terror twilight

Track 24 (“You Are the Light,” recorded at the Portland studio) is a real treat… that classic Pavement vibe.

Correction: this morning, it's showing up as Track 36 (don't know what I was looking at / smoking last night)

Only just noticed "you are a light the calm in the day" sounds a bit "like like the the the death"

Somehow P missed making the rotation in bar / coffee shop playlists. I never hear them in the wild

Nice ending to the Pitchfork review:

It was the album that brought Pavement full circle: dressed for success, but never quite sure if they wanted the job.

I don't care for the Godrich order. The most interesting thing for me to hear is the demos. The melodies are already so fully-formed, even with the lyrics being half-there or absent. Which isn't suprising, but it does shine a necessary light on the fact that SM's primary gift has always been melody, as opposed to lyrics, even though so much attention is paid to those, at least in the Pave era. It makes me wish he and Berman had combined their strengths more often with the Joos (see American Water, especially "Blue Arrangements")

Not sure melody is even one of SM's top 3 strengths (1. cool guitar tunings/chords/progressions, 2. general attitude/approach, 3. vocal delivery / note: idk if these are official, i just typed them out with 10 seconds of thought)

theres definitely a very specific feel to a lot of his melodies thats immediately identifiable as his musical voice. whether its necessarily his primary strength compared to his lyrics though, just bc the lyrics happen to come later in his songwriting process, is debatable imo.

this was cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkmgOjA1Hvc

Malkmus has written memorable melodies: "Major Leagues," "Shady Lane," "Here." I go to him for the pluses that alpine static mentioned.

xps I don't care for the Godrich sequencing either. It's like they told him the album was called Terror Twilight and he was like "got it - so side 1 is 'terror' and side 2 is 'twilight.'" I like/love those first four tracks individually, and I was totally on board with opening with "Platform Blues," but taken all in a row they come across like someone trying a little too hard to be a badass. There's almost an edgelordiness to some of the lyrics ("you're a nice guy, and I hate you for that," etc.) that never really jumped out at me when these songs were spread out across the tracklist.

Also I think the original order worked really well! "Spit on a Stranger" and "Carrot Rope" always struck me as being kind of similar, so I like them as bookends. "Folk Jam" is a great track two. I agree with this from upthread too:

I love how Carrot Rope lurching in after Hexx just totally deflates that grand statement

Bob mentioned on Kreative Kontrol that there were other future Jicks songs they worked on in those sessions, but I guess Malkmus nixed them for this collection, which is too bad. Cool to hear the full band versions of "Porpoise" and "Rooftop Gambler" - I had no idea they ever even attempted those. I'm excited to see what deep cuts they pull out on the tour this year!

YOu can see them rehearse Discretion Grove on the Slow Century movie. . . for a hot second

Didn't one of these (many) other recent TT retrospectives mention something about several band members complaining about leading off with a song that "none of them played on"?

(FWIW, I've never liked "Platform Blues" too much... if anything, I appreciate Godrich getting it "out of the way" early, haha)

I don't like "The Hexx."

It was better when they played it faster and it had a different title

also i think theres plenty of songs in their past that no one played on besides SM. . . . Steve West for example does not seem bothered by being replaced for two tracks in all the press I've read

He does indeed say he wasn't bothered in the Pfork piece ("The thing with Pavement is that some people would play on a record, and some people wouldn’t. It wasn’t really my place to be upset about it.")

I think Ibold and West played on most Pavement songs from Crooked Rain onward. Spiral not so much; he was a big part of Slanted and the early EPs but is basically inaudible on most of Malkmus’s songs on the last few records. You can hear Nastanovich dicking around here and there if you listen closely, but he was always more of a live member than anything else.

It feels like this album has been dissected & reflected more than the rest of the band's catalog at this point... I guess there's a little more to say about how it was recorded than the others (and it was their swan song). But it's kind of a funny example of a band's "no one's favorite*, but not a failure** either" type LP being so thoroughly discussed.

*I'm sure it's someone's favorite
**I suppose it was a financial failure, given the recording cost vs. sales

One of the biggest revelations I’ve had over the past few years is that this record is a LOT of people’s Pavement record.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, so please don’t come at me

Malkmus' description of "Shady Lane" in the video posted upthread as a sort of bratty, nursery rhyme-type thing pretty much nails why I often dislike his melodies. On the opening verse of "Shady Lane," in particular, Malk sounds like a hyperactive child breathlessly describing to a patiently nodding adult his recent trip to grandma's house. By "Dutch! Dutch! Dutch!" I just want to say "OK, Stephen, very nice, now let's calm down a little and watch iCarly, OK?"

