Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is the one to be remembered. Pavement had lost some of the fuzz of their earlier b-sides and Slanted to put out an evolved, step-on-forward album that is only criticized by the unwise. Praise God that hardly anyone's that stupid. The tension it presents, the line it dares to toe, the lack of any cohesive 'statement', these are what make Crooked Rain an ageless time capsule, harkening us to remember whatever we like, using nostalgia as a means of carrying on. Not as distorted as Westing but not as refined as Terror Twilight. The line between the outright careless and the carefree may have gotten blurred on some Wowee Zowee songs but Crooked Rain churns out playful riffage and lyrical madness that gives you the idea that Pavement was blissfully unaware of their ability as a band and that this was the very thing that made them great in the first place. They're just 'those guys' and isn't that teriffic?
Stephen Malkmus played the fool during Radiohead's rise to power. Thom Yorke and he lived in the same world, not really asking or answering any questions, for that was not their place. Their speciality was realization, observance and misunderstood understanding. Life in the nineties was fragmenting into a a cut-up, yuppie-sized incapability to proceed. We were becoming glued, stuck and synthesized. Every day, the choice was between despair and detachment. People who said there was a third option were probably telemarketers. Though Yorke's criticism and paranoia of postmodern existence was justified, it's Malkmus's voice of absurdist awareness that one must bend an ear to every once in a while. The world doesn't make sense, nor does it care for our emotional wellbeing, end of story. It's fallen and gone. Will we laugh or cry, live or die?
'I don't care, I care, I really don't care, did you see that drummer's hair?' Oscillation and confusion is fine. Cracked eggs and dead birds scream as they fight for life, but right now the issue is the length of the percussionist's hair. And why Malkmus belts the word 'career' like he's saying 'Korea Korea Korea' over and over. And when irony and malaise meet, as they have in these last twenty years, those are both valid concerns. The centerpiece, the tableau in snapshot form presented by Crooked Rain is 'Gold Soundz', beyond a doubt. If 'Gold Soundz' doesn't make you lovingly long for days gone by, I'm afraid you have no soul. Sorry I had to be the one to break it to you. 'So drunk, in the August sun/And you're the kind of girl I like/Because you're empty and I'm empty/But you can never quarantine the past'. You certainly can't and it's Spiral Stairs, Mr. Malkmus and the rest of them that turn the past from a hellhound on our trail to the laughter of adolescent friends and concerts we'll never forget. They're wizards unaware of their magic and they can turn emptiness into a celebration with the advent of a single lyric.
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