Pavement: Brighten The Corners

     Well, this is my fourth and final Pavement post. That is until Matador reissues Terror Twilight. Before I get into Brighten The Corners, I thought I'd encapsulate my feelings about Pavement's first four albums with a girl analogy. Slanted And Enchanted is your first love, but she's not THE one. Crooked Rain Crooked Rain is the awesome girl that you fall in love with and marry. Wowee Zowee is that hot, freaky chick you want really bad, but you know you're not cool enough to get. Brighten The Corners is the girl of your dreams that you meet after you're already married to CRCR. How's that for a summation of one of the greatest "grand slam" album runs by any band?
     Brighten The Corners starts out with the track "Stereo". Malkmus' delivery is equal parts goofy and laid back. I also enjoy his reference to Geddy Lee's voice. The album also features my second favorite Pavement song, "Date W/ Ikea", which is a Spiral Stairs power pop gem. The rest of the album is a solid amalgamation of the ground they had covered on their previous releases. Once again, Matador did an excellent job of packaging this reissue. I highly recommend my kids listen to all my Pavement cd's.
     I'm not sure how I feel about the decision to cover Pavement as a series of posts. I didn't want to cram everything into one post, but a series probably wasn't the best alternative. Going forward, I'm not sure I'll do it with another band or artist. I will probably continue to post about Guided by Voices albums as they come out, though.
     I also have a couple side notes today. First, I just finished reading Wilson Neate's new book about Wire called, Read & Burn. It's fantastic and now I think I'm going to go to the Wire show at the Beachland. He also wrote the excellent 33 1/3 book about Pink Flag. Finally, this is my 88th post. Since I'm closing in on 100, I thought I'd come up with a special 100th post. I haven't figured out what it will be yet, but I have 11 more posts before I have to decide. Peace.