Pavement
Slanted And Enchanted

THE REVIEW

1992. Matador. Slanted and Enchanted.

Before it, there were various EPs (Perfect Sound Forever, Slay Tracks, Demolition Plot) which will be included in the Westing (By Musket And Sextant) collection and in which the seeds of Pavement can be discerned, with their lo-fi and somewhat ramshackle inclinations. This attitude will embody more mature arrangements in Slanted And Enchanted. Dirtier than the subsequent Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, in which Pavement's jewels shine in perhaps too polished a way; it should be said, however, that Pavement's noise is probably far from a total adherence to an intellectualistic intent to serve the spontaneity and genuineness of the creative process through a method that almost aspires to self-annihilation: someone might find it a bit plastic and studied, provided they find a similar "lack" in Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. (perhaps less in Sonic Youth, although eternally present in noise-rock references).

Just to be clear, Pavement are not John Cage.

Moreover, they recover the low fidelity of recordings (lo-fi), perhaps less arbitrary in groups like Half Japanese and Beat Happening and for this reason less loaded with ideological significance.

But coming to the CD... “Summer Babe” is the beginning, the single that makes its way among American college fans, with a melody perhaps a bit familiar, but now it's the approach that counts, the notes are combinations that have been exhausted, and in the composition of the piece (as in all Slanted And Enchanted) a carefreeness transpires as a cure from anxieties and frustrations and not as gratuitous disengagement. In the following “Trigger Cut,” as the fast pace advances, perfectly calibrated drops and tone recoveries are introduced, the melody gets into your head while second voices respond to Malkmus’s singing (“I've got a message for you... I keep it in my head”).

One after another, each better than the last, quickly, and the tracklist ends rapidly. But there is already time to choose two or three pieces to consecrate in your player... because Pavement invades you, they lend themselves to all kinds of listening, from attentive and presumptuously cultured to free, evasive, and completely uncritical.

Some vaguely jazzy influences in “Conduit For Sale!” and various Pavement-like catchy disharmonies (made effective by slightly off-key singing and small experiments on guitar strings) from “Chesley’s Little Wrists” to “Jackals, False Grails...” (how can you not hear in the latter the influence that Pavement had on hard-to-label bands like Modest Mouse). Not to mention the various “In The Mouth A Desert,” “Zurich Is Stained,” and “Here,” the latter stunning even in its distortion-filled, shoegazing-like version; any comment would frankly be reductive.

Two years later, still for Matador, the album “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” will be released, consecrating them as champions of the lo-fi era (somewhat unjustly) in the Cobainian and post-Cobain period, a time when grunge monopolized American scene attention. For many, the second will be their best work; for others (like me), it will be great but not on par with the first.