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".

Day 0708 - Slanted and Enchanted

Pavement "Slanted and Enchanted" (1992)

Originally started as a studio-only project, Pavenement released a number of lo-fi releases.   They eventually recruited a drummer for more recordings and even some live shows.

The band certainly weren't courting fame and success, with the original version of this album being circulated on cassette with no song titles listed.   The music created some buzz and eventually the full version of the album was released.

It has kind of a Velvet Underground vibe with vocalist Stephen Malkmus' drawling vocals.  The music is vaguely melodic with lots of noisy guitar; so not unlike more than a few other bands active at the time.   It didn't really grab me.  It's perfectly listenable, but not something I'm likely to revisit or investigate further.