Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)

Upon starting this blog, I promised myself that I’d write at least one album review a week. It’s been over a month since my last one. Pavement’s iconic Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is the reason why.

I’ve known about this group for almost a decade now. My first experience came around 2005 after receiving a positive endorsement from my older brother regarding the song “Range Life”. I gave it a listen and thought it was catchy, clever, and deserving of a couple of re-listens– nothing more, nothing less. Over the years as I expanded my musical tastes by virtue of the ever-growing sphere of music reviews on the internet, I saw this band’s name pop up multiple times, and almost always drawing the utmost reverence. It seemed that for some reason this group of slackers that pumped out a couple of alternative rock albums in the early-to-mid 1990s were quintessential to the development of a broad range of critics’ and fans’ musical taste. I listened to a few of the bands’ other songs– like “Cut Your Hair,” Pavement’s most far-reaching track in terms of mainstream influence, but I still couldn’t put my finger on this seemingly hidden element that made the band considered so impressive and influential. Years went by and my opinion remained stagnant: they were an okay alternative rock band.

That is, until I decided to shut the fuck up and listen. One day I played the album cover-to-cover with no preconceived notions and no intentions of musical analyses on any level. It was only after this that I was finally able to grasp exactly what makes this such an important piece of work.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is a sterling compilation of music from beginning to end– without trying to be one. Pavement’s front-man, Stephen Malkmus, has an inexplicable knack for writing lyrics that result in radically diverse interpretations, while retaining an unfathomable sense of humor. The meaning of one of the album’s highlight tracks, “Stop Breathin'”, has been discussed and analyzed endlessly as a story about the difficulties of a break up, or the result of a broken home… but Malkmus revealed that the song is really about wars and tennis. You get the sense that the lyrics might not have even been written with the intention of ambiguity, but the end result is a lot less shallow than one may believe… or is it?

It’s that kind of charm and mystery that makes this such a great album. Malkmus sings half of the songs out of tune, and almost every other song is played in some weird alternate tuning that seems to either be a product of laziness or genius. The production is very lo-fi– and while Pavement aren’t considered the pioneers of the style, they certainly helped bring it into popular light. Songs like “Silence Kid” and “Gold Soundz” sound like they might have been recorded in one or two takes, with the bass and distortion turned all the way up, and the treble and mid cranked down– but somehow they contain some of the most warm, catchy melodies I’ve ever heard.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain‘s first single, and most mainstream hit, “Cut Your Hair” is a perfect example of what makes this band great. The song starts off with a melodically playful set of “ooo”s… that come in at the wrong time. The song’s chord progression; D-C-G-Em-G-Em, leaves the listener with a lack of resolve as to what key the song is really in (do I feel complete at D? Or at G? But what about E minor?), but for some reason this lingering makes the track even more interesting. Malkmus’ lyrics are pretty easily interpreted– he starts off with the line “Darling don’t you go and cut your hair/Do you think it’s going to make him change?”, and as the track picks up, it’s obvious that the song is focused around the music industry. But— when you hear the first line, your initial perception might be that it’s going to be about a girl in a strained relationship– and the track is driven by this kind of ambiguity. The song’s lack of resolve results in more varied forms of interpretation, a trait that most bands have been pursuing since the beginning of time, but have yet to reach.

The album’s highlight track, “Gold Soundz”, relays a simple three chord progression and details the importance of keeping secrets within oneself and with one’s significant other– going from the latter to the former as the track aggressively progresses. A lot of the beauty of the music is in the guitar tuning– Malkmus plays this song in D-A-D-A-B-E tuning (aptly named “slacker tuning”), allowing him to use more open strings and resulting in a pleasant, gentle tone. The song slows down after the first verse, and subsequently explodes into an “anti-solo” — pretty much just a few notes played over and over again. But the radiating guitar and easy-going emotion of this bridge make it as beautiful as anything– no matter how technically “good” it is. I tend to think of using intangibles as somewhat of a cop-out when reviewing music, but there’s no other way to express the nostalgic feel of this song.

While not every track on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has the qualifications of a 5-star song, the songs’ placement on the album are perfect– and the whole work plays through very comfortably. There are few albums I’d consider easier to listen to cover-to-cover. While “5-4=Unity” isn’t anything groundbreaking, it serves well as an intermission between two of the album’s most quality songs.

I don’t think I regard this album so highly because I’m from the suburbs, because I tend to prefer lo-fi indie rock, or because I can relate to Pavement’s slacker style. I consider Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain to be a perfect album because it is one. Pavement preferred to stay out of the spotlight in the 1990s– while a similar band like Nirvana was getting tons of media attention for Nevermind (and rightfully so), Pavement chose to inch away from the spotlight when they finally had a chance to be in it. Whether you believe their “anti-fashion” fashion statement plays any role in their significance, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain by Pavement is a fundamentally superb record both musically and idealistically, and I have no doubt in my mind that the longevity of this album will remain; Pavement’s fan base has grown exponentially both in size and enthusiasm since they sprung up in California in the early 1990s, and with good reason. Not only Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, but just about all of Pavement’s catalog will remain some of the best music to ever come out of an already jam-packed decade, and pretty much all indie rock bands that have gained a following since Pavement are forever indebted to their innovation. And yes, I did just say that they are better than Nirvana.

100/100