terror twilight

Maybe not "un-Pavement" - maybe they just don't quite resonate for me or something. That's songs like "Ann Don't Cry," "Billie," "Major Leagues." (Brighten The Corners has a couple songs like this too.)

Eh, "Major Leagues" is pretty good.

I always forget about this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ1APx-M5UY

Glad the reissue is finally happening; I love this album. It was the first Pavement I heard, at age 13 when it came out. It was this blurb review in Time magazine that piqued my interest:

Listening to this avant-rock band's new album is like arriving late to a mystery movie. You wonder, "Have I missed something?" In the case of Terror Twilight, you haven't. About a third of the songs on this album lack musical coherence, substituting aimless dissonance and artless artiness for melody and emotion. On a few tracks, however, Pavement lives up to its cerebral reputation; these boast a smart mix of studied elegance and ethereal sweetness. Still, this is a band that needs to replace indulgence with consistency.
--By Christopher John Farley

I was starting to get into "the hard stuff" around this time, so "avant-rock," "artless artiness" and "aimless dissonance" sounded promising to me. When I finally checked the album out at a record store listening station I was very surprised to find that it was by and large mellow, pretty, and conventionally melodic, with only the occasional measured diversion into noisy weirdness (e.g. the deliberately ugly chorus of "Billie"). At any rate, I loved it and bought it and got really deep into Pavement shortly thereafter. I still think Terror Twilight is a better album than Brighten the Corners, though BTC has the higher highs.

In retrospect this whole episode taught me to read album reviews with a great deal of skepticism and to trust my own ears more. So thanks, Christopher John Farley, for missing the mark on Terror Twilight!

This reminds me a bit of the Rolling Stone review for Wowee Zowee. The writer was like the father of a misbehaving child - “I’m not angry, and just really disappointed” - and that bristling exasperation made me curious enough to buy that tape and ultimately become a big fan.

Farley! I remember that byline!

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/wowee-zowee-114288/amp/

the Nirvana-like “Kennel District”

Surely he meant "Flux = Rad"? How do you confuse those two songs

Only thing I was mad about WZ was that it only had three sides.

I remember the cool-guy record store clerk saying he didn't like it (and was only into their early stuff).

That review is a very one listen response to wz and of its time as I remember it being a high point of "alternative rock" popularity and people were expecting them to build on the "success" of cut your hair and they dropped this sprawling mass of a record & blasted through the songs in front of empty pavilion seats at daytime lollapaloozas. Looking back now, it's clearly a masterpiece and shows the band's progression as artists, but this is the terror twilight thread and that album is underrated, the production & sequencing were great on cd & hold up just fine.

terror twilight was actually the first pavement record i heard somehow, i was smitten with malkmus's songwriting and lyrics and esp guitar playing

WZ is my favorite now tho, most 'pavement-y' to me

wait that RS review of CR,CR mentions flying burrito brothers? what flying burrito brothers sounds like that record??

I guess "Range Life" could be construed as "a nod" to the Burrito Brothers?

I remember the cool-guy record store clerk saying he didn't like it (and was only into their early stuff).

When I bought the album the summer after it came out the record store guy excitedly told me "This album restored my faith in music!" (RIP Aboveground Records, Edgartown MA). I find it enjoyable enough but always felt sort of let down after that build-up.

"Speak, See, Remember" is resonating with me a lot more than it once did, particularly these lines - at points almost a "developers' aspirational prayer" or "developers' motivation" or something - and how their stresses fall:

"Buy now!
Develop the coast and raise the, sight lines
The oceans are moving out and, someday
Develop the coast and sell the air
You know if we could, we'd sell the air

Stand back!
Expansion is what we do the best
I don't see the grass and the fields
I see an epicenter with agendas
And you are aware, they must be next
I hope you're aware, they must be next"

A lot (not all) of Terror Twilight is for me about how certain songs present at first, and that presentation is was roots in memory, but the songs morph in fascinating ways when I revisit the record in real-time, like, "oh yeah, there's also this bit, that bit, a choice line rampaging in the late going."

