Still Enchanted: The Return of Pavement

A rambling personal reminiscence on Pavement to mark the occasion of their first gig in 10 years.

The last time I saw Pavement was at the Roadmender in Northampton, sometime in the middle of 1992. Robert, a good friend at the time but someone I haven’t seen for a number of years, drove us down there from Birmingham*. Of the gig itself I remember thinking they were amazing, Gary Young was doing handstands and handing out celery, Bob Nastanovich may have been wearing a Luton Town FC replica shirt which seemed odd**, but the rest of the details are lost in the haze of time and premium lager.

For some reason I missed the band when they played Birmingham, hence the trip down to Northampton. I think I was out of town at the time - possibly to see Ride who I’d often travel for. I remember being at another gig at the same venue a week beforehand (the legendary Edwards No.8) and stealing the Pavement poster advertising the gig - I had that on my wall at Uni for a long time. Edwards was probably the best venue in town circa 90-92 and I saw many amazing gigs there, all performed on a stage about 8 inches high (basically a raised dance floor). Nirvana, Tad, Fugazi, Bitch Magnet, The Lemonheads, Sugar, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Das Damen, Smashing Pumpkins, Sugar, The Verve, Dogs D’Amour, Rage Against The Machine, all come to mind. But, those are stories for another post.

1990-92 was a period of major transition for me. I’d quit my job, disentangled myself from a couple of destructive relationships, started hanging round with a different crowd and was about to head off to University. The move away from my home city marked a de facto change in my listening habits in that I left all my vinyl behind and only took CDs with me. This had the effect of making c1988 a bit of a year zero for music (apart from the first two Big Star albums, which actually sounded fairly contemporary thanks to Teenage Fanclub’s homage). Again, that’s a story for another post.

I guess I first came across Pavement when The Wedding Present covered ‘Box Elder’ for the b-side of ‘Brassneck’ in 1990. It wasn’t until 1991’s ‘Summer Babe’ that I actually heard them. By the time the album came out the following year they’d built up quite a buzz. I remember hearing ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ in The Plastic Factory - an independent record shop on Corporation Street where a few alumni of my old record shop alma mater (Vinyl Dreams) worked. That last year in Brum I did a few days work there myself, although I’m pretty sure I was just hanging out when Mitch played me the album.

Anyway, I bought it on the spot and played it *a lot*. I loved Malkmus’s drawl, seeming no-sequitur lyrics and the Sonic Youth tunings of the guitars and the fact that when a lot of my favourite artists were crossing over these guys seemed to embrace the willfulness and amateurism that would have them and their aesthetic brethren branded as slackers.

Ironically, the band had made a creative leap by the time they released their follow up and most accessible album ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ before getting denser with ‘Wowee Zowee’, peaking (imho) with ‘Brighten The Corners’ and waving goodbye with the under appreciated ‘Terror Twilight’. I’d still hold those three middle three albums up as classics of the indie canon, and although I’ve played those albums a lot in the intervening years (all of them apart from the last now available in expanded editions) I’ve kind of overlooked their debut. So on Friday (which happened to be my birthday) I treated myself to the Luxe and Reduxe version of ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ and it’s been a revelation. I had come to think of this debut as being patchy, but it seems that was a false memory. Listening again now the Fall comparisons that seemed so obvious at the time are harder to spot apart from on a couple of tracks (‘Two States’ in particular). The slacker epithet has a bit more traction thanks mainly to Malkmus’s delivery and lyrics on the likes of ‘Here’ and ‘Summer Babe’, but there’s also a lot of focus, especially on the extras, which include the ‘Watery Domestic’ EP and two Peel sessions plus a contemporaneous Brixton Academy gig. And the quality of some of those extras - ‘Secret Knowledge of Backroads’, ‘Ed Ames’, the alternate mix of ‘Here’, ‘Shoot The Singer’ to name but four - are worth the price alone.
The latter track has even made it onto their best of ‘Quarantine The Past’ due out in a couple of weeks.

