All Time Top 1100 Albums (Aerosmith - Big Ones) P265

41/1100

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Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is the second studio album by American indie rock band Pavement, released on February 14, 1994 by Matador Records. The album saw the band move on towards a more accessible rock sound than that of their more lo-fi debut Slanted and Enchanted and achieve moderate success with the single "Cut Your Hair".
The album also saw original drummer Gary Young replaced by Steve West. It was a UK Top 20 hit upon release, although it was not so successful in the US charts.


1. Silence Kid
2. Elevate Me Later
3. Stop Breathin
4. Cut Your Hair
5. Newark Wilder
6. Unfair
7. Gold Soundz
8. 5-4=Unity
9. Range Life
10. Heaven Is a Truck
11. Hit the Plane Down
12. Fillmore Drive


Here we go! Review No.41 - Colin Larkin rises from the dead to randomly pick out a selection from his Top 1000 (1100) whilst Rob has a well deserved break and it's a pretty unknown Indie/Alternative Rock pick by the Californian band Pavement 'Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain' - was surprisingly a enjoyable listen and has a Eels/Beck vibe about it, opener 'Silence Kid' is a good intro and sets the tone for rest of Album, the catchy 'Cut Your Hair' is the closest to a big hit they got, 'Elevate Me Later' and the acoustic 'Range Life' are the other stand outs. I guess they got lost in-between the end of Grunge and the Britpop era so never made quite made it big - but critics gave this plenty of praise, and rightly so.

This placed number 237 out of the Top 1000


7/10


 
BlueHammer85 said:
41/1100

View attachment 53943


Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is the second studio album by American indie rock band Pavement, released on February 14, 1994 by Matador Records. The album saw the band move on towards a more accessible rock sound than that of their more lo-fi debut Slanted and Enchanted and achieve moderate success with the single "Cut Your Hair".
The album also saw original drummer Gary Young replaced by Steve West. It was a UK Top 20 hit upon release, although it was not so successful in the US charts.


1. Silence Kid
2. Elevate Me Later
3. Stop Breathin
4. Cut Your Hair
5. Newark Wilder
6. Unfair
7. Gold Soundz
8. 5-4=Unity
9. Range Life
10. Heaven Is a Truck
11. Hit the Plane Down
12. Fillmore Drive


Here we go! Review No.41 - Colin Larkin rises from the dead to randomly pick out a selection from his Top 1000 (1100) whilst Rob has a well deserved break and it's a pretty unknown Indie/Alternative Rock pick by the Californian band Pavement 'Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain' - was surprisingly a enjoyable listen and has a Eels/Beck vibe about it, opener 'Silence Kid' is a good intro and sets the tone for rest of Album, the catchy 'Cut Your Hair' is the closest to a big hit they got, 'Elevate Me Later' and the acoustic 'Range Life' are the other stand outs. I guess they got lost in-between the end of Grunge and the Britpop era so never made quite made it big - but critics gave this plenty of praise, and rightly so.

This placed number 237 out of the Top 1000


7/10


Click to expand...

Formulaic music by numbers for me, soulless and empty....The well has gone dry, sorry I hate it BH :)
2/10
 
I’ve heard this record many, many times and I continue to have the same reaction: why the hype? How is this “melodic”? I am fine without melody sometimes — it’s just I don’t understand how this is considered melodic especially compared with another two dozen alt mid-90s bands of similar ilk but less acclaim who actually had hooks and chops. Someone once called these guys “America’s Fall” which would annoy me if I were in The Fall.

Further comments inbound but I’m not having any more positive a visceral reaction to this than I ever had.

I will say after Spotify played this it launched right into My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow” which blew out all the cobwebs Pavement left in my ears. God damn did they kick ass.
 
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Since music critics and a lot of music fans have been looking for the reincarnation of the VU or Dylan for, like, 50 years, anytime someone comes around the corner who may offer the vaguest similarity to either of them seems to get a lot of attention. So it is with Pavement. Obviously they're nothing like VU or Dylan, I know, but you know what I mean -- they're "emergent from the underground." But Archers of Loaf -- a WAAAAAAY better band and contemporaries of these guys -- had bands like this sussed: "The underground is overcrowded" they wrote, correctly, and Pavement is partly responsible.

Several friends whose taste I share and whose open-mindedness I appreciate think the world of these guys. And as a Bay Area native, maybe I should too since they're from Stockton (barely the Bay Area, actually -- pretty much filled with cows, warehouses, dust and crime). But after a number of listens to this and their other acclaimed "masterpiece" Slanted and Enchanted, I just can't hear it. The guitars ping and slosh around without creating many hooks though they do on Cut Your Hair, on Unfair maybe, and on Gold Soundz, too. The tempos range from iffy to slovenly to lazy, often within the same song. Also Steven Malkmus can't sing, but that's not even really a problem, compared to the others. I'll admit he can write a lyric or two, but musically Stop Breathin and Newark Wilder and 5-4=Unity and Heaven Is A Truck are all ugh. It's just a grab bag of indie/alt -- it doesn't live with you after. It doesn't stick. At least not to me.

What's more irritating is that some of this has been done before, and a lot better, and more inventively, by The Replacements and Sonic Youth, among (many, many) others, years earlier. And I've never understood how this band can be the vanguard of Gen X. Some critics called them the best band of the 90s even. That's almost an insult. This reminds me of that first Beck record we had on this list, which was the beginning for him, not the pinnacle of artist evolution, which this supposedly is for Pavement.

A point for the lyrics on Unfair for its many references to my home state, but there's only one real word for this record: overrated. And, I might add, as fuck. An exceedingly generous 5/10.
 
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When’s the deadline for reviews on this? Can’t quite make my mind up about it. Not awful by any means though. More Velvet Underground than the Fall that’s for sure
 
Short review as I’m on holiday - I didn’t dislike it, but there’s not really enough to make me want to listen more than a couple of times.
Slightly rocky but in a ramshackle, half-arsed way that isn’t bad, but isn’t great either. 6/10.

Great to have this thread back - thanks @BlueHammer85
 
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