FEATURE:
Mighty Fame Throwa
Saluting Pavement’s Debut Masterpiece: The Timeless Slanted and Enchanted at Thirty
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THROUGHOUT April…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gail Butensky
some enduring and wonderful albums are celebrating big birthdays. One of them is Pavement’s genius debut album, Slanted and Enchanted. Released on 20th April, 1992, it is often ranked as one of the must-hear and greatest albums ever. Led by the incredible Stephen Malkmus, Pavement followed their acclaimed debut with the equally-brilliant 1994 album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The California band released a masterpiece in 1992. Prior to its thirtieth anniversary, go and get the album on vinyl. Like I do with album anniversaries and stuff like this, I will highlight a couple of features about the album, ending with some reviews. One of the defining albums of the 1990s, Slanted and Enchanted is still played widely today. In a feature from last year, Guitar.com reviewed the album and discussed the background of Slanted and Enchanted. They also revealed how Pavement formed:
“Pop music catches on like a meme. It just takes a little bit of tinder, and it can become a phenomenon.” Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus astutely reflected in 2018. In the same interview (with Esquire) the then 52-year-old indie-rock godfather revealed that he was always keeping an ear to the ground, dissecting the modern pop charts mathematically to try to unpick its ever-changing, winning formula.
Little wonder that Malkmus is keen to decode the mechanics of success, his band’s unanticipated rise to the pinnacle of indie rock primacy some 27 years before wasn’t achieved via heavy major label promotion or deft chart-chasing, but by a conscious upturning of listener expectations. His breezy attitude to the recording process – and life in general – became central to Pavement’s slacker-rock appeal.
In 1991, the 24-year-old Malkmus was nervously putting the finishing touches to his band’s debut full-length album. Capturing the ramshackle sound of three young men pushing at the limits of listener tolerance, Slanted and Enchanted’s 14 tracks might have been intended as a wry 90s update of Stephen’s post-punk influences (The Fall and My Bloody Valentine in particular), but, through a combination of unkempt, dissonant chord structures, tangled, grubby riffs, tuneful, vibrant melodies and coolly delivered (but earnestly intelligent) lyrics, Slanted and Enchanted was a felicitous moment-seizer. And one which prescribed the DIY ethos of independent music for decades to come.
Maybe maybe
Formed by high school friends Malkmus and Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs) in Stockton, California, the pair’s initial ideas (aside from having fun playing local open-mic nights) was that they would experiment with freeform musical expression, and write material that evaded the howling anguish of the then on-the-rise grunge scene, or the pomposity of stadium rock. Malkmus and Kannberg were middle-class, suburban kids – and that’s what they wanted their own music to reflect. “Whatever soul you have being a suburban kid like us, what can you do that’s right that way?” Malkmus explained to MOJO in 1999, “Because we’re not Black Sabbath, we’re not working-class heroes and we can’t get away with that. Luckily we’re not hanging out at Met Bar, either, we’re not New York City hipsters or anything, so that’s our earthiness.”
Freeing themselves from the pressure of trying to be something they weren’t, the duo’s early sound fizzed with raw elements that would soon come to enthral the local indie scene. Early tracks such as the spritely jog of the heartbroken Box Elder or the ominous, angular spikiness of She Believes revealed Malkmus and Kannberg’s predilection for using their guitars as a diverse musical paintbrush. Complementing, and competing, with each other.
These songs, along with three others, were recorded at future drummer Gary Young’s ‘Louder Than You Think’ home studio in one four-hour session. The resulting first EP, Slay Tracks: 1933-1969, pulsed with Malkmus and Kannberg’s noise guitar, purposefully captured in tinny, near-transistor-radio quality (this was stressed by the wash of radio noise on EP opener You’re Killing Me. Pavement’s homespun production aesthetic was born. “When I first heard them, I did not understand it.” Young reflected in an interview with Vice in 2015, “I’d tell my friends in New York I just made this weird record and I don’t really know how to describe it.”
This gloriously sloppy debut EP was a riveting listen, organically shifting between furious squalls of guitar, and shaky arrangements that were barely able to stand, before decaying into abstract expressions of fury. Occasionally bolstered by an eccentric (and often improvised) rhythms – a result of Young’s spontaneous decision to leap behind the drumkit during the sessions. Another crucial ingredient in the developing stew, was Malkmus’s vocal delivery, which veered from a sardonic, idle cool, to a hormonal wail across the EPs run time.
Just 1,000 copies of Slay Tracks… were pressed, and released to surrounding independent stores by Kannberg’s self-run label Treble Kicker. This very first Pavement release was soon recognised as a word-of-mouth, underground gem by indie rock scribes and attentive devotees of their local Stockton scene. It was enough to pique the interest of Chicago-based Dan Koretzky, who was in the process of founding his own label Drag City. Recognising Pavement’s potential, he promptly signed the outfit, and two further EPs quickly followed.