Previous Pavement LPs exist in full form in memory for me, for whatever reason.

Also, the tenor of SM's voice in this part of the song is pretty interesting - hysteria, tedium, and flatness, sometimes in the same breath.

That is one of my favorite bits of the entire album, the way it shifts and accelerates from the previous parts.

Huh, that’s interesting… I’ve never parsed those lines. Thanx for posting that

I never did either, until pretty recently!

Yeah that part rules so much

do it do it do it do it

Speak See Remember is one of those songs that makes me realize the limitations of the band, esp. the drummer. Would be so badass with the "right" drummer/band

I like "speak see remember", definitely one of the more swingin' numbers in their repertoire

The built environment always figured into their lyrics a little bit (and in places like the Wowee Zowee liner art) – usually in a halfway romanticized way – but it seems most explicit on this album; in those lines above, and also "The Hexx" ("reeling in a parking lot" / "standing on the freeway")... like, if you ever wondered why the band is called Pavement.

the Cut Your Hair video, sliding down that freeway embankment

or wait ... was that not Cut Your Hair? Santa suits, bows and arrows, etc.?

Gold Soundz ... right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPvhKV3Yg2k

Was SM’s dad an architect or urban planner, or am I misremembering? I think Spiral Stairs actually did study urban planning after the band broke up.

Being Stephen Malkmus is … easy. You’re born upper-middle class in Los Angeles, the son of a general property/casualty insurance agent.

from https://magnetmagazine.com/2001/04/01/stephen-malkmus-being-stephen-malkmus/

Sounds like Kannberg never actually went to school for it

“I have a few blogs I look at all the time about city planning,” he says. “I get pretty excited about that kind of stuff. I lived in Seattle for a long time and I still follow what’s going on there. San Francisco too. I had the idea that I was going to get back into it but I just kind of let it go and kept making records.”

From https://www.popmatters.com/city-plans-and-vulcan-hands-spiral-stairs-scott-kannberg-speaks-2495400365.html

"there's blood in the butter the kitchen's are closed" always sticks in my head from Speak See Remember. Unhygienic!

xp And people call them slackers...! (ha ha)

I always heard "the kitchens are closed for the holidays" as referring to, like, a ski resort or boarding school... but not sure about that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Ww_O3ceKU

Very on brand to promote this web oddity

The track may be a significant source of $$ for them, considering its numbers (assuming streaming at that level does make money for artists)

weird turn of events! will there be a bunch of gen z kids at the pavement reunion shows? i'm guessing "no" but I don't really know.

Maybe with their parents

Nast really needs to write a memoir

http://vishkhanna.com/2022/04/05/ep-677-pavement/?fbclid=IwAR1IXLmY4sjqOV1EbV9P7ygxG9QzHMblmR3OgjcokUvKi3SATXU43nC9Zsg

he does. man he sounds bitter in that interview though. and he's living in a shack???? yikes. hope the dude is ok

The scuttlebutt for the 2010 reunion tour was that Malkmus did it to help out Nastanovich financially iirc.

yup

I remember that turning up in a MAGNET profile

Also

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/so-much-for-destiny-the-story-of-pavements-terror-twilight/?fbclid=IwAR3VxDN0JcOH7ZIukECQ7pBOFDDDKlSr97e4_QUfEovBhvNNIPXVqfp8zCg

That Pitchfork piece is a good read, but also annoys me all over again that they are only restoring the Gordich sequencing on the LP, but not the CD version. Seems dumb.

in that interview its funny to get godrich's take on the infamous forgetting-bob's-name issue. happy to have some closure on that one.

"Look, maybe I only forgot his name once."

Yeah, that's kinda weak, lol – "there’s five of them and just one of me"

I mean I'm sure he's a nice guy, etc.

he got paid very well for that gig, iirc. least he could do is remember the name of one of the nicest guys in music.