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The peculiarity of Pavement's music to me has always been its indifference. A song like "Loretta's Scars" is at once dreary as well as rousing. Stephen Malkmus's slackeristic vocals contribute to the indifference, but I think it has more to do with the unconventional composition of Pavement's songs. On the one hand, at the time 'Slanted and Enchanted' was recorded, you had a bunch of fellows who, at best, had moderate skill with their instruments, yet a fairly intimate connection with them. On the other hand, part of the band was living outside NYC, while the other part was back in Stockton, California, and so the result is a sort of bicoastal composition which successfully hybridized a bunch of antagonistic pairs: Malkmus's melody craft with Kannberg's explosiveness; menacing snarls with mournful croons; an East Coast melancholy with a west coast optimism.
The bridge straddling these poles is Malkmus's lyrics, a literal glue holding together the music which is constantly threatening to disintegrate. I always felt that the comparison between Pavement and the Fall was most pertinent in terms of the lyrics of the two bands. I can no more pierce the meaning of "Conduit For Sale!" than I can "Prole Art Threat." No two bands have ever made a better case for incoherent musical ramblings to equal great literature, mostly because no two bands have ever created such poignant verbal formulations with their lyrics and titles.
Matador has just released a tenth year anniversary edition of Pavement's first album, called 'Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe and Reduxe.' It is a two-disc set with forty tracks comprising: the original songs, remastered; two Peel sessions; a live set recorded at Brixton Academy (originally released on a bootleg entitled 'Stray Slack'); the 'Watery, Domestic' EP; nine B-sides and unreleased takes from both the 'Slanted' and 'Watery' sessions.
Inside the embossed slipcase is a booklet which contains liner notes, detailed thoughts from Malkmus, Spiral Stairs (a.k.a. Scott Kannberg), and others, and archives some of Malkmus's personal lyric notes. The entire package is handsome. Some of the high points on Matador's reissue are the Peel sessions, which feature a furious rendition of "Here," as well as a thoughtfully meandering song "Secret Knowledge of Backroads," which would later turn up in a different version on the Silver Jews's 'Arizona Record.'
On the second disc, 'Watery, Domestic' sessions songs "So Stark (You're a Skyscraper)" and "Greenlander" are two tracks which are simply indispensable. The first starts with a lull and slowly builds to a howl and then relapses, only to crescendo again in a screech which sounds like it is tearing Malkmus's left lung into thirty-four ravaged pieces. The second is a soft, mossy exploration which vitally bounces up and down, intermittently dipping into a paralytic ice-encrusted pond for three brief moments where the music's pulse simply halts. Both songs are gems, and similar jewels populate the rest of the selections. The re-release of 'Slanted and Enchanted' validates Pavement as one of those seminal bands to which they were compared ten years ago. And if their election into the aristocracy of the indie rock empire was already tacitly accepted by many, then you can consider this reissue the official coronation ceremony.
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- Administrator
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When Mineral disbanded following the completion of their second record, 'EndSerending,' many fans of their brand of plaintive and emotional rock were stunned and dismayed. In just a short time, Mineral had not only amassed a loyal following and had been courted by a number of major labels—even signing with Virgin but calling it quits before they could record anything—but they had also nearly changed their sound completely. Once a punk-laced energetic emo band like Sunny Day Real Estate, they were now fans of sprawling melodic structures with even more soaring vocals. Founding members Chris Simpson and Jeremy Gomez decided to continue making music together under the moniker The Gloria Record, and released several EPs and singles on Crank!. With this, their first full-length, the Gloria Record accomplishes the same growth in sound Mineral showed from their first LP to 'Endserenading.'Arena Rock
Where as before their sound was more acoustic in nature, with mellower songs and themes, now The Gloria Record is an accomplished indie rock band with some very interesting textures and flavors. They've finally hit their musical stride, featuring keyboards and distinct drumming, chiming Sundays-like guitars, and Simpson's vocals soaring above it all with a renewed sense of glory. The album opens with the synth-drenched title track, but soon shifts to the fervor and drive of "Good Morning Providence," eclipsing anything these musicians have been involved with previously. Things move pleasantly along with "Cinema Air," with its lyrics the most impressive of the lot—and the frolic of "The Immovable Motorist," which is a mostly somber affair with a hospital/death mixed with driving theme. "My Funeral Party," "I Was Born in Omaha," and "The Ambulance" are phenomenal arrangements, surpassed only by "The Overpass," burying them all in piano and Simpson's falsetto. Fans of Mineral should like this new sound, but fans of Death Cab for Cutie and the like will also love this release.
