FEATURE:
Gold Soundz
Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain at Thirty
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MAYBE not ranked…
IN THIS PHOTO: Pavement in 1994
alongside the best albums of the 1990s, I think that Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain should be! The fact that it came out in 1994 – the best year ever for music – meant that other albums got credit and more attention. The fact is that the band’s second studio album is a classic. Released on 14th February, 1994, I wanted to mark the approaching thirtieth anniversary of a huge album that everyone should hear. Led by songwriter Stephen Malkmus, this album was a minor commercial success upon its release. Perhaps resonating more with critics than the public, in the years since its release, many more people have connected with the awesome Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. You can read fascinating features and insights into the album here. You can also pick up a copy here. I wondered whether there would be a thirtieth anniversary reissue. So that it can be made available on different coloured vinyl or cassette. I will come to some reviews for this album at the end. In 2014, Stereogum published an oral history of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. It is amazing to imagine why this stunning album did not fare better in the album charts:
“For Pavement, already an underground sensation thanks to 1992 debut Slanted And Enchanted, this album marked a massive leap in terms of fidelity and style. Sonically, they traded the static-laden home recordings of their early days for studio work with outside engineers. Crooked Rain was hardly a polished record, but it sounded bright and clear compared to what came before it. Stephen Malkmus’ lyrics continued to be an inscrutable collage of scattered phraseology, ironic commentary on the music industry, and inside jokes interspersed with brief glimpses of relatable human sentiment; in the single “Gold Soundz,” the apparently soul-baring lyric “So drunk in the August sun/ And you’re the kind of girl I like/ Because you’re empty, and I’m empty” exists alongside nonsensical banter like “Did you remember in December/ That I won’t eat you when I’m gone.” But Pavement’s music underwent a substantial makeover on Crooked Rain. The band largely left behind the post-punk framework of Slanted in favor of an easygoing classic rock influence, establishing a template they’d work from for the rest of their storied career.
Although Crooked Rain never climbed above #121 on the U.S. album chart, it was by far the most visible release yet for the young New York label Matador Records, generating radio and MTV airplay for a scene that existed almost completely underground. That’s partially because it boasted the most accessible music to ever emerge from that scene. The songs bursted with undeniable melodies couched in off-kilter delivery, be they vocal hooks tweaked by squawks and whimpers or effortlessly slinky guitar leads that shined and careened like casually waved sparklers. The chorus from lead single “Cut Your Hair” is indicative, pasting the album’s most indelible melody into wordless falsetto mewling. It sounded unlike much of the leading alternative radio staples of the day, but it did reference some of them by name when Malkmus playfully dissed Stone Temple Pilots and the Smashing Pumpkins in the closing bars of the country-tinged “Range Life.” The album-closing guitar epic “Fillmore Jive” declares the end of the rock and roll era and ends on an unfinished sentence.
Such exploits didn’t rocket Pavement to the forefront of the commercial alternative explosion that dominated the early ’90s in the wake of Nirvana; a year after Crooked Rain’s release, the band was pelted with rocks and mud at Lollapalooza’s West Virginia tour stop and had to end its set early. But the album did (ahem) cement Pavement’s fervent fan base, a cult that grew steadily until their breakup at the end of the ’90s and blossomed exponentially in the 2000s when bands and critics alike began rampantly name-checking the group as a formative power in the underground. Furthermore, Crooked Rain paved the way for Matador’s rise into a fertile middle ground between the mainstream and the underground and, in a larger sense, guitar-based indie rock’s evolution into a commercial force in the new millennium. It’s hard to imagine bands as disparate as Fleet Foxes, Arcade Fire, and the Shins ascending to legitimate rock stardom without Crooked Rain laying the groundwork a decade earlier — firstly by unapologetically blending punk and classic rock influences, secondly by nudging the cloistered indie underground out into the mainstream spotlight without making the leap to a major.
Its place in music history aside, Crooked Rain remains an incredible collection of songs, a document of a singular band at the peak of its powers confidently carving out new territory. The music feels effervescent and alive in a way that belies the disjointed way the record was assembled. The lyrics stick with you, even the ones that read like complete nonsense. It is an unforgettable album and one well worth remembering. So today, with the assistance of the members of Pavement and other key figures in the record’s creation, we do just that. Below, those closest to the action tell the story of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain”.