Across Demolition Pilot J7 and Perfect Sound Forever Malkmus and Kannberg were given space to develop their sonic universe. At this point, Gary Young joined the Pavement ship full-time – squaring off competition from their then live drummer Jason Turner”.
The Quietus also shone a light on the brilliant Slanted and Enchanted in their feature from 2012. Reviewed in the month of its twentieth anniversary, the debut album from Pavement still sounds utterly stunning and fresh:
“On first listening to the album you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a demo, home-recorded on Portastudio using cheap cassette tape. And it would be an assumption not a million miles wide of the truth. The album was actually recorded at the home-studio of ex-hippy and Pavement drummer Gary Young and done so with little equipment or experience and on a very tight budget.
Though this might not sound particularly appealing at first, specifically to the auto-tuned ears of some readers, this is one of those many aspects of Slanted and Enchanted that makes it so magical.
The lo-fi production gives the listener an affinity with the band because knowing that the songs are not indebted to a producer's signature sound or vision, or sullied by over-production provides one with a more precise sense of what it was like recording this album, an impression almost of what it would have felt like to have been there at the time.
Because of this, Pavement's work has most often been likened to that of The Fall - specifically their early releases. Both groups embrace a raw, unpolished sound; one that seems to welcome dissonance and seeks to give the listener immediacy to the recording process.
And this is not just the opinion of music critics. The frontmen of both Pavement and The Fall (Stephen Malkmus and Mark E Smith respectively) have each acknowledged the apparent similarity, the former through his well documented love and indebtedness to the Manc post-punk outfit and the latter through a less flattering description of Pavement as Fall "rip-offs", saying "it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads."
Aside from the shared sound, what also links the two bands is their lyrical content. Like Smith, Malkmus excels at a stream of consciousness lyrical style, one that baffles and entertains in equal measure.
Take the opening to the stand-out track form the album, 'Trigger Cut' where Malkmus sings "Lies and betrayals / Fruit-covered nails / Eeeee-lectricity and Lust". I've listened to this album countless time and still don't really know what that means. And yet, just as Smith's lyrics perfectly complement the chaotic music of The Fall, so too do Malkmus' with Pavement.
But odd lyrics and Fall-inspired musical simplicity can only take you so far. And what makes Slanted and Enchanted a truly great album (rather than just a good one) is the quality of the songs.
'Trigger Cut' remains one of the band's finer moments and arguably one of the most memorable and enduringly appealing indie tracks to emerge from that decade. It possesses everything that's good about Pavement, surreal cut-and-paste lyrics, Malkmus' unusual delivery, stripped-down production and an irresistibly catchy sound.
And it's the last of these that is most important. Without the band's capacity to craft genuinely catchy hooks and melodies, Slanted and Enchanted would have just been artless noise; or Yo La Tengo if you prefer. [Saucer of milk for Mr Keoghan! Ed]
And this ability to create order from the clutter, letting the undeniably wonderful song-writing of the band shine through, is evident on much of the album. Almost as impressive as 'Trigger Cut' are tracks such as 'Zürich is Stained', 'Here', and 'In the Mouth of a Desert'; each one succeeding in walking that fine line between genius and chaos.
But that's not to say that there aren't some dodgy moments. While not necessarily bad, songs such as 'Conduit for Sale!' and 'Chesley's Little Wrists' are significantly weaker than the rest. They probably could have been left off the album because their inclusion needlessly reveals what happens when a desire to create a messy-sound trumps song-writing, illustrating that the band is capable of sometimes getting it wrong.
But then what album, let alone what debut album, is without its faults? And Pavement at their weakest are still a hundred times more interesting than lots of other bands at their best.
I'd advise anyone who's never listened to Slanted and Enchanted to do so as soon as possible and those of you who haven't listened to it for a while to go back and enjoy it in its entirety.
This is music in its natural state, free from the modern belief that the trickery of the studio contains the key to success. It might be unpolished, messy and at times confusing but that's exactly what helps make it so great”.
I am rounding off with a couple of reviews of Pavement’s debut, Slanted and Enchanted. Even if their debut, debatably, was eclipsed by Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Slanted and Enchanted is a timeless introduction that will live and inspire for generations. This is what PopMatters observed in their 2004 review:
“No album title from the ’90s describes its sound so perfectly as this album. As grunge began to become oversaturated in 1992, Slanted & Enchanted offered a lackadaisical, sunny, Northern California alternative to all the heroin-drenched misery of Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots, helping to initiate the “lo-fi” trend of the early ’90s, which would be continued in subsequent years by the likes of Sebadoh, Beck, Guided By Voices, and Liz Phair. Recorded over a couple weeks at Young’s home studio, with Kannberg playing bass lines on a tuned-down guitar through a bass amp, it might seem on the surface an amateurish, cacophonous recording, but amidst the hodgepodge are some superbly constructed, albeit idiosyncratic pop songs. Unlike the often impenetrable, artsy noise rock of Sonic Youth, Slanted & Enchanted is actually fun: it’s noise you can hum along to.
