Best PAVEMENT album?

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Crooked Rainx2 is the jewel in the crown of the Pavement catalog.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Monday, 16 February 2004 18:06 (twenty years ago) link

Slanted and Enchanted. In my opinion what sounds like "filler" when sober works when drunk etc. Put S+E on full blast when you've got a few people back after the pub's shut: there's not a wrong second.

Crooked is my second favourite, but I don't like some of the tracks.

― All Bunged Up. (Jake Proudlock), Monday, 16 February 2004 19:26 (twenty years ago) link

the first and last albums are best - s&e and tt. i hadn't listened to pavement for a while until the other night, when i saw a programme on mtv2 showing lots of their videos. i dug out their albums the next day and fell in love with them again. i've never understood the lack of love for terror twilight - "major leagues" and "spit on a stranger" are the two best ballads they ever did, and malkmus is on top form, lyrically. i played it to death when i first got it.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Monday, 16 February 2004 22:43 (twenty years ago) link

S&E: Luxe and Reduxe.

― Andrew Unterberger (Andrew Unterberger), Monday, 16 February 2004 22:48 (twenty years ago) link

1. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
2. S&E
3. Wowee Zowee
4. Brighten the Corners
5. Terror Twilight
Every song on CRCR is solid, and fillmore jive is one of the best songs, anyone who doesnt like fillmore jive is retarded.

― King Fame Throwa, Monday, 16 February 2004 23:05 (twenty years ago) link

oh i forgot westing, put it in between WZ and BTC

― King Fame Throwa, Monday, 16 February 2004 23:07 (twenty years ago) link

Slanted & Enchanted is the album that started it all. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is great, and at the time I thought it was their swan song, but it's only as good as it is in the context (IN THE SHADOW!) of S&E.

― scottontharox (scottkundla), Monday, 16 February 2004 23:34 (twenty years ago) link

I once read that Filmore Jive was Steve Malkmus's father's favorite Pavement song.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 01:29 (twenty years ago) link

three weeks pass...

OK, I changed my mind. If WZ ended with "Flux=Rad", it would be the best.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 20:39 (twenty years ago) link

(flux=rad was my password to access the network at work many years ago...)

my favorite Pavement record changes constantly, looking back I think Wowee Zowee has been my favorite most frequently...

― willem (willem), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 21:03 (twenty years ago) link

0. Watery, Domestic...but that's an EP.
1. CRCR is the most consistently enjoyable album.
2. S&E
3. WZ
4. BTC
5. TT

― Baked Bean Teeth (Baked Bean Teeth), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 21:24 (twenty years ago) link

slanted and enchanted

― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 21:40 (twenty years ago) link

Terror twilight is frustrating, lifeless, and ocassionally just half-assed, to be sure, but it has more brilliant moments than even the previous two. More really than about any band you could name has ever put on an album.

So it's the best. Though I admit thinking so requires really acknowleging and lovin the brilliance Pavement brought to their last three albums. If you think crcr can even compare, clearly you have no fondness for their spacey adventurous metal-pop tendancies.

― Brian Mowrey (Brian Mowrey), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 21:52 (twenty years ago) link

This Nation's Saving Grace, I mean Slanted and Enchanted

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 22:27 (twenty years ago) link

wah-wah

― cinniblount (James Blount), Wednesday, 10 March 2004 22:28 (twenty years ago) link

The thing is, Brian - I've been listening to it a bit recently to try to catch up with those who advocate it on here - it is seriously tuneless. I can hear all sorts of brilliant little spacy moments, true, but most of the tunes sound like the stuff we sing aimlessly in lifts. We're all different; but without a certain amount of melody I can't engage. So, S+E, still, all the way.

― Bunged Up. (Jake Proudlock), Thursday, 11 March 2004 00:03 (twenty years ago) link

Surely most Pavement stuff is tuneless anyway, that's half the fun. TT has the best lyrics on it if anything.

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 11 March 2004 00:18 (twenty years ago) link

Um, 'tuneless' I can't really address. Particularly if albums like Sumday and Chutes too Narrow are so generally regarded as catchy; clearly, what I think is bland is not a popular view. So, I don't have a problem with you calling the album that.

But perhaps you have not listened to the guitars. There are guitars in that album, I find. If I fuckin sang out Platform Blues' Dooo-de-doo-de-doo-de-de-WHHAMM WHHUMP WHAMM in a 'lift' I would, assuming that term refers to intoxication, never let myself see a sober day again. Fuckin best riff ever.

Though I assume you have listened to them. And that's cool too.

― Brian Mowrey (Brian Mowrey), Thursday, 11 March 2004 00:48 (twenty years ago) link

Yeah, I quite like the album. Yeah, great lyrics, great guitars. But, and I'm not a musician, the tunes are (I should have said this instead of "tuneless") dreary and uninventive to my ears. Just an opinion.

For the person above who said that all Pavement albums are tuneless - no way. S+E has tunes coming out of its ears. And "Range Life" off CRCR is one of the monster tunes of all time.

― Bunged Up. (Jake Proudlock), Thursday, 11 March 2004 10:30 (twenty years ago) link

I'm playing it.

Stone Temple Pilots, they're elegant bachelors,
They're foxy to me, are they foxy to you?

― Bunged Up. (Jake Proudlock), Thursday, 11 March 2004 10:33 (twenty years ago) link

Please give me a time and place...we'll meet up for that Smack.

i initially read that as snack.

― jarv, Thursday, 11 March 2004 10:43 (twenty years ago) link

two years pass...

hahaha

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 00:20 (seventeen years ago) link

IT'S CROOKED RAIN!!!