As a slight detour, I want to source from 2019. Billboard collated recollections and testimony from artists about how Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain impacted them. What their experiences were discovering this album. If songs like Cut Your Hair are played more than any from the album, there is a richness and consistency throughout that makes it an incredibly solid and compelling listen – one that will grab you from start to finish:
“I didn’t really have a lot of access to music, because my parents don’t really listen to music that much, and I grew up not being able to watch TV or use the computer except on the weekends (laughs). So I didn’t have MTV nor did I know how to download stuff off the Internet. It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school that I acquired a group of friends who would burn CDs for me. And I had a friend burn Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain for me, and I would play it all the time on my Discman. “Range Life” is a big favorite on the album, because going on tour with Potty Mouth the song really resonates with me. The idea of “I want a range life if I could settle down” — always going out on the road and never really having a stable life. I identify with that sentiment very strongly. – Abby Weems, Potty Mouth
I was in junior high school and deep into radio grunge played on Atlanta’s 99X when my older brother purchased Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I’d heard him play Slanted and Enchanted a few times on our hour commute to school but was lured in by CR‘s higher fidelity, the “Cut Your Hair” single, and the Smashing Pumpkins / Stone Temple Pilots commentary. It seemed like “Cut Your Hair” could have been on mainstream radio. It was more or less the first time I can remember describing someone as “indie-rock” to my friends. Most of my buds were into jam bands and when Phish later covered “Gold Sounds” I felt redeemed. Jams aplenty on CR, particularly the “Stop Breathin'” outro jam and “5-4= Unity” in particular being favorites for me. But I was definitely most interested in the lyrics and how a “career” could seamlessly morph into a “Korea” or how “if I could settle down, then I would settle down.” It seemed like the more Stephen repeated a word or phrase, the more dimension it accumulated. CR has great one-liners like “there’s one thing I’ll never forget, hey you gotta pay the dues before you pay the rent” or “no one serves coffee, no one wakes up,” but it also has lyrics I’ve misconstrued for years. I used to think “Unfair” said, “walk with a credit card in the air, swinging nunchucks like you just don’t care” which I later refined to “slinging nachos like you just don’t care” before realizing that it was officially “swing your nose like you just don’t care.” But that’s what made it all so great. It all somehow simultaneously mattered a lot and didn’t matter at all, it was playful, fun, and without enough reverence to be irreverent. It wasn’t angsty because nothing seemed worthy of getting angsty about. It was just cool. – Parker Gispert
I don’t think me or Curtis actually like Pavement. I had this experience with the lead singer I thought was funny. The first time I saw him was my first day working at a BBQ restaurant in Texas. I was flustered and didn’t know what I was doing. He was very polite. The next time I saw him I told him about it and he was very polite again. Then I saw him when I was drunk a few months later and accidentally told him the story again. This time he seemed less into the conversation. I realized that I had already told him about it before. But now I feel like I have to say this story every time I see him. I told him for the third time at a show for Matador. We haven’t run into each other for years but an ex of mine said she saw him at some festival and he said “you have that annoying boyfriend right?” And she said “not anymore.” – Coomers, Harlem
I am old enough that I remember when “Cut Your Hair” was a hit on the radio, and young enough that I have yet to see a Pavement show. I remember, as a kid during the onset of some of the best indie rock, Pavement came across as fresh and obscure. Malkmus spoke with a simultaneous candor and nihilism that was really appealing to my young brain. Crooked Rain shows Pavement at their finest. Pop indie rock candy that could be chewed by the weirdos. That’s how it felt to me, and still does. I have never heard a song like “Range Life,” well, in my life. The melodies are their own, as well as the perfectly tight loose jangle of the band. “Stop Breathin” is a ballad that no one could write but Stephen Malkmus. Pavement is able to cleverly celebrate their influences through a unique sound that is their own. Bands will spend years trying to sound as nonchalantly beautiful as this album just IS. P.S. I saw Stephen Malkmus this past summer, and he was more boyish and lackadaisically perfect than ever! – Lilly Hiatt
Crooked Rain is my all time favorite Pavement record. In fact, “Range Life” is one of the few songs I’ve covered live. I got kicked out of my apartment in North Carolina because the owners wanted to sell the whole house. The song “Range Life” seemed to encapsulate that period for me, so I got onstage at the Mothlight in West Asheville and sang it to my heart’s content. It’s an oddly relatable and beautiful song for a band that seemed so content to throw a wrench in most pop structures. My friend Dom helped me rewrite the Smashing Pumpkins lyrics at the end to be about DIIV and Sky Ferreira and we got a good chuckle out of it. Also, “Stop Breathin’” is a perfect song. It’s rare to hear a U.S. Maple influence on a mainstream rock band. Anyway, Pavement rules. Malkmus rules. – Eric Slick, Dr. Dog”.
