Unheard Cuts Bolster Pavement Reissue
Thu Sep 23, 8:48 PM ET Add Entertainment - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Jonathan Cohen
NEW YORK (Billboard) - Eleven never-before-heard tracks will be unveiled on Matador's 10th anniversary edition of seminal indie rock act Pavement's sophomore album, "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain."
Due Oct. 26, the double-disc set sports 14 additional unreleased versions of songs from the album, including a 1994 Peel Session on BBC Radio. The package will include a 40-page booklet with essays, rare Pavement photos and memorabilia.
"There's some things I would veto now and then, but Matador more than anything has been the driving force in digging up stuff and making these records into '90s classics," Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus (news) told Billboard with a chuckle. "I mean, they're doing a 40-page booklet! I didn't even know there was that much stuff that you could use for this!"
Thanks to such infectious cuts as "Range Life," "Gold Soundz" and "Cut Your Hair," "Crooked Rain" exposed Pavement to listeners well beyond the confines of indie rock. The set is the band's top-selling album to date, having shifted more than 234,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
"There are some extras that I guess just failed," Malkmus said of unreleased tracks like "All My Friends," "Hands off the Bayou" and "Flood Victim." "There are some full songs that are pretty cool; they sound just like 'Crooked Rain.' They maybe have not as good mixes or bad singing, or are just slightly inferior. But they're still pretty good."
Malkmus said he never listens to old Pavement albums, but was pleased to hear "Crooked Rain" recently in a bar in his Portland, Ore., home base. "I made an effort to record it and mix it in a way that was not completely '90s," he said of the album. "In the end, if you listened to it a lot when it came out, it will take you back to that time. It's just a little more fleshed out than (the 1992 debut album) 'Slanted and Enchanted.' It's not necessarily more ambitious, but just by making a second album, it's more ambitious. On a first album, you don't know what you're doing."
Pavement split after 1999's "Terror Twilight," with Malkmus going on to a solo career leading the band the Jicks. He said there's no fundamental obstacle to a Pavement reunion some day, but it's not something he's anticipating in the near future.
"It doesn't feel exactly right yet for me to do it," he said. "I mean, it could. I guess you just know when it's right, just like so many other things in your life. Or, you force it due to financial reasons or someone telling you how much you could make. No one has told us that, so that's not an issue at all. But we all get along; no one is like a lawyer with a huge caseload or has lost an arm."
Reuters/Billboard
