PAVEMENT - BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS

Life takes you funny places. You see, when you should be practicing for a keyboard exam, you start playing the same two chords over and over again. You start to think, “Hmm, this sounds familiar…” and you clunk them for another 2-3 minutes. It starts coming back…you remember listening to this when driving, when picking up your sister from school, right in the middle of winter break your senior year of high school, but god, WHAT IS IT?! Well, it turns out to be the song “Blue Hawaiian” by Pavement. Off of “Brighten the Corners”. But, I haven’t listened to this album in MONTHS! I mean, it’s good and all, but it’s not “Slanted & Enchanted” or even “Terror Twilight” for that matter. It’s the bastard stepson of Pavement’s discography. The critics will say that “Wowee Zowee” is, but it isn’t. “Wowee Zowee” is an LP that goes and explores all kinds of Pavement – the punky (“Serpentine Pad”), the transcendently beautiful (“Grounded”), the epic jams (“Half a Canyon”) – it’s an album that distills everything you’ve loved about Pavement into little under an hour. “Brighten the Corners” serves its spot as Pavement’s own “Bossanova” or “Down” – a great album, but when compared to others by the group, it lacks.



First off, what’s this?! A song with a lyric about Geddy Lee? Sign me up! Yeah, the sound’s a little slicker, but listen to that semi-ironic chorus that’s made for blasting out of speakers in the summertime. A lyrical romp too – the chorus contains the line “my baby baby baby babe gave me malaria hysteria”. You think all is well with Pavement…and then….the slick sound stays. And it’s all mid-tempo. And where’s the distortion pedal?? Where’s Bob’s yelling?!! Is Scott still in the band? Why does everything sound so frickin’ relaxed?!



And here’s the problem – Pavement accidentally became another one of those slacker bands of the 90s…they didn’t practice, the recordings were covered in a glorious layer of fuzz, their first drummer was a drug-addled hippy , and yet, they still wrote some of the best music around from 1989-1992. But now it’s 1997 and what do we get? Middle-aged Pavement. (Johnboy – this is the equivalent of “Wilco (The Album)”, but not as terrible.)



Now this isn’t a bad album…but when you compare it to anything else in the Pavement discography, it doesn’t shimmer like a burning man drowning in Lake Michigan – it glistens with an ant’s eye on a slip and slide. Scott’s songs are good this time…



I’m sorry for that review. It was terrible.



OVERALL RATING – nachos with jalapenos – good, just stuff you gotta pick off.

KEY TRACKS – “Date W/ Ikea”, “Starlings of the Slipstream”, “Embassy Row”