The Deal: Another Pavement reissue brightens the legacy.
The Good: In some quarters, BTC is considered past the apex of Pavement’s career arc, but even if you buy into that, this is still remarkably epic shit. The original 12 Mitch Easter-produced cuts show Stephen Malkmus and crew solidifying all the aspects of the rock canon they’d already remade in their own fractured “I’m of several minds” aesthetic: the hop-along pop of “Shady Lane” evaporating into early Floyd space-out, folk recorder bookending Sonic Youth feedback in “Transport Is Arranged,” the Byrds-meet-Dinosaur Jr. guitar workout of “Date w/IKEA,” to name but a few. And not many other lyricists could describe a crumbling relationship as imaginatively (and succinctly) as Malkmus does on “Type Slowly” – “One of us is a cigar stand/and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine.” What makes these Matador reissues top-notch are the voluminous extras, and this set, the fourth, has the best yet (cf. Scott Kanneberg’s “Winner of the …,” the recast revved-up twang of “Slowly Typed,” the Thin Lizzy-like “Roll With the Wind,” the just-as-good-as-the-original version of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon,” etcetera). Disc One includes six b-sides and two previously unreleased outtakes, and Disc Two’s 24 tracks feature a goldmine of 15 previously unreleased in-studio-sessions songs, compilation cuts and outtakes.
The Bad: Two or three outtakes may not be essential, but B-list Pavement is better than most A-lists.
The Verdict: They rewrote the rock template in ingenious ways, but this might be the most accessible place to start for neophytes.
This article appears in Jan 20-27, 2009.