The other takeaway from that video: this band was really never good live, were they?

Shady Lane is awesome.

I don’t know if I’ve ever met a single person who claimed they were even good live. Fun, yes.

Not even "good"? That's a bit strong!

Sloppy but fun is pretty much their elevator pitch.

Just took another spin thru the Godrich tracklist, and the novelty has worn off... Kannberg definitely got it right.

Platform Blues is an inspired choice as an opener and the album always suffered from being too slow to mid-tempo overall (IMO), but yup, original was the way to go. The Hexx second is as daft as a brush.

they're great live. saw 'em 5 times. all great.

bad Pavement experiences are like the "fans of VU started their own bands" thing at this point. a handful of people saw them play badly back in the day, but now everyone on the internet is certain they were always terrible. whatever.

Man, amen to that. Saw em a few times in Chicago at lounge ax & metro & I thought their reunion show @ Millennium Park was just as great - different levels of fun and none of the sloppy to my memory.

who cares if they were good live

The Millennium Park show was transcendent. The Pitchfork set 3 months prior not so much.

saw them not long after slanted & enchanted came out with g.young I think handing out bananas after show, doing handstands etc its was unreal & felt like magic tall dwarfs & 3d's opened I seem to remember Chris Knox put his head through his keyboard but that seems crazy and maybe he just walked his head into it - the noise & the chaos & the melodies & zinging wigged out songs from pavement were sublime & I was enthralled with that whole album the evening was a joy - seen footage from only a few yrs later and they seemed absolutely banal & like it was forced fun in comparison - from my point of view it was all down hill once the unpredictability of Gary Y left -watery domestic a high point some good stuff after but they lost something somehow & then TT seemed like such a horrid artificial thing like a pavement covers band taking the Mickey

Saw them live twice - 1994 and 1997 - and they were good both times, and surprisingly 'tight' (I think having two drummers kept them pretty locked down).

Saw them on the S&E tour in Glasgow at a rubbish venue called The Cathouse, they arrived just as we were queuing outside and Gary was chatting with us all and showing off his new cowboy boots.

The gig was pretty great loose and a measure of fucking about and in-jokes. GY doing his shambolic brinkmanship thing, handstands on the drum stool, my memory tells me that he made cinnamon toast for the audience after the support act too, I remember loaves of Scottish pan bread on the apron of the stage and a toaster, did I dream that? idk

> Not sure melody is even one of SM's top 3 strengths (1. cool guitar tunings/chords/progressions, 2. general attitude/approach, 3. vocal delivery

For me it's how all the aspects of his appeal are part of this complete package - the talented but lazy irony-soaked hipster. Super memorable elegant long vocal melodies reminiscent of Neil Young or REM are there occasionally, like on all the slow songs on Brighten, or Gold Soundz or Trigger Cut. The verses on his best songs seem to tumble forward and take odd turns and then start making big leaps and declarations on the chorus, but with a lot of unexpected choices. But he wasn't interested in crafting a whole album of stuff like that or even a perfect radio-friendly song; that's been done. What we have here is burying these moments in noise or scattering them around silliness. A complete refusal to try to write a "Heart of Gold" or "Everybody Hurts", but to take what is great about those songs and refresh them with strange choices and a ramshackle approach appropriate to the times. And this was the problem with Major Leagues as a single; it was in the uncanny valley where maybe Pavement could be big and popular if I dunno, Better than Ezra could. It was polished too much and the lyric/melody pair were too clearly hopeful and romantic.

Malk's lyrics are occasionally brilliant, but often just cryptic or throwaway, and that seems so appropriate for an underground band in the early 90s with all these super hip production/guitar influences (the fall, bad moon/evol sonic youth, swell maps). Major Leagues could definitely have been arranged in a palatable way for die-hard Pavement fans with an approach that was typical of the band - undercutting the lyric and warmth of the arrangement with some crazy noise section or a scratchy riff, or pushing harder on the lyric to make it a bit weirder. I have come around to the song because I interpret the metaphor of "let's take this relationship to the next level like joining the major leagues" as Malkmus saying fuck it, let's try to make this band truly successful, let's go full Radiohead/Beck, and when that fails, he breaks up the band in resigned disgust. So I can handle this love song because in a sense, it's about loving the band, and wanting to make the relationship work, and that's the kind of thing you might do when your relationship is just about dead.

Did he want Radiohead or Beck's career? I wonder. He comes off like a more sober Paul Westerberg in his casual commitment to self-sabotage.

