Really great review of the Crooked Rain Crooked Rain (LA's Desert Origins) re-issue. Some of my fave bits:
"...Pavement was on another trip. They liked to make fun of rock iconography, but they were smart enough to avoid offering an alternative. You never really knew where Pavement stood on anything, which kept an air of mystery and made their music malleable..."
"...Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has been called one of the great California albums, but unlike most records slapped with that label, it avoids dreams and nightmares and focuses on the banal. This is a suburban California album, and since suburbs are exactly the same from Sacto to Levittown, it's an album to which all suburban kids can relate..."
"...When I finally bought S&E, my first thought was, all right, sweet, some of these songs are as good as the ones on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. There's no question that S&E is a fantastic record, but to me, parts of it sound like Pavement wearing a costume. Listen to the brilliant "Summer Babe" and know that Malkmus loves Lou Reed, but East Coast cool ultimately isn't his style. On Crooked Rain, Pavement became a band, opened up (as much as they ever could, anyway), and sounded like themselves: smart, funny, confident, West Coast, suburban..."
When I look back and realize that I discovered what would become (and what still is) my favorite band in the world as a fourteen year old (California suburban) high school freshman through this album, I can't help but get all nostalgic. I mean, first, to have been brought in by KROQ of all places, through the "Cut Your Hair" single and the slot it subsequently won them on that year's Weenie Roast, that just seems like incredible luck. And then to remember sitting in the local Blockbuster Music, back when those existed, at the listening station (because those people let you listen to anything in the store, opened or not), and testing the whole album out...it seems like forever ago but this music is still so important to me. It sent me off in the direction I've been in ever since, and it brought me to the things that have really laid the groundwork for who I am, musically.
I guess what I'm saying is...man, this is some good shit. And Pitchfork, I guess you're forgiven for your totally lame Ted Leo review.
