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Pavement - Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition
| Ew |
| Fans of the '90s' preeminent lo-fi-literati rockers tend to divide themselves like different gangs from The Warriors — some are fiercely loyal to the clean accessibility of 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, others to '95's more jammy, obtuse Wowee Zowee. But '97's ''mainstream''-friendly Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition, now reissued with 32 extra tracks, is a trove of effortless pleasures, from the pogo-party frolic ''Stereo'' to the rickety, fuzzed-up gem ''Date w/ Ikea.'' Many of the unreleased, B-side, and cover tracks here are less immediate, but no less joyful for the Pavement completist. A...full text |
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| Thephoenix |
| In 1997, not quite 10 years after he formed Pavement in Stockton, California, with friend Scott Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus was still singing like a dude unsure of what he wanted to be. Quasi-crooner or monotone absurdist? Fantasy rapper or thrash scatman? His band, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were: a bunch of ironists who had evolved from remedial players into players who only pretended they were remedial. They proved it with Brighten the Corners, their penultimate and best album, which plotted those dangling-participle guitars and run-on drum patterns within classic-rock syntax....full text |
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| Popmaters |
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These days, Stephen Malkmus doesn’t care if you like his music. If the occasionally charming but mostly formless jamming of Real Emotional Trash doesn’t ooze ambivalence, check out his live show. Even with Janet Weiss on the drums now, it’s like walking into a rehearsal: Malkmus with his head down, slumped over his guitar, noodling away. Tough to watch and more than a little disappointing coming from a guy who is capable of so much more. Back in the mid-’90s, Pavement began moving in a similar fashion. They were starting to make music solely for themselves, though one could hardly blame them. It was a different turn from the one Malkmus has made in 2008. Then, the band was shouldered with the burden of being the “kings” of indie rock, the exact sort of assignment Pavement spent its career pushing against. So they made the chunky beautiful mess that was Wowee Zowee, and while history has been kind to the record—and it should be—response back in ‘95 was tepid....full text |
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