Day 0760 - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Pavement "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" (1994)

I think I preferred this one to the previous Pavement album in the list.   I've seen it referred to as a more mainstream sound than the previous album, but I dunno.  It's still quite noisy and has some unconventional compositional directions.

Though the album has some nice hummable melodies, there's still a lot of noise.   A sparse piano part will appear out of a cloud of fuzzed guitar.  A rock song will suddenly give way for an extended, repeated clean guitar section.  There's a jazzy instrumental in 5/4 time "5-4 = Unity" which is a tribute to jazz pianist Dave Brubeck but it also has elements of rock and even rockabilly on show.

The 90s are obviously well underway by now with that idea of it being cool to not care.   Singer Stephen Malkmus is just so unimpressed, and so cynical, and takes the time to make fun of several other 90s rock acts in song "Range Life".