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My iPod #453: Pavement – Gold Soundz

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“Gold Soundz” may just be Pavement’s poppiest moment ever to be recorded and released. Found in the middle of the great Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, it is positioned after the wild rocking of “Unfair” and precedes the jazzy and experimental “5-4=Unity” but finds the perfect middle ground to provide one of the band’s most lighter, softer and easy listening tracks in their wide catalogue of astounding music. I am a Pavement fan, so I might have a bit of a bias opinion on this stuff.

In terms of the mix, the track is very treble heavy. The bass guitar and drum pedal are present are audible but are pushed back putting the focus on the guitars and various cymbals with Stephen Malkmus’ voice right in the middle of it all. Malkmus sings continuously, his lyrics roll right off the tongue from the first verse and straight into the chorus without any sign of effort, though they may not mean anything in particular they still manage to make a lot of sense in a way coming off quite confusing but beautiful in the process.

Took me a while to get into “Gold Soundz” though. Not really sure why. But I can’t help but feel happy when I hear it from time to time.

My iPod #319: Pavement – Elevate Me Later

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After the opening track “Silence Kit” from Pavement’s second album “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” is “Elevate Me Later”, a song which I believe is Stephen Malkmus’ critique of celebrity lifestyles and other things that are considered to be of higher statuses. He clearly doesn’t give a shit about those, and the song title shows that he’d rather pass on being associated with them.

It took me a while to get into it. Didn’t think it was that great of a track. But the ascending guitar riff got stuck in my head one time and I just wanted to listen to it repetitively.

The song itself is very laid-back and easy to listen to.  There isn’t a lot to it except two verses, both of which are sung with a very simple but enjoyable melody and a part where the band execute this faux big rock ending where they ploughing in as much noise as they can from their instrument, with Malkmus yelling something which is buried deep in the mix….. only to begin playing the guitar riff again until the song actually ends and the album continues with “Stop Breathin'”.

It sounds simple. That’s not a bad thing. Simplicity is all you need sometimes.

My iPod #229: Pavement – Cut Your Hair

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Ah…. the first Pavement song I ever heard. It all started from this.

I was ten years old, probably getting to eleven, and I was downstairs nice and early whilst everyone else stayed in their beds to watch the music videos on MTV2. “Cut Your Hair” came on, played for the its three minute duration, and then was gone. But it got stuck in my head. The “ooh ooh ooh” chorus, the easy-to-remember ‘riff’ (don’t know whether it’s a riff or not)….. I am certain that that was the only time I saw the video on that channel before it got revamped, renamed and whatever else the company did to totally remove its credibility.

The music video is really simple and not at all serious. The band come into a barbershop, weird things happen when each member sits in the chair resulting in no one getting their hair cut and they leave when the song finishes. Does it have anything to do with the song? Not really. It’s more of an obscure “Hey we’re Pavement” type thing, seeing as this was the band’s first proper music video to go with a song that did quite well commercially. Although, it did leave me wondering who played what instrument and who the person singing was.

Anyway, “Cut Your Hair” is a song about people in the music industry caring more about their appearances than they do about the actual music. It is sarcastic in tone, something supported by Malkmus’ trademark loose and “off-key” vocal.

I liked it so much I put the video on my Piczo site; every kid who was in Year Six (2005/06) will know what I’m talking about. Too bad that company died, and my site is gone now.

“Cut Your Hair” is on the band’s second album “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” from 1994.