I want to end with some reviews. I will start out with Rolling Stone. They reviewed Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain when it arrived in 1994. It is clear that this album from the Californian band was very different from anything around them. Maybe a reason why it both resounded with some and maybe did not instantly connect with others:
“ROCK IS DEAD — long live rock. The Who introduced this contradictory sentiment 20 years ago, around the time of punk’s birth, and Pavement revive it for punk’s rebirth — and not a moment too soon — on their stunning new album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. While the Who smashed guitars and eardrums, Pavement smash preconceptions on Crooked Rain — about how an indie-rock band should sound, about whether “alternative music” is an alternative to anything — creating an album that’s darker and more beguiling than their heralded previous efforts.
Despite — or maybe because of — obvious lifts from Sonic Youth, the Fall and the Pixies on earlier releases, Pavement’s slacker sound, which buried primitive pop melodies under layers of pretty noise and lazy rhythms, made critics and the college-radio crowd swoon. On Crooked Rain, Pavement — vocalist-guitarist Stephen Malkmus, guitarist Spiral Stairs, bassist Mark Ibold, percussionist Bob Nastanovich and drummer Steve West — avoid the expected indie inclinations to noise, volume and lo-fi sound, replacing them with clearly ringing guitars and Bowieesque tinkling piano.
Crooked Rain’s clean production and insidiously catchy melodies hardly signify that Pavement have sold out — if anything, their vision is more warped and caustic than before. On such previous releases as Watery, Domestic; Slanted and Enchanted; and the numerous, hard-to-find vinyl EPs collected on Westing (By Musket and Sextant), the band’s lyrics seemed artily tossed off, resembling dada transmissions from another, more surreal dimension.
On Crooked Rain, though, Malkmus, the band’s principal songwriter, appears concerned with more earthly matters, in particular the rise of alternative music and the concurrent death of rock & roll: As “Newark Wilder” laments: “It’s a brand-new era/And it feels great/It’s a brand-new era/But it came too late.” On “Cut Your Hair,” Malkmus equates the recent popularity of alternative music to a trendy haircut, mocking Nirvana-be’s who “dance right down to the practice room/[To] get attention and fame,” reminding them that “songs mean a lot/When songs are bought/And so are you.” On “Range Life,” Malkmus gets specific in his vitriol, dropping vicious put-downs of his peers that would seem more at home in a hip-hop dis than in that song’s sweet, country-rock shuffle. He targets Smashing Pumpkins, claiming, “They don’t have no function/I don’t understand what they mean/And I could really give a fuck.” He also derides Stone Temple Pilots as “elegant bachelors,” adding that they “do absolutely nothing more to me.” Elsewhere, Malkmus’ lyrics are replete with drug references and desperate, mundane pleas, as in the chorus of “Stop Breathin'” (“Stop breathing for me now”) or this refrain from “Fillmore Jive”: “I need to sleep/Why won’t you let me sleep?”
Pavement’s contradictions come to a head in the album’s closer “Fillmore Jive,” which is seemingly inspired by the death of Bill Graham and rendered in an elegiac tone reminiscent of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” (and Don McLean’s “American Pie”). In “Fillmore,” Malkmus addresses various punks, rockers and the “dance faction,” bidding them to say “good night to the rock & roll era/’Cause they don’t need you anymore.” It’s ironic in itself that as Malkmus declares that rock is dead, he displays the sort of passion, skepticism and inventiveness that only offers proof of its ongoing vitality”.
