Pavement
Terror Twilight
»
|
NATN Recommended
Pavement
Terror Twilight
Matador, 1999
RiYL: Radiohead, The '60s (the decade, not the NBC miniseries), Built To Spill's There's Nothing Wrong With Love |
The result: Picture-perfect Pavement.
The boys of our most favoritest indie band, Pavement, have finally given us a worthy follow-up to 1994's masterpiece, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Sorry, hardcore P. fans, Wowee Zowee doesn't count. Moments of brilliance, yes -- but too many moments of suck as well). Terror Twilight, the band's fifth studio effort, is a cohesive, brilliant collection of 11 songs. Its tight structures and immediate hooks co-exist alongside adventurous guitar epics and frontman Stephen Malkmus' trademark lyrical wit.
But that's to be expected these days on a Pavement album. What's most strikingly different here is the clarity with which the band executes these songs. For a band whose recorded output began as distortion set to a (marginal) beat, this is quite a diversion.
Producer Nigel Godrich is probably most responsible for Pavement's transformation. Where earlier albums recalled the murkier efforts of Sonic Youth and Sebadoh, Terror Twilight shimmers with chiming guitars (this may or may not be a good thing. I leave that decision up to you, gentle reader). Godrich, who guided Radiohead's spacey, prog-rockish OK Computer and Beck's swinging, '60s pop-infected Mutations, has become the avatar of all things groovy with this album.
Whether by Godrich's hand or not, Twilight effuses a "Riders On The Storm" vibe throughout. By Twilight's second song, the aptly titled "Folk Jam," I was positive I'd been transported back to a mid-'70s Dead show. Album opener "Spit On A Stranger" bounces along with a buoyancy that evokes the '60s three killer Bs (Beatles, Byrds and Beach Boys). The lovely melody and Malkmus' heartfelt singing make it one of Pavement's sweetest songs yet.
Don't let the bounciness fool you though -- Malkmus is still a jar with a heavy lid. "Honey, I'm a prize, and you're a catch / And we're a perfect match," he sings with all the requisite irony on a song that's basically about what happens when two pains in the ass fall in love.
(Here's the part of the review when the reviewer shares some of the clever phrases he or she has caught in the few times he or she has listened to the album so that he or she can sound literate and clever. I'll spare you because, quite frankly, I'm still ferreting out some of the better bits about rock stardom on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
Unlike earlier Pavement works that just started and ended weirdly (see the aforementioned Wowee Zowee), many cuts on Twilight begin as conventional song structures and meander into strangeness. "Speak, See, Remember," one of the album's definite highlights, starts as simple folk number, meanders into a Television-like chiming midsection and finally degenerates into a distorted heavy metal riff. "Platform Blues" maintains a dope vibe by starting off like an Exile-era Stones jam and turns into a heavy metal dirge.
See a pattern yet?
Were this a different era, this might be Pavement's breakthrough album. Maybe even a major label debut. Whatever label you want to give it, Terror Twilight couldn't have come at a better time.
The '90s, the decade Pavement ruled, were about to come to an end. And in this era of CD burners and MP3s, the terms "indie label" and "lo-fi" really don't have any meaning anymore. What's more indie than burning your own CDs or tossing newly minted songs onto your website? And if you're doing that, could it possibly be lo-fi?
"It's a brand-new era and it feels great / It's a brand-new era, but it came too late," Malkmus once sung about the Alternative '90s. But that era's over. It's time to usher in a new one, and Pavement seems up to the task.
PATRICK KASTNER | Affectionately known as Cousin Patty (yes, it's a "Throw Momma From The Train" reference), Patrick Kastner is a designer for the Columbus Post-Dispatch.