who "engineered" and "played drums" on the band's debut album, Slanted and Enchanted. Still, it was this ostensibly unbearable combination of obnoxious slackerdom and erratic hippie nonsense that sired a sound that would inspire a big pile of teenage rawk bands in the next decade-and-a-half.

A word on my decision to use the distinction "garage rock." Pavement is garage rock because it was recorded by suburban kids in a garage. It's about as simple as that, and any other labels, amusing as they may be, are basically irrelevant. Drawing on the scatterbrained, shambolic aesthetic of bands like The Fall and coupling it with the drama of Echo & the Bunnymen, Malkmus wrote the kind of unbelievably catchy songs that bounce around in your head like quarters in a washing machine.

Anyway, this is the first of what will invariably be a series of posts on Pavement, the best garage band ever. Say what you will about their musicianship, this is a band that could really play. You can argue about whether ol' Gary Young was a better drummer than Steve West (he wasn't), or whether Bob Nastanovich is really a necessary part of the band (he is), but at the end of the day, Pavement are just what they set out to be: a bunch of brainy loser-types playing gloriously rudimentary rock for a bunch of other brainy, if utterly useless, loser-types.

Okay, that's an exaggeration to some extent, but really, Pavement is all about exaggeration. It's the heart of garage rock, finding a little bit of humor or grasping for some meaning in the mundane pointlessness of suburban life. It's just a series of attempts, successful or unsuccessful, to make something out of nothing.

Or something like that, anyway.

Now listen here: "Stereo" - Live @ Shepherd's Bush, UK ('97)