The opening track alone is a knockout. “Summer Babe” starts off innocuously, with distorted, Dinosaur Jr. style guitars and Young’s pounding drumming (punctuated by a little hi-hat flourish after every two bars). Any notion of this being just another indie rock song is thrown out the window when Malkmus delivers his unforgettable first verse: “Ice baby / I saw your girlfriend / She’s eating her fingers like they’re just another meal / She waits there / In the levee wash / Mixing cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar.” This isn’t just pretentious gibberish. A brilliant bit of surrealist poetry that bears a slight similarity to West Coast poets Lew Welch and Bob Kaufman, Malkmus depicts a scene of summertime ennui and longing that sticks in your head immediately. Kannberg’s solos are sloppy, but mellifluous, as the song builds to the climactic chorus of “Every time I sit around I find I’m shocked.” It’s the ultimate slacker love song.
The hooks on the rest of the album are plentiful, as are the oblique lyrics of Malkmus, which are often ridiculously obscure. The fabulous “Trigger Cut” contains whimsical wordplay (“Lies and betrayals / Fruit-covered nails / Eeeee-lectricity and lust”) and a simple, yet contagious melody, complete with a fantastic break of “sha la la” falsetto vocals. The befuddling, Sonic Youth-ish “No Life Has Singed Her” has Malkmus intentionally garbling the words in the chorus (singing “No life for Ginger”), “In the Mouth a Desert” features a great guitar melody that breaks into a gorgeous solo at the end, not to mention a rare impassioned moment from Malkmus (“I’ve been crowned, the king of it / And it is all we have so wait / To hear my words and / They’re diamond sharp”), while “Zurich is Stained” boasts more of a breezy, country feel. “Loretta’s Scars”, the noise-drenched “Perfume-V”, and the exhausted-sounding “Our Singer” (featuring Malkmus’s great vocal delivery in the opening line, “I’ve been waiting / An-tiss-ipating”) sustain the momentum for the rest of the album, but it climaxes on the stunning ballad “Here”. Opening with the classic lines, “I was dressed for success / But success it never comes,” it perfectly encapsulates the plight of directionless, twentysomething Generation X-ers wondering what to do with their lives, but Malkmus then delves into more esoteric poetry, seemingly spewing words that just happen to sound good with the song’s plaintive melody: “And all the sterile striking it / Defends an empty dock you cast away.” It’s a beautiful mess of a song.
Malkmus and Kannberg may have been the driving creative forces behind the band, but Gary Young was their secret weapon. Pounding away relentlessly on the kit like the muppet Animal, Young has two settings: stop, and go. His fluid, often overly powerful drumming sometimes comes close to overwhelming the songs (just listen to those cymbal crashes near the end of “Summer Babe”), but his playful style works perfectly with the other two members, as his distinctive fills help set this album apart anything else you’ll ever hear. Young would go on to record the Watery, Domestic EP in 1992, but by the end of the year, his erratic behavior would force his bandmates to replace him with the more skilled, yet duller Steve West. As a result, the four albums that followed would lack the relaxed, goofy charm of the first record.
In “Conduit for Sale”, a song obviously inspired by his hero Mark E. Smith of the Fall, Malkmus hollers stream of consciousness lines, screaming “I’m trying!” 16 times in a row, and facetiously mispronounces the word “scion”, but in the middle of this mess hides a line that epitomizes what Pavement was all about: “Between here and there is better than either here or there!” On Slanted & Enchanted, Pavement lurked in the fringes, swiping sounds and hooks from myriad styles, doing things their own way; they refused to be categorized, and that quality is what makes the album still sound strong today. The glorious 2002 re-issue Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, with its wealth of rarities and live performances, hammers home just how great this album was, a perfect introduction for curious younger listeners. Every bit as important and influential as two other albums from the same time period, Nirvana’s Nevermind and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, it’s the definitive sound of ’90s indie rock”.
I might actually wrap it there. Such a remarkable and original album that can be appreciated and loved by anyone who hears it, there will be a lot of celebration for Slanted and Enchanted on 20th April. For further reading, I will direct you to this 2012 feature from The New Yorker. Already cemented their talent and promise on their debut, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted is…
SUCH a magnificent debut album.