Saturday, May 31, 2008

Pavement - Brighten The Corners


One of my favorite bands of all time. This is the first album I listened to of theirs, simply unlike anything I had ever heard. Malkmus' way of twisting the pronunciation of words is so irresistibly catchy. I mean the man invented a way of singing no one to my knowledge has ever done before. This like all of Pavements music seems to be clumsily perfect, in other words "organized chaos". From the first listen to the first track "Stereo" I was hooked. Sometimes at work or out somewhere the question "What about the voice of Getty Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy? - I know him, and he does." flies out of my brain cells and I think one thing - Genius-. But the real stylistic gem for me is -Transport Is Arranged-. Every word leaves you in suspended animation with your mouth open. At least for me, its not that these are extraordinary lyrics, they are actually really simple. Malkmus has always made the hard seem attainable. And for all this praise, this isn't even their best record. Please enjoy.

3 comments:

Justin Wilmes said...

On an only slightly related note, I noticed recently that 2 Pavement songs seem to copy the vocal melodies from a couple of famous old songs.

1. The verse in the song "Silent Kid" off of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain is REALLY close to the melody on the verse in "Rollercoaster" by Buddy Holly.

2. The chorus in "Spit on a Stranger" from Terror Twilight is REALLY close to the chorus from the famous song "Mr. Bojangles", sung by Nina Simone and Bob Dylan, amongst others.

I can't imagine that a musical stud like Malkmus would have done this coincidentally, must have been intentional. Both songs are track ones on both records. Dunno, just kind of curious. Has anyone else noticed these similarities?

Anonymous said...

Those Hot Chocolate Hour bros have a link to the new Deerhunter album.

http://hotchocolatehour.blogspot.com/

Jason said...

Awesome, I am getting into Malkmus big time and I was just thinking of picking up some Pavement. Thank you sir.