Moving to 2014, where The Quietus gave their assessment of a magnificent album. One of the very best of the 1990s. They reviewed it twenty years after its release. Since then even, you can hear bands coming through that are distinctly influenced by Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. If you have not heard the album lately, then take some time out and experience it. You will not be disappointed:
“That joy’s in its buoyancy, its wide-open major cadences, the shimmering warmth Pavement slid into after Steve West took over drum duty from Gary Young. It’s in the sound that other publications describe as "classic rock". In the way that at the end of ‘Silence Kid’, you get Malkmus’ admission that he’s “screwing myself with my hand” – that brief fall into fucked-up defiance – and then a few seconds later, ‘Elevate Me Later’ kicks in and it’s back to exuberance. It’s in the way it splinters out like fireworks from the steaming, angry freak-out of ‘Unfair’, one of the few songs on the album in which the subject is disarmingly obvious:
We've got desert, we've got trees
We've got the hills of Beverly
Let's burn the hills of Beverly!
It’s how, within a breath, the band move from that release of rage towards their California homeland to the laid-back beauty of ‘Gold Soundz’, and pull you right along with it. It’s in the unexpected, sparkling jazz of ‘5-4 Unity’. And then, of course, it’s in the wonderful alchemy of loucheness and yearning in ‘Range Life’. It’s such a warm, loose song, an easygoing pisstake that famously damned the Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan was offended, but Malkmus, of course, had just grabbed any old band or two from the air because they sounded right).
The album became a strange, shimmering tapestry of things to take seriously and things to mock; a combination of optimism, melancholy and smart slacker indifference that was a guiding philosophy for years. It probably still is.
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw?
Quicksilver shifts between earnestness and diffidence; endless alterations between soul-baring snapshots of a deep, vast inner life and cocky mockery. And the instinctive genius of the way these both flowed alongside the melodies or jutted out against them made the whole thing glorious.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is arguably the most commercial record in the Pavement canon; ‘Gold Soundz’ being exemplary here. Sandwiched between the rougher Slanted & Enchanted and Wowee Zowee, it’s a glimpse of a band who could have, if they wanted, gone in a mainstream indie rock direction. This was as crowd-pleasing as they got – there are more polished, pretty tracks on it than on any of their other albums. Even so, it also contains its own resistance, most especially in ‘Heaven Is A Truck’ (as Beavis & Butthead asked about Pavement: “Are they even trying?”); and the disjointed dissonance of ‘Hit the Plane Down’. This resistance wasn’t calculated or even particularly conscious. Pavement really weren't trying. They simply shrugged at external notions of success and got back to making the record. And if the world thought it pretty and embraced it, or thought it ugly and shunned it, so be it.
'Fillmore Jive' is where it ends.
passed out on your couch
A song that meanders, dips and builds around a desperate yearning to be asleep; to be submerged in dream. How resonant this hollowed-out, underwater song would sound to me for so many years. When Stephen Malkmus sings “I need to sleep” then begs “why don't you let me?” I felt it deeply, listening on a Sunday night after another weekend making myself make the most of my twenties. So much of that decade is exhausting; you have to show up, think about
career, career, career, career
about people's new haircuts, needing credit cards, elegant bachelors (are they foxy to you?), if you’re the kind of girl he likes (cos you’re empty), all those fortresses and ways to attack, your grandmother's advice – and you need to sleep.
When I asked to write this review, I wondered if an album that shone so brightly in the past would be lost to me now, as the truth is, I don’t listen to it much these days. I thought that at 32 I’d wonder why it’d had such a hold over me five, ten years ago. I was ready to admit that if something so of its time and at such an angle to the world could still steal over me in the same way, it’d prove I was stuck in an extended adolescence or in ex-stoner nostalgia – that I should just admit defeat and become a 90s casualty, giving into wearing nothing but flannel shirts and listening to Brian Jonestown Massacre.
But recent spins have only reaffirmed that its exuberant grace is transcendent. And anyway, you can never quarantine the past”.
