Pavement's Artists Make Their Mark

Pavement, the musical phenomenon you may or may not have heard of, has just released its second LP, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. This event is sort of a smaller version of the release of In Utero or Vs. earlier this fall. How would these laid-back rockers respond to the crazed success heaped upon them by the musical industry and the American public, we wondered? Would there be another "Smells Like Teen Spirit," etc. etc.

While Pavement's last LP, Slanted and Enchanted, did not make them a household name, or even crack the top 40 for that matter, it was a pretty seminal event in the indie rock world. I personally think it's the best LP released to date this decade, and I probably listened to it three or four times a day for seven months after it came out. You want to get a hold of that record if you like bands like The Velvet Underground. I'm not the only person who felt this way, however: it sold many thousands of copies and made Pavement the band to beat for a million aspiring rock bands (including mine). Major labels have been courting Pavement's songwriter and lyricist, Steven Malkmus, for the past few years because, in the words of an industry insider, "they have realized that he can write songs like Tom Petty if he wants to."

A friend of mine recently said that Malkmus was a Bob Dylan for our times: "Every night he goes out on stage and sings different words, and every time it's just as great." He has been accused of singing nonsense; the liner notes in his records include lists of words which have no relation to one another aside from sounding similar ("Close Shave. Chess Leave. Clove Leash." etc). But it doesn't sound like nonsense to me. While any one song might not have a coherent "plot," such as boy-meets-girl or man-hit-the-road, which can get kind of boring anyway, Malkmus' songs are surreal glimpses into a sensibility to contemporary American life that could only be characterized as genius. He sings about history and culture, and dying, and love, and open wounds. "Take me down to the ridge where the summer ends/We'll watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame..." from "No Life Singed Her" on Slanted is pretty fucking lyrical. His vocal delivery is also sublime: there is something in his voice--Roland Barthes called it the grain--which is just unbelievably communicative and charismatic. Like Lou Reed before him, he can't actually sing all that well, but it's those strange textures in his voice, the moments where it breaks, where a note out of his range is covered by a defiant yelp, that make him unique in the first place.

So you can imagine my expectations for this new record. When I first heard it I was pretty disappointed. The songs just didn't seem as strong as on previous records (all of their stuff prior of Slanted is now available on a Drag City CD called Westing, By Musket and Sextant), and the whole dynamic seemed changed, for the worse. The Pavement of Crooked Rain is indeed a very different animal from past records. Until now every Pavement record was the product Malkmus and his partner Spiral Stairs, plus drumming by a crazy and amazing hippie named Gary. They played all the instruments, and in most cases there wasn't even a bass guitar. This may not sound so appealing, but it was how they did it, and believe met it worked.

On Crooked Rain, two fundamental changes have taken place: first of all, Gary is gone, supposedly amicably, replaced by a less flamboyant drummer named Steve West. And other musicians who previously only accompanied the three on live tours are now given performance credit. There's no reason why this must be a change for the worse, but the songs seem to lack the focus of earlier work. At times they should half-hearted; I wonder if a dispersal of creative control has led to this.

There's also something awry in the singing. Malkmus has renounced nonsensical lyrics (to a certain degree) and spends a lot of the record singing bitterly about the music industry, the New York rocker/druggie lifestyle, California politics... On the first single, "Cut Your Hair," he criticizes the music industry (as Nirvana did with their "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter") just as he offers up exactly the sort of pop gem that keeps it alive. Between insanely catchy "Woo woo woo woo ooh oohs" at the beginning of each verse, he sings lyrics like "Songs mean a lot/When songs are bought/And so are you..." In the gorgeous retro-sounding "Range Life" (I'm telling you, it could be off of Highway 61 Revisted), he takes some shots at bands who have made it their business to become huge: "Out on tour with Smashing Pumpkins/Nature kids, they don't have no function/I don't understand just what they mean/But I could really give a fuck..." Instructively, in a "lyrical references" section of the liner notes, the line is adjusted to read "I/They don't have no function."

This is interesting stuff for those with rock'n roll aspiration, but I fear for its universal appeal. Scrawled in the liner notes is a boxed phrase: "NOTHIN TO SING BOUT." In a recent interview in Raygun Malkmus addressed this problem, admitting that when he recorded this album he didn't have anything "poetic and beautiful to say, and I wasn't having girl-friend problems." He just didn't have the inspiration, I guess; the best moments are those that reveal a vague angst, best summed up in the melancholy chorus of "Range Life": "If I could settle down, then I would settle down." On paper it looks pretty straightforward, but in the song, with a changing melody over changing chords, it comes out as a tragic epiphany.

Having made these criticisms, I have to admit that this record has grown on me a whole lot, and all of my friends seem to be having the same experience. (One just walked out the room, saying, "This has grown on me, a ton.") Malkmus has become addicted to REM (covering "Camera" on a b-side and writing a silly tribute to them for No Alternative) and Crooked Rain features a few gorgeous pastoral tunes--"Range Life" and "Gold Soundz" in particular--that are a million times better than anything Mssrs. Stipe, Buck, Berry and Mills have produced in years. The excellent opener, "Silence Kid," a message to a shy little boy who shouldn't listen to his grandmother's advice, seems to reference almost every sub-genre of rock (classic oldies, weird early '80s experimental music from New Zealand, and more) while still maintaining its own integrity. People have always accused Pavement of being derivative, and it's true that they often should like other great bands. But that's rock'n roll, pal, take it or leave it! The final song on the album, "Fillmore Jive," is a decent successor to the Beatles' "I'm So Tired."

If you have any interest in rock music at all, you should buy or tape this record, and tell me what you think. As Malkmus himself says, speaking for the countless bands who are accused or ripping him off, "Look, we don't want to do blues or techno, so what else is there to do but this?" We still do need him, whether he likes it or not.