Considering they are on of my all time favourite bands, I don’t really know why I never saw them live again - I certainly saw a lot less bands in general between 92-97 - generally relying on what I could blag tickets for in exchange for a review while juggling my course and extra-curricular student activities. However, I am about to rectify this heinous oversight.

Pavement play their first reunion show tonight in Auckland, NZ. I had hoped circumstances might allow me to be there but looks like I’m going to have to wait and catch them at their second gig at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on Thursday. I’ve waited 18 years already, I guess three more days will be bearable.

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*last time I saw Robert I was in the crowd at Benicassim (2003) and he was playing on the mainstage with The Zephyrs.

** if I recall correctly the band’s UK label head Abbo was a Luton fan.

10 Albums From 1989 That Are Better Than The Stone Roses

This week saw people get their knickers in a twist about a Stone Roses reunion. Again. Now don't get me wrong, I think The Stone Rosess is a really good album, but it certainly has its fair share of filler - and don't forget Elephant Stone wasn't even on the original album. FAIL.
So time for a bit of perspective. Here's a list of albums that also came out in 1989 and are better than the Roses' debut. It also inadvertently helps to illustrate some of the gaping holes in the Spotify catalogue - only five of these full albums are on there. Pah!
So in no particular order...

Lou Reed New York - no one was expecting Lou Reed to come back with an album this good, abunch of sketches about the city and various NY characters. Romeo Had Juliette, Dirty Blvd, Busload Of Faith - the Lou Reed album I still play most.

Ministry The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste - in 1989 I thought Al Jourgensen was a genius - he'd worked or went on to work with Jello Biafra and Ian MacKaye, Skinny Puppy, Cabaret Voltaire and Revolting Cocks amongst others. Who knew it'd all go downhill after one more album. This still sounds pretty intense.

De La Soul 3 Feet High And Rising - 1988-1990 was when skinny white boys like me* 'got' hip-hop, pretty much thanks to this album and...

Beastie Boys Pauls Boutique - At the time, the overlooked follow up to 'Licensed To Ill'. Now acknowledged as the classic it is.

Nirvana Bleach - this debut is rough and ready but that's its charm. The riff from School, Swap Meet, Been A Son, About A Girl. Fuckin' A. At the time I thought this was a better album than...

Pixies Doolittle - with hindsight, a better album than Bleach. Is it a better album than Surfer Rosa? I think so. It's definitely better than The Stone Roses. Even the sleeve's better.

Rapeman Two Nuns And A Pack Mule - Get past the controversial name and it's an awesome album. Also features one of the best cover versions EVER in Just Got Paid (ZZ Top). I wish Albini had done another album more like this rather than the first Shellac album.

Pop will Eat Itself This is the day..The hour..This is. - scrappy grebo band embrace sampling culture to great success. Wake Up...Time To Die, Can U Dig It, Wise Up Suckers!', Def Con One. All brilliant.

The Cure Disintegration Their last great album. Lovesong, Fascination Street, Pictures Of You, need I say more? Even casual fans should own this one.

Fugazi 13 Songs - OK, this one is a bit of cheat as it's a compilation of their first two vinyl EPs, but if you only own one record on this list, I'd suggest it should be this. Still sounds like the most exciting thing ever committed to tape.

That's the definitive list as of this morning. Have I missed anything off?

*yeah, I was skinny in 1989

Yeah Yeah Yeahs ‘It’s Blitz’

Yeah Yeah Yeahs burst into my consciousness when the fractured energy of Bang first filled the Xfm airwaves eight years ago. An iconic lead singer with an electrifying presence, a drummer and guitarist who clearly understood that art rock dynamics and sonic experimentation weren’t the enemy of catchy songs, this was a band that couldn’t fail to excite. Their full length debut Fever To Tell certainly delivered on all the promise.

However, 2006’s Show Your Bones met with a cool response from some quarters, Pitchfork saying it “sounds guarded, with very little danger and too few moments of real urgency” and The Guardian claiming “the band are still struggling to raise their game beyond White Stripes-goth-lite”. If casual fans struggled with the direction of that album, it’ll be interesting to see what they make of It’s Blitz!.

Early reports revealed that production was going to be shared between long time knob twiddler David Sitek and the man who helmed 2007’s Is Is EP, Nick Launay. Given the band’s acknowledgement that Launay’s work with Public Image Limited was why they wanted to work with him in the first place, along with Nick Zinner’s recently declared love for vintage synths, it was clear that the album was going to take at least some of its cues from the early 80s. Sure, first tune out of the traps Zero certainly hit everyone in the chest, driven along by squelching synth/heavily effected rumbling guitar line, its dynamic structure and feel coming across like the mutant dancefloor cousin of Muse’s Map Of The Problematique, but once you get past that first song those influences come thick and fast.

Heads Will Roll shamelessly ‘borrows’ from PiL’s This Is Not A Love Song; Skeleton Me is the missing track from OMD’s Architecture And Morality (it even has a faux martial /highland pipers bit like in Maid Of Orleans); while the scratchy guitars and syncopated bassline of Dragon Queen funks along nicely. All of a sudden Zero starts to look like the band throwing everyone a bit of a curveball.

Elsewhere, the spirit of Fever To Tell can be felt on Dull Life and Shame And Fortune, the former the only track on the album that comes close to matching the tempo of Zero, the latter featuring some serious fuzz and a yelping vocals. Those looking for this album’s Maps or Cheating Hearts should check out Runaway. With a simple piano intro, some great power ballad drumming, ebowed guitar, tortured strings and synths that could have been lifted straight off Duran Duran’s first album (check out To The Shore), it features one of Karen O’s most melancholy lyrics “I was feeling sad / can’t help looking back / want you to stay / want you to be my prize”. Easily their best chance for a massive hit single.

When the band announced the title of the album some hoped this was going to be their hardest record yet, few would have imagined it likely they might be referencing the club that birthed the new romantic movement. While I’d still like to hear an album that is 10 different versions of Machine, to these ears Its Blitz! is the sound of the band appropriating the best bits of a much maligned era and effortlessly creating something that sounds new and vital. No mean trick, but it’ll be interesting to see if everyone else is convinced.

Muse Recording New Album

Sound of 2009 and Marketing

Yesterday I mentioned this article on Drowned In Sound which bemoaned the marketing techniques of record labels and the pressure they put on new acts. The premise was that aiming to get new bands hyped onto start of year tip lists such as BBC’s Sound of 2009, means that bands are forced to deliver new songs to a strict calendar that isn’t conducive to making great art. Also, that failure to deliver on the promise of these tips within the first 12 months means artists don’t get time to develop any more.

Historically these lists are pretty meaningless in the scheme of things and are inevitably from the school of throwing enough shit at a wall and some of it sticking. But certainly with this and last year’s BBC poll there is a stronger bit of method to the madness, with last year's having a pretty successful hit rate. It probably helps that the BBC have tapped into the grassroots music enthusiasts rather than just rely on who are the labels’ priorities. Looking at the 2008 list you can see that when they have tripped up, it's because they’ve bought into the crap coming from the labels (Joe Lean and The Jing Jang Jong) or they’ve got sucked into the miasma of blog hype for artists with little to back it up (Cajun Dance Party, Black Kids).

Where they were successful is with either acts that had already been in development for a while (Adele, Duffy, Santogold) or with acts who’s albums they would already have heard by the time the list was put together (Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Alphabeat, Black Mountain, Lil Wayne). It can certainly be argued that Joe Lean and Black Kids weren’t given enough time to develop, but you can’t really imagine all the development time in the world helping Joe Lean, can you?

Of the others, have any of them really suffered from unrealistic release schedules? Not really, because they nearly all had the albums in the can already. So it seems a bit unfair to be hating on the marketing departments so much when they look like they’ve pretty much played it just right for most of the 2008 list. Even Foals had the chance to redo their album after not liking the David Sitek produced version.

So looking at the top 5 of this year’s list how will they fare? While White Lies have won the sprint with their solid debut 'To Lose My Life...' going straight in at No.1 in the album charts, judging by the amount and quality of stuff she’s already put out on the web, poll topper Little Boots has to be the favourite for a truly great debut in 2009. I don’t really care for Florence and The Machine, so I’m hoping that she might be the Joe Lean of 2009, but I suspect she’s probably this year’s Bat For Lashes - contrived, average but inexplicably nominated for the Mercury prize.
Empire Of The Sun are the opposite in that I’d love them to be this year’s MGMT, but they’ll probably be the Black Mountain (great overlooked album of the year). La Roux I’m still unsure about. Their combination of low key indie club dates and touring with Lily Allen could be just the right thing to break them but they might be just too pop and Elly could just be a little too young and inexperienced to pull it off.

Certainly the lack of landfill indie on the list is to be applauded and here’s hoping that the retro 80s electro vibe will see Ladyhawke album becomes the sleeper hit of 2009.

Latest Problems with the Music Industry

Drowned in sound have started a new series of industry articles from those in the know. The first is called ‘How To Get Tipped’ but would be more accurately titled ‘how the marketing department is killing new bands’. It’s a good article, but a little unfocused in what it’s actually against. Have a read, I’ll post some of my thoughts on this tomorrow

Warner Music Group have come in for some flack over the removal of YouTube videos that infringe their copyright. Admittedly, most of the flack is coming from unlikeable kids who don’t understand copyright but it is another case of the industry wading in and pissing off their potential customers without thinking about how they can use what they are doing to their advantage. NB:I don’t think kids need to understand copyright to be likable.

On a more positive note, I'm loving this from French Horn Rebellion

My Morning Jacket 'Live From Las Vegas At The Palms'

It’s no secret that I’m a longtime fan of My Morning Jacket, if you want to know about the transcendent power of rock music there are currently few finer live bands and certainly they are in my top three live acts I would recommend to any music fan (full list coming soon). For my money their 2005 John Leckie produced album Z was pretty much faultless, although many fans prefer the reverb soaked, recorded-in-a-grain-silo sound of their first two albums and the major label debut It Still Moves, Z is the one that finally comes closest to capturing the full extent of their majesty (although the live album/dvd Okonosos is probably the best starting point for new fans). So the release last year’s eagerly awaited follow up Evil Urges was something of a disappointment.

Whereas in the past they’ve successfully implemented elements of reggae (Phone Went West) and ska (Off The Record) and they’ve always had a lot of soul, the funk, r’nb and falsetto experiments found the band misfiring. That and a few slight songs with cheesy lyrics marred what otherwise should have been the album that crossed over.

Skip forward seven months to this iTunes only curio recorded live in the state of the art Palm Casino studio in Las Vegas. There’s a suitably lounge-tinged feel here that, given the city’s place in the whole rat pack mythos, seems appropriate. This cocktail vibe is enhanced by picking five of the more laid back and quieter tracks from either end of the band’s catalogue to date, which gives the six song EP a consistency that it might otherwise be lacking. Opener Tonight I Want To Celebrate With You employs the omnichord that worked to such great effect on Touch Me I Think I’m Going To Scream Pt 2 , but rather than go with the latter’s gentle electro groove it takes on a country flavour with some pedal steel guitar. It’s this country rock and cocktail theme that runs through all the tracks here, bringing out the AM friendly side of the band, and although it’s certainly not the reason why I love the band it is something they do well, and stripped of the wailing guitars it serves to showcase the quality of Jim James songwriting.

New tune Dear Wife could happily have sat along side the better tracks on the last album but the standout is the Tennessee Fire's They Ran, a lesson in restraint with sweet wordless, backing vocals that to these ears has the same feel as The Flamingos version of I Only Have Eyes For You.

As a companion piece to Evil Urges it’s a strong offering (and at only £4.74 a bargain), although fans of the band’s more rocking side (assuming they already own Okonosos) may want to check out some of the recordings from the Madison Sqare Garden NYE show as well. That and keep your fingers crossed for rescheduled UK dates.