I will end with this review from Secret Meeting. It is interesting reading what they had to say in their 2020 piece. How the music scene was transforming and turning by 1994. It was a fascinating year where some scenes peaked and were levelling off and others were coming through. Within that year, early on, Pavement put out this incredible musical statement:
“When Pavement released their second studio album in 1994, the alternative music scene in the US had been riding the crest of a wave. Genre-defining records from the likes of Soundgarden, Nirvana and Beastie Boys would all go on to reach number one in the Billboard chart that year, and acts which had emerged from the DIY underground had become household names. But the worm was slowly starting to turn – as with most crossovers, there is always a danger that A&R men, TV Execs and unscrupulous advertisers start to see the dollar signs, and the inevitable sub-par ‘cash-ins’ begin to appear. It was the first flashes of this cynicism that ended up seeping into Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain – an album that satirically critiqued the music scene. Questions about whether The Stone Temple Pilots were ‘foxy’ or not, tales of ‘Range Rovin’ with the cinema stars’, and a tongue in cheek line about the ‘drummer’s hair’ were all thinly-veiled barbs about the way the mainstream media and related hangers-on had started to jump on the alternative bandwagon.
For a songwriter who’s often claimed his lyrics are largely nonsensical, and is known for using phrases purely because they sound good together, on Crooked Rain it seemed Stephen Malkmus was making more of a point. None more so than on Elevate Me Later. But instead of a typical punk attack on the rich, Malkmus cuts them down with wry digs at the woes of upper class fashionistas and again at the music suits.
For all of Pavement’s avant-garde, noiserock-lite tendencies, they’ve always had a deft ear for melody, and pop gem Cut Your Hair is a fine example. A scuzzy, upbeat song complete with a throwaway ‘ooh ooh ooh’ refrain that mocks the image obsessed music scene, and the poseurs and scenesters that inhabit it.
The jewel in the crown of the album is undoubtedly Gold Soundz – a beautifully written, twilight-kissed song that shifts focus momentarily and catches the melancholy feeling of remembering people or times that have been lost. 5-4=Unity maybe shouldn’t have made the cut. However, on an album that moved away from the MTV-led version of alternative music, it isn’t surprising that Pavement included an instrumental in a 5/4 time signature – in fact it wouldn’t have been surprising for them to release it as a lead single.
Alt-country track, Range Life, is an Americana-tinged song that trots along breezily, and stays just on the right side of being glib or cheesy. With brilliantly throwaway lyrics, Malkmus describes youth in suburban America, and makes the mundane sound idyllic- ‘Out on my skateboard, the night is just humming/ And the gum smacks are the pulse I’ll follow if my Walkman fades’. After an understated, but perfectly placed bar-room band middle eight, Malkmus again can’t help but turn his thoughts to his contemporaries, referencing both The Stone Temple Pilots and The Smashing Pumpkins – and on a song with such a carefree, laid back sentiment it’s easy to see why Malkmus has nothing in common with Chicago’s perpetual nihilists.
Pavement always had a punk ethos, DIY values – they didn’t really fit into the Generation X mould. It’s also hard to say exactly when Pavement peaked (they would go on to release three more brilliant studio albums), but it could be argued that commercially, critically, and creatively Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain wasn’t ever really bettered. The band split after Terror Twilight in 1999, but would reunite again in 2010 to tour in support of the aptly named best of compilation, Quarantine The Past. They also announced last year that they would be reforming once again to play a pair of shows this weekend to celebrate the anniversary of Primavera festival, which, obviously, has been postponed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. But the reaction to the announcement was greeted with such anticipation that it’s hard to overstate their ongoing popularity.
Members of Pavement have forayed into other musical ventures since the split, but it’s Malkmus who found the most success in the post-Pavement years – releasing a plethora of albums, including 2018’s Sparkle Hard, that would arguably go on to overshadow the Pavement back catalogue, and cement himself as the ever inventive, constantly shifting godfather of lo-fi slacker rock.
In terms of its legacy, Crooked Rain helped inform new generations to a whole host of other artists – including modern day acts Parquet Courts and Car Seat Headrest. Their influence has been synonymous with some of the best alternative music of the last quarter of a century, while still remaining a band who simply can’t be imitated”.
On 14th February, it will be thirty years since Pavement released their acclaimed second studio album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. One of the absolute standouts from 1994, in years since it has gone on to influence artists. You hear its songs played on the radio. It has endured and created this distinct legacy. I am not sure whether Stephen Malkmus and the band will mark the thirtieth anniversary. I hope they do! After all these years, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain remains a work of brilliance. We will be discussing this wonderful album…
FOR years to come.