pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

lol

xp it's true, he seems to have lost it :(

BTW I want to encourage anyone interested to see Pavement on this tour if possible, an absolute revelation 10X better than the 90s, the whole time I was thinking "This is what it should have been"

Yeah I saw MM at an in store before a club show that night and Brock was guzzling tallboys and could barely play at 4pm

xp Yeah they were great, they seemed really engaged with the songs and having a good time. I don’t even think of them as a particular favorite band but afterwards I was thinking about how many songs I like that they didn’t play, and it was still a totally satisfying show.

counterpoint about the pavement tour: i missed my chance to get tix and all the nearby cities are sold out so i'd appreciate if no one on ILM ever mentioned how good the shows are ever again, thanks in advance everyone

brock definitely was unbalanced irl and had his share of onstage meltdowns & brushes with the law, i remember reports of him cutting himself onstage and stuff. with stuff like that microchip interview he seems to have simultaneously settled down & gotten more out there.

My reaction to Pavement and pretty much anything Malkmus-related is an eyeroll, and has been since I was in high school— never helped that I had a friend who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about how they were the best band in the world. Their fans are like nerdier versions of GBV fans afaic, but Pollard is a better songwriter and an infinitely better lyricist/poet than Berman or Malkmus could ever hope to be.

I know that’s speaking ill of the dead, don’t care— David Berman just wasn’t that good a poet! People just like him because he was the first ‘weird’ poet they could access.

I know that’s speaking ill of the dead, don’t care— David Berman just wasn’t that good a poet! People just like him because he was the first ‘weird’ poet they could access.

hot take so spice
it was posted twice

a good refrain

counterpoint about the pavement tour:

I've been enjoying the fan tapes/youtube stuff out there, can relax with them on the couch and not be surrounded by a bunch of people who look like me screaming along to Cut Your Hair, probably more fun this way

People just like him because he was the first ‘weird’ poet they could access.

Another way of looking at this is DB was the first weird poet they could access and these people all went on to explore more poetry and see how great and wonderful poetry can be all thanks to Actual Air

I first read Berman when I was 34 or 35 when I saw Actual Air in the remaindered section of the college bookstore. He wrote at least three or four good poems iirc. Don't know his other collections.

hes really only got the one

not actual air, but still v. good

Moments can be monuments to you
If your life is interesting and true
It's just the same for a man or a girl
The meaning of the world lies outside the world
People love people and they understand
If you want to renovate your background mind
A federal woman needs a municipal man
People gotta synchronize to animal time
You can't change the feeling but you can change your feeling
About the feelings in a second or two, aha
People always come 'round

Im kinda surprised nothing posthumous has come out tbh. I'll grant that he was a better rock lyricist than poet, but there is good stuff in Actual Air imo. "Much better than other poetry books by musicians" sounds like faint praise, but its true.

I think the first line is from Rossetti: about sonnets being a moment's monument. Good steal.

Comparing Malkmus and Brock as lyricists is interesting but a bit reductive if you disregard delivery.

Malkmus spun some clever lines with exquisite wordplay, but delivered them in a (frequently off-key) drawl or bark that made the words feel tossed off, arch and sardonic. It felt throwaway but wasn't.

Brock wrote impressionistic nonsense, but delivered his words with a combination of urgency and woundedness that feels very raw and unaffected. It felt like a punch in the guts but you don't really know why.

I guess Malkmus is the guy at the party who'll charm you with his wit and steal your girlfriend, and you won't really mind. Whereas Brock's the guy at the party who'll weep about his dead dog while cutting line in the bathroom queue, then throw up on his own shoes.

Having seen both Modest Mouse (at a festival) and Pavement (in theaters) in the past five months, I can attest that their live shows (sound/presentation/"vibes") are very different at the moment...

hot take so spice
it was posted twice

i'm too much i'm too much comforted here

the recent Isaac Brock interview where he's still clearly fucked up is a shock because I thought he'd gotten sober. dunno if I read it or just assumed it because people like that kinda have to get sober if they wanna make it to middle age. perhaps I was thinking of Gene Ween.

definitely some class stuff going on between the cultural/critical perception of MM & Pavement

This is all I meant with my community college vs Ivy league thing

I was honestly curious. I hadn't thought of them as representative of different social classes but I was always more of a Built to Spill > Modest Mouse guy. Discussion was interesting.

The class discussion had been enlightening; it's an interesting perspective I hadn't thought of before.

This is what I love about ILX. And getting piled on when I diss The Beths.

don't think we've forgotten about that

Cheers @pitchfork for ranking If You're Feeling Sinister the 25th best album of the 90s!https://t.co/dPXwExPurN

— belle & sebastian (@bellesglasgow) September 29, 2022

This is quite sweet but my first thought was 'Cheers p4k for enjoying our album less than you used to'

It's 2022, everyone enjoys B&S less than they used to.

don't think much less though

I've remained been the same on them - ehhh hmmm

I still think Tigermilk is great, but apparently Pfork doesn’t…

"The State I Am In" from Tigermilk is great as the one B&S song represented in the poll, and If You're Feeling Sinister still seems like a landmark album for its time

The only '96 B&S song I'm all that bothered about is Electronic Renaissance, but that's a real goodun

Tigermilk has some problematic lyrics from today's perspective but it's still a bop.

Yeah, especially post-Tiger King

I like that Belle & Sebastian presented their early EPs and LPs as an unambiguous rejection of the hypermasculine music of the 90s

Sleater-Kinney's "One More Hour" is really great. I'm glad that that is their representation on the tracks list

Sleater-Kinney's "One More Hour" is really great. I'm glad that that is their representation on the tracks list

It was my favourite SK song as a teen, and it's still my favourite now. In retrospect I shoulda figured out I was gay waaaaaay sooner. Fuck compulsory cishet.

Anyway, as much as I love the songs on Dig Me Out, I think The Hot Rock is their true full-length masterpiece.

"one more hour" is their best song yeah

Lists! On the internet!

went through a little 'exile in guyville' phase recently but LOL @ ranking it above 'nevermind'

'american water' above any pavement album (also no 'wowee zowee') is kinda crazy imo. DB is one of my fav song writers ever, but the SJ albums are all kinda uneven imho. the pavement albums are just perfect front to back

122. Roni Size / Reprazent: New Forms (1997)

hell yeah

idk i think all the pavement albums are kinda inconsistent and chaotic but that's also supposed to be part of the appeal

but yeah american water being above crooked rain is pretty weird

None more so than Wowee Zowee, which is a sprawling masterpiece of chaos.

Sebadoh albums make Pavement look super consistent by comparison though...

'crooked rain' is completely solid

I dunno, Range Life is a great song but it is a bit of a gimmick. And that fake jazz song is kinda cringe.

the problem with 'american water' is nothing else comes close to 'smith and jones' and 'random rules'. since those are 2 of the best songs of all time, it's a steep drop-off right at the beginning

crooked rain is the most consistent pavement album but it still has one goofy aside in "5-4=unity" and i do not care about "hit the plane down" at all

'american water' above any pavement album (also no 'wowee zowee') is kinda crazy imo. DB is one of my fav song writers ever, but the SJ albums are all kinda uneven imho. the pavement albums are just perfect front to back

― flopson

idk part of Pavement's charm for me is their insistence on shaggy-ass experiments that are best skippable and at worst active irritants; it's why I rank WZ above the rest. I couldn't imagine Pavement without them.

Pavement could make puzzling choices over what to put on albums and what to leave off; their B-sides were often the equal or better of their album cuts. I'm thinking of Strings of Nashville in particular.