 
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- Steve Smith
- Albums and Singles
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- Diane Wei-Lewis
- Albums and Singles
Although 'This Night' features a number of solidly written songs, this extremely production-heavy album emphasizes its faux-velvet-bell-bottom-wearin'-chamber-pop sound so forcefully—to the point of being tedious—that even those who acclimate will probably remain disgruntled.Merge
Drippy reverb makes a mush of overly rhapsodic instrumentation. Nearly every song is unmercifully dominated by affected vocals. Don't get me wrong—Daniel Bejar's coquettish voice is the perfect complement to his wistful, teasing lyrics. But over the course of the album, the vocals and the effects put too much emphasis on a fairly categorical sound, at the expense of the songwriting. Each on its own, the songs here might do a bit more justice to the band's less obvious talent for assembling the essential melodic and lyrical structures of each track. Consecutively, however, their continuous drone becomes irritating and awful. Obviously, some bands have successfully worked this angle to their advantage, but in the case of Destroyer, the somewhat desperately lush effects-laden backdrop is empty filler, a viscous mud one must wade through to get to the heart of each song. There is a pretty great album here, tragically smothered by its own "atmosphere."
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"Hootenanny" is where their sound really took off, with most of the hard, angry energy missing in favor of earnest songwriting. There are still some quickies, but with tracks like 'Willpower' and 'Within Your Reach' the band was starting to show potential. Westerberg's lyrics were improving, the band was getting tighter, and you can really hear that this was what they wanted more than anything. Which leads to "Let It Be".
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Remix participants were all invited by ITN, themselves. Most of the artists are of a younger generation (Flesh Field, Assemblage 23, Ivan Lusco, Haujobb, Seize, Faith & The Muse, Chandeen, Steve Bennet, Electronicum, and A_Robot) while only two are fellow contemporaries (And Also The Trees and Attrition). These aren't very obvious choices at first glance but all of them treated the original songs in a very careful and respectful manner. The beats are most obviously reworked in almost all cases. Flesh Field's Ian Ross lays a driving beat under "A Rebours (Against Nature)" as does Ivan Lusco on "El Secreto (It)," while Assemblage 23 get a bit housey. Justin Jones from AATT replaces haunting electronic sequences with his own trademark guitar style on "Corruption (Sister And Brother)." A_Robot and Faith & The Muse add their own voices to their contributions but keep conservatively close to the original In The Nursery style. Attrition's pick of the secret hymn, "To The Faithful," is characteristic for their dramatic style and with their version, "To The Faithful (In Remembrance)," they nearly take the greatest side-step from remix to re-interpretation, only outmatched by the final drum and bass dancefloor mix of "Caprice (Levity)" by Seize.
Nearly all of the tracks (with only one exception, "And Your Eyes") were selected from recent albums, from 1990's 'L'Esprit' through last years 'Engel,' thus excluding their 1980s work. As bonus, however (and maybe a reference to their own starting point), ITN include their interpretation of "Love Will Tear Us Apart," produced with a similar aesthetic as the rest of the disc's remixes and featuring a live drummer and professional oboe player.
The fact that 'Cause + Effect' can stand up to the beautiful standards of nearly all ITN output makes this remix project a great success.
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