Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Album Review)

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)

My copy: 2010 reissue by Matador

Despite the pretensions that run within any given indie circle, everyone secretly wants a hit. To be known as a de facto force in your styling, to move up and outward or just to command influence over and spawn new generations of “good” music. Sure there are complications, there are demands, all kinds of serious detractors that drive artists to erect barriers around the idea of hitting it big. It’s also certainly valid to criticize an artist who compromises their original vision for attention. But sometimes a compromise is catchy as fuck.

When Pavement decided to turn in their Fall records and lean more into the Bunnymen element, they did compromise to a degree. And yet what came to be is also a cohesive vision of 90’s adolescent culture - a coming of age that extends logically from Slanted & Enchanted’s more primal, noisy tantrums. While Slanted contains this raw, primordial spirit, Crooked Rain also possesses a melancholy, loveable-loser soul that serves as a reflection of a more playful (and stoned) teenage mindset. 

Crooked Rain has classic rock showboating without the actual skill, psych meandering without the indulgent length and introspection without giving too much away: all combined to form a perfect catalyst as inspiration for the now bolstered “slacker” youth that may have been urged to trade their skateboards for guitars upon hearing this record. Crude masturbation allusions aside, Malkmus proves himself quite the wordsmith on tracks like “Elevate Me Later,” “Unfair” or “Range Life” (fuck you Billy Corgan). The David Berman collaborator doesn’t quite rival the former’s poetry, but when combined with a more chaotic and outright melodic approach to the music, it was certain that Malkmus’s effort would be more widely accepted. 

Yet, where Crooked Rain begins to limp is in its tonal compromise - the debut was harsh, layered and distinctly more lo-fi. The aesthetic of their original recordings was surely out of necessity, but it developed a tangible personality the likes of which are only slightly retained on the sophomore release. They’re unpopular, but outliers like “Hit The Plane Down” and “5-4=Unity” rekindle some of the irresponsible menace of their initial charm; the former in the frenetic vocals and the latter in its playful sound experiments (though just a rendition of “Take 5”).

But the hits are pretty undeniable: “Cut Your Hair,” and “Gold Soundz” boast choruses that even your girlfriends would get excited to sing along to. The big winners of the record are “Unfair” for its animated screams and “Fillmore Jive” for its emotional trip into the realities of indie rock lifestyles. The production here is mostly dry in delivery, but the bass is given much more room to explode, giving palpable depth to the many crescendos of the record. 

While not wholly groundbreaking in sonic creativity, Crooked Rain does boast an interminable influence in the annals of indie rock, serving as poster child for then much smaller indie label Matador. Though influence alone should never be enough, it’s true that Malkmus serves up a tight balance of pop and slacker grime to push Crooked Rain into notable territory.