I don't think of any of those indie bands could have hit it big, anyway (Sebadoh actually did try to write an "Everybody Hurts," with "Willing to Wait"). FWIW, I feel like "Stereo" was a good attempt at an "authentic-feeling Pavement song" that may have had a chance at alt rock radio, but of course it did nothing.

Good post there MIG

I don’t think SM really wanted to take Pavement into some indie rock stratosphere. It was probably Nigel pushing for that and SM being like “yeah, sure, why not, but that’s on you, bro.”

^^^^^

The SM interview in the reissue (from TapeOP, 99) hints at this - trying something new and different, leaning on Nigel to help bear that load. From everything I’ve read this also happened to be the point that Malkmus realized in an undeniable way that he’d formally outgrown a band that wasn’t as into music as he was. (It didn’t help that they didn’t live in the same area, obviously.)

I’m a huge fan but can admit that Malkmus in that era particularly was kind of a petulant guy. (And he couldn’t be bothered to even do a fresh essay or interview as part of the reissue package!)

BUT

If you think about it, he did the right thing: he just ended the band. He didn’t do the thing where he fired everyone and hired session players (or underemployed indie royalty) and charged forward under the Pavement banner.

Breaking up the band preserves a certain sense of legacy and means “we can get everyone back together for a tour every decade or so and make lots of money.”

“This is fun, but I’m never recording with you guys again. Probably.”

idk. I have a different reading – I think he always wanted to push things further with the band, but he just wasn't good at communicating this in the end. He wrote a song making fun of Steve West's drumming... before, I used to think this was just a joke, but starting to think this was passive aggressive at least.

I think so too (re:pushing things further.) I never felt it was a case of Godrich the pop guy vs SM the petulant artiste. SM knew Godrich was a famous hi-gloss commercial producer when they decided to work together, its not like they were assigned to each other at random. i think he was clearly interested in what a polished version of Pavement would sound like, and at that moment it wasnt completely outside the realm of possibility to think such an experiment might have a chance of producing... if not a big hit, then at least a bigger hit than Pavement had seen previously.

i dont think he was racking his brain trying to write a chart topper, but I dont think he was consciously trying NOT to, either. to me it always seemed more like he saw the unique spot Pavement was in and was sort of setting up the right conditions. like "if i happen to write something that might connect, why not have it on a nice-sounding Nigel Godrich album with good playing and see what happens?"

I think the delusion by Westerberg, Mould, Hart, Malkmus, etc. that they could write a chart topper a charming thing. They could write catchy college radio hits. No way on earth "Cut Your Hair" or "Stereo" would've gone top ten no matter how many #1 singles Kurt Cobain earned.

^^This. I'm not a big Pavement guy or anything, but I do know they had a snowball's chance in hell of breaking through on Corporate Alternative Radio in 1999, when Nu Metal, Pop Punk and Guitar Pop with a capital 'P' ruled the roost, and most 'out there' band on tbe airwaves was Cake.

In the pitchfork piece Malk mentions that he conceived the songs on TT as being closer to WZ than BtC which struck me as interesting and makes sense, although I still think of the album as more the first Malkmus solo record that just happened to have Pavement as the backing band. Maybe half or more of the WZ tunes have multi-part structure or feel like two songs grafted together; some of the more "Pavementy" songs on TT have that feeling. Also WZ and TT seem to jump around from vibe to vibe a lot more than BtC, even though TT shares with BtC the "all the songs are slow to midtempo" problem that I attribute to Malk's lack of confidence in West.

> I think the delusion by Westerberg, Mould, Hart, Malkmus, etc. that they could write a chart topper a charming thing.

Well maybe, but it definitely does happen from time to time that an underground band after years of toiling has a top US hit. In the late 90s these include breakthough hits of varying size and quality by long timers Sugar Ray, Luscious Jackson, Chumbawumba, and the Verve; and Westerberg-lite Goo Goo Dolls of course had a string of hits. Major Leagues was never gonna be that, but you can make an interesting playlist of late 90s bands doing AOR sounding vaguely retro maybe Tusk or Nightfly influenced type stuff like it by Pavement's similarly melodically gifted reforming ex-slacker peers Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey, and of course Silver Jews.

I don't blame them for trying; it resulted in fascinating songs.

xpost

Sugar Ray, Luscious Jackson, Chumbawumba, and the Verve

Different ears, etc., but those bands had a better talent for radio fodder than Malkmus -- and even "Naked Eyes" didn't rise above the top 35.