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 08:50 (seventeen years ago) link

No, I just checked the other day. It's still Wowee Zowee.

― Matthew Perpetua! (Matthew Perpetua!), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 11:58 (seventeen years ago) link

Slanted and Enchanted.

― kornrulez6969 (TCBeing), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 12:32 (seventeen years ago) link

No, Matt's right. Reasons: a) breadth b) depth c) the sprawl d) pedal steel guitar e) [for CRCR lovers] lack of "Hit the Plane Down". Goddamn I'm gonna listen to it right now.

― ledge (ledge), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 12:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, at least a, b, and c. I think Wowee Zowee has a really admirable emotional range. The album just sounds like life to me, or my life anyway.

― Matthew Perpetua! (Matthew Perpetua!), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 12:42 (seventeen years ago) link

what i don't get is why people bleat on and on about slanted and enchanted even though it sounds like 12 different renditions of "hit the plane down".

*ducks*

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 12:52 (seventeen years ago) link

it's 14 tracks

unless you're saying that your lying ears can at least discern the excellence of "Zurich is Stained" and "Here"

― bernard snow (sixteen sergeants), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 13:21 (seventeen years ago) link

Mind you I think sticking Western Homes at the end of Wowee Zowee is an almost fatal error. Unless, Matt, you think your life is going to end in bad farce.

― ledge (ledge), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 13:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Here and Trigger Cut are more or less the only S&E tracks I really really like - I can take or leave the rest.

Wowee Zowee is very good but it's more a jumble of songs rather than a consistent album. Like Troutmask etc, it's made for the random play button.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 13:34 (seventeen years ago) link

was there a cover of "here" being played alot recently?

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 13:36 (seventeen years ago) link

oh Tindersticks, of course. it was only getting played alot in my flat.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 13:41 (seventeen years ago) link

dog latin yr makin' me sad

Slanted & Enchanted is just a great summer album, basically. but in a totally different way from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which is also a great summer album. I dunno. whatever.

― bernard snow (sixteen sergeants), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 13:41 (seventeen years ago) link

d00ds,
it's STILL Wowee Zowee.

― edde (edde), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

yes it is definitely wowee zowee. i will never in sixty thousand years understand how anyone could suggest brighten the corners, but y'know, no accounting for taste.

― you make chatting lame (teenagequiet), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Mind you I think sticking Western Homes at the end of Wowee Zowee is an almost fatal error. Unless, Matt, you think your life is going to end in bad farce.

I wouldn't rule that out at all! But no, I love "Western Homes," especially as the ending for that record. I like its weird bounce and the way Spiral's voice trails off like a ghost at the end. "This is what I always wanted / a new home / and a place to breathe" - the song just has a great sentiment to end the album on, and where else are you going to put it? It's kind of an epilogue after the climax of "Half A Canyon."

I just totally love all five of those Pavement albums, and it actually kinda bugs me to see any of them put down.

Dog Latin, maybe you ought to spend some time with live versions of the S&E songs.

― Matthew Perpetua! (Matthew Perpetua!), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 16:09 (seventeen years ago) link

CRCR = sunny clear day
S+E = overcast and/or rainy day

― Matthew Perpetua! (Matthew Perpetua!), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 16:12 (seventeen years ago) link

It has to be CRCR for me, although Wowee Zowee gets better the more I hear it. Crooked Rain... was the first Pavement album I heard and the moment I fell in love with them. Saw them live twice; once amazing, once extremely disappointing. The disappointing gig was about four months before they split though, so I guess with hindsight I can't really hold that against them.

― yer mam! (yer mam!), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link

1. Slanted & Enchanted
2. Westing... (this collecton plays as a great album for me)
3. Wowee Zowee
4. Crooked Rain

― nicky lo-fi (nicky lo-fi), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 16:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Pavwemnt should have kept making EPs instead of albums.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 16:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Web Frequency Indexer results for this entire page up to this point:

26 CROOKED
26 RAIN

20 ZOWEE

19 WOWEE

16 SLANTED

14 ENCHANTED

14 S&E

11 BRIGHTEN
11 BTC

8 CORNERS
8 CRCR

8 TERROR
8 TIME
8 TWILIGHT

― nancyboy (nancyboy), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 21:56 (seventeen years ago) link

One more for CRCR, the best high-school summertime album ever.

― cosmo vitelli (cosmo vitelli), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 21:58 (seventeen years ago) link

Matthew Perpetua, I have that Pavement DVD with pre-CRCR footage on it and while I understand it was probably a lot fo fun if you were there at the time and the whole indie rock revolution thing and the Gary Young what a nut etc. etc. But I find that the majority of pre-CRCR stuff either bores me or hurts my ears. I guess the point is that it's really badly produced but the sound quality is so thin and each guitar squall or snare hit just sounds like a pin to my eardrum. I guess that's hyperbole, I like a few of these tracks but none of them as much as later stuff.

With Pavement though it's always the first album you hear that you secretly like the best, even if (as in my case) it's Brighten The Corners which I have a very soft spot for, even if I do say that CRCR is the best.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 12:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Pavement's good, but not worth arguing over.

With Pavement though it's always the first album you hear that you secretly like the best

I'll drink to that

― marbles (marbles), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 18:06 (seventeen years ago) link

"Pavement's good, but not worth arguing over."

sure it is!
ever heard that 2nd disc on the CRCR deelux??
it's worth fightin fer!

― edde (edde), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 18:15 (seventeen years ago) link

"With Pavement though it's always the first album you hear that you secretly like the best"

nah - cuz the first one I heard was S&E, and I like the middle three way more than either of the bookends.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 18:18 (seventeen years ago) link

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