Comments on Crooked Brain, Crooked Brain

your friend is a dick

yeah, i was never into those bands either. i probably hear them all the time on kexp but they don't stand out for me.

"meh?" really? "MEH?" granted, wowee zowee is my favorite pavement album, but come on. slanted and enchanted invented the term "indie-rock," then crooked rain totally defined it. i mean, even if you didn't like "cut your hair" [inarguably the greatest shoulda-been-a-hit-single of the 1990's], you can't deny the beauty of "heaven is a truck" or the smarts of "stop breathing."

meh. wow, dude.

You need new friends.

The Pixies work about the same way for me as Pavement does with your friend.

What 1 & 4 said.

I don't know - somehow I've never really sat down with a Pavement album (I'm not sure how I made it to the ripe old age of 31 without that happening, but there you have it), but whenever I hear them in passing it doesn't really grab me.

I like cut your hair and heaven is a truck, but I agree w/ comment 5. I would lump modest mouse in there, too. I still dont get MM, though.

Your friend doesn't get Pavement or Modest Mouse?

Ditto 1, 4 and 6.

playing an entire album on a jukebox is a dick move, even if it is the best album ever made.

For me, Pavement had a few good tracks on each album and the rest was forgettable generic indie rock. Really overrated, yet without completely sucking. See also: Smashing Pumpkins.

No, Cosby, this is a dick move: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html

I have to concur with "meh," though I've come to understand what makes Pavement and Modest Mouse "important," if not (for me) enjoyable or striking.

Well, let me qualify that a little. There's some striking songwriting on both bands' parts. To me, though, they illustrate why so much indie rock feels so lightweight: great lyrics and solid melodies aside, if you drop the self-conscious sloppiness--if they actually tuned their guitars, practiced, sang in their actual ranges (and stopped acting like singing on pitch makes you some kind of bourgeois sellout)--what you're left with is just, well, rock & roll, and not all that different from the rock & roll our parents listened to. Which is fine, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing.

I can't say I listen to them as much as Erasure.

i'm going to start doing that. that entire album is brilliant.

great band, though i occasionally get grief for the opinion that their finest work came at the end of their career. i'd rate my personal enjoyment of their albums in parallel to their reverse chronological order with Terror Twilight being my favorite and Slanted and Enchanted rarely getting any play on my stereo.

It took me a while to fully come around to Pavement, but yeah, they're a pretty brilliant band.

Although I would probably say that CR, CR is my least favorite Pavement album, even though it's still chock full of solid to great moments.

a friend of mine can't get into pavement because he demands higher production values. i say he's missing out.

@12:
hilarious article. i'm guilty of jukebox terrorism ('sister ray', 'cop shoot cop', 'washing machine'), but 2 hours of brian eno is the next level.

the WORST jukebox dick move that i'm aware of was someone playing 'the end' by the doors over and over again. bartender tip: those new mp3 jukeboxes typically have a skip button, always keep your thumb hovering just in case the new radicals come one.

It seems a bit dated when I listen to it now. Like a time-capsule message from the exact moment that indie-rock became College Rock.

Oddly, I like the Jicks better.

The Fall kills Pavement dead.

Pavement is a total snore-fest. If you want good music from the 90's, go listen to Weezer.

sweet sad pavement...boring boring boring...never understood their greatness either, they were a crappy/safe "college" group, must be a generational thing.

@3 pavement did NOT invent the term 'indie rock'

We should also add Dinosaur Jr to this bonfire, as I believe Dinosaur Jr, the Pixies and Pavement can all be credited with helping to create today's misnomered genre of "indie rock"....and I never got it.

Weezer is actually one of the worst bands of the 90s. Annoying as shit. It must be a generational thing--I always thought they existed for our siblings in junior high to piss us oldsters off.

Pavement is a mixed bag, but Crooked Rain is a great album. I mean, top 100 great, not top 10.

Pavement pretty much defined the soundtrack of my youth.

hmmm, I dunno if I've even ever heard Weezer. seriously.

I hate how much this place is a music snob haven.

When irony went sour right before the turn of the century the date was on the carton for this band, but they sounded SO fresh at the beginning of the 90s, it was impossible not to get swept up - even if, as Malkmus said, they just thought there should be a version of The Fall from "Sacto, Northern Cal". Crooked Rain is kind of their perfect flowering for me. The non-sequiturs line up gorgeously and swirl into an undertow of unassignable emotion. They're still a little fey, which is just a problem they have as a band - I remember the Jicks played an instore on Capitol Hill on the day the Iraq war started and you could have thought it was any other day for them (maybe they were feeling the hurt, but they were sure keeping it to themselves, I mean, the country doesn't start bombing people EVERY day). But no shame on Crooked Rain, that shit is immaculate in my opinion.

Excellent Band. Excellent Album. Best album of the 90s? Perhaps....though B2M was doing some pretty incredible harmonizing in the largest city in Pennsylvania round